Family Matters

How do you tell a two year old that you are going to be gone for five months? Since a few days can seem like an eternity how does a young childgrasp the concept of a month or several months? Is it damaging to children to have a parent gone for so long? These questions have not been formally answered by the government or at least not been made available to the public. We'll find out as a whole generation of kids whose parents deployed over the past eight years grows older. Of course you can argue that the family member/spouse is a willing participant and is aware of the likelihood/eventuality of deployment but truly, as a psychiatrist in the NAVY I did not anticipate deployment to one desert country and one completely landlocked country all within two years. I can't help but draw comparisons to jail/prison terms and deployment. Not because I am basically trapped here, but because of the separation from "normal life" and the separation from family.

The effect of deployment on children is of interest to me on a personal and professional level. The personal connection is that I have three children of my own ranging from 4 months old to 4 years old. The professional interest stems from being a psychiatrist by training. After I returned from my first deployment one of my sons had taken to wearing dresses on a regular basis. In actuality they were large T-shirts but he called them dresses and would frequently ask if he looked pretty in the dresses. Now some may think it a stretch to link my absence in his life for 8 months to him wearing dresses but just enough of a link may be there. The concept of a dominant mother figure comes to mind but I suppose I could also point to him being in a pre-school class with mostly girls. On the other hand wearing dresses could be completely innocuous and basically just be a classic dress-up phase (no pun intended). Ultimately he gets attention for wearing dresses and whether the feedback is encouraging or disparaging it nonetheless reinforces the behavior. I suppose if my son incurs medical expenses later in life related to being confused about his gender identity I can link it to my service in the military and sue for compensation.

Getting back to the prison theme now. Deployments range from 6-12 months for most US service men and women. For a time in 2007-2008 it was 15 months for Army service members. Those tours pale in comparison to most prison sentences and yet deployment length gets lots of attention. The Department of Defense has put out a joint venture with Elmo (Sesame Street) to educate kids about their parent's upcoming deployment. Summer camps are set up just for children who have a deployed parent. While I am thankful for those services I can't help but think of children who have a parent in prison. They get no extra resources to cope and there certainly aren't any special summer camps for them. On top of that their parent is gone for a much longer period. Staying in contact can be just as difficult with someone in prison as with someone who is deployed. If you say "at least they don't have to worry about the safety of the person in prison" I would counter that prison may be even more dangerous than deployment. Along the lines of chronic exposure to danger, what do we really know about the rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the prison population? Not be inflammatory, but does anyone really care enough? Does anyone want to know the answer? Because there is probably no alternative to incarceration so what sort of intervention could realistically be devised? I can see one side making the argument that the criminal made the decision to commit a crime and so he has to face the health consequences that incarceration may bring. Please note, the soldier signed on the dotted line as well and should know that experiencing trauma is part of the job description. While the service member most certainly is compensated for psychological and physical trauma and offered life-long medical care, there are no such resources for ex-cons.