Military Culture

During Operation Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn (OIF/OND), over 2.1 million American military troops have been deployed, 44% of whom have children (DOD 2010a), resulting in nearly 2 million children experiencing stressors of parental deployment (DOD 2010b) to a war zone, whereby a parent may be either wounded or killed (Link, Palinkas, 2013). Children are moved between 6 to 9 times during their school careers, following their parent as they are re-stationed from base to base. When a child is repeatedly transferred, from place-to-place, school-to-school, community-to-community, it is difficult to establish roots. Although the ability to adapt is a corresponding strength, the death of a parent to combat not only leaves a child with a traumatic loss
of a significant primary relationship, it simultaneously causes a disruption in the stability of home, school, and community supports. The surviving parent and child(ren) must re-locate because a Military family is no longer considered part of the broader military family. As they are required to move, the surviving parent may experience the duress of preparing funeral arrangements, while locating a new residence and new school(s), with very brief notice. No longer considered members of the broader military family, they soon become part of the civilian population. The civilian population has little to no understanding of military culture and are far-removed from the types of stressors our Military families endure. Hence, there is a disconnect. The surviving parent will likely experience their own grief distraught by the sudden and violent death, unable to provide full support to their children because of their own distraught. The parent may experience a disorienting dilemma, struggle with despair, while facing a great deal of uncertainty, with concerns about finances, the future, the children, while preparing, coordinating, and attending the funeral of their marital partner. The needs of the child may be lost in the confusion and children will be expected to re-negotiate not only a new environment, school, and peers, but also a family adjustment and deep personal loss of a significant relationship with a parent. The absence as a result of parental deployment may cause the loss to feel psychologically ambiguous, as well as the fact that children are likely unable to comprehend the permanence of death due to their development levels. CITE FROM RESILIENCE DOCUMENT – I THINK, I WILL NEED TO FIND (McDermid, et al., 2008)I LOOKED THROUGH RESILIENCE DOCUMENT AND DON’T THINK THIS IS THE ONE THIS POINT CAME FROM.Although a child may not cognitively understand death, even if the child is too young to remember, depending on age and ability, the body will remember, and a child may become somatic. This sets the stage for the development of anxiety, an inability to express emotions, with concern for the well-being or permanence of the surviving parent or loved ones, while the child experiences a funeral, a move, and will be transferred to a new civilian public school where peers are unlikely to grasp the experience even if a child did have the ability to describe it. These children become very vulnerable. When a parent remarries, the mention of the deceased parent can become uncomfortable to the “new” blended family. Therefore, the child is caught in a cyclone of emotion, un-relatable to most. The inability to express their realities is likely to cause anxiety and physiological fight or flight patterns which can lead to long-term physical, mental, and emotional health consequences. In my own experience, my father’s death was glossed over because of the sudden transition into my mother’s custody with her new marriage with two new babies. It would take many years before I fully understood what happened.
If Educators will weave in military culture into higher education and public K-12 settings, in order to continue and carry on with the work that the Obama Administration began through the White House Joining Forces Initiative, Operation: Educate the Educators, we can facilitate the development of socially supportive networks of care and compassion for our Military, Veterans, Spouses, and Children of all military experience, to include Special Needs.
I believe that by educating our civilian population, they will understand better the full extent of the protections they enjoy because of the sacrifices made by so few, and the exacerbated stressors the entire military family experiences for certain of said civilian privilege, as well as our Gold Stars who immediately lose that broader military family, with specific focus upon children who experience PDC, children of Wounded Warriors injured either physically/psychologically, and children with Special Needs. I recommend that Ball State University (as a University with a military history dating back as far as 1918), consider facilitating education in military culture in our large population of civilian students, especially as a University which espouses the principles of Beneficence. In this regard, I believe it need to be a blend, not only of history, political science, psychology, and education, but in the distance education setting. Of course, by teaching about the inclusion of military culture, I would also suggest weaving in disability culture and the caregiving aspects of these life experiences. An interesting spin is that not only will we be educating civilian communities of adults to develop socially supportive communities, but we will be educating educators who facilitate communities within our K-12 systems, as well as community colleges and higher education. Teachers as mentors and guides can help en"courage" a child's life to develop tangible skills of RES through an enlightened school community that can
serve to emotionally support the child's development in lieu of such a traumatic and life-altering event with no obvious solution.