Bosnia classes prepare parents for
post-deployment reunions with kids
By Sandra Jontz,
Bosnia bureau
Photos by Ivana Avramovic, Stars and Stripes
Sgt. Melvin Farr, 36,
holds a photograph of his 15-month-old son, Joshua. Farr last saw Joshua at the end of
May. |
Sgt. Flint Weathers, 25,
carries a photograph of his son, Jackson, in his ID card pouch. Weathers will miss his
son's first birthday this week. |
EAGLE BASE, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Pangs of guilt and fear blend with pride
whenever Sgt. Flint Weathers thinks about his son, Jackson.
Weathers will be thousands of miles from Jackson when he celebrates his first birthday
in less than a week. And when Weathers arrives home in October, he fears his son might not
recognize him.
"My biggest fear is that I’ll be a stranger to my own son," said the
25-year-old National Guardsman from Douglassville, Ga.
Such is the military life.
Family needs go on the back burner during deployments, said Maj. Mike Durham, a
chaplain stationed at Eagle Base in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Families don’t like it.
Yet duty calls.
"I do feel resentment a little, but this is our job. It will all be all right when
we get home," Weathers said. "He’s going to bounce right back."
For several days in June, Jenifer Weathers repeated one word over and over to the
Weathers’ only son, hoping he would remember it when the special day arrived.
Chaplain (Maj.) Mike
Durham, stationed
at Eagle Base in Bosnia and Herzegovina, tells soldiers returning home that it's important
to have a plan for reuniting with their families. |
He did, and without hesitation, the youngster uttered the words into the telephone
receiver on Father’s Day.
"Dada."
Jackson was barely crawling when Weathers last saw him in July while home on vacation.
"Now he’s becoming a little person, with a personality, and I’m missing
it all," said the soldier who, as a civilian, strings and repairs power lines for
Greystone Power Company. "It makes me a little sad, a little mad."
Durham said he counsels countless soldiers who go home and are wounded by children who
shy away from them, who hide behind the other parents, or express outright fear.
"The main thing is to educate [soldiers], to make them aware of what they might
expect [while deployed], so they are not walking in blind," Durham said. "They
have to know that these reactions are normal."
| What to
expect Children
react differently to a parent who has been away for a significant amount of time,
depending on age:
- Infants to 18 months: anxiety, shyness, clinging to the other parent, even fear.
- 18 months to 4 years: shy, playful, excited, also resentful and angry.
- 4 to 11 years: excitement, happiness, wanting to play.
- 12 to 14 years: happiness or indifference.
- 15 years and older: indifference, act as though your deployment did not affect them.
Any response from a child is considered normal. When a child shows no response,
that’s when it’s time to worry.
Source: Eagle Base chaplain |
The U.S. Army incorporated numerous childhood and family studies when developing a
family-reunion program. It takes more than just wanting to go home, he said. Soldiers must
have a plan, be prepared to deal with changes the family has gone through in their
absence.
Like for 36-year-old Sgt. Melvin Farr, who was not home in Georgia with his wife when
she suffered a miscarriage earlier this year. The family endured, he said, and will
continue to do so because they are blessed by a strong faith in God.
"She stayed strong and said God has a plan, and we stand firm on that," said
Farr, father of 15-month-old Joshua and 4-year-old Elizabeth.
During his deployment to the Balkans, his wife also rented out the family’s home
and bought another. "She’s just an amazing woman," he said.
Farr, an active-duty guardsman, fears he might return home and not want to discipline
his children, mainly out of guilt for being away so long, he said.
Change also is coming for Lt. Jason Smith, 29, whose family is set to grow by one soon
after he returns.
For now, though, Smith observes the progress of his unborn child only by the sonogram
photographs his wife sends. He also has a 19-month-old son, who he hasn’t seen since
arriving to the Balkans in March.
Smith misses all of the little things, he said, like the first time Ryan said
"olive."
Lt. Jason Smith, 29,
thumbs through
photographs of his son, Ryan. |
"It’s such a simple word, but I just wish I had been there. He had stubby
legs when I left, and now he has long legs and runs around in the yard," said the
Atlanta police officer as he thumbed through a stack of photographs.
The family changes, and so has the soldier, Durham said.
Sometimes, being a single parent compounds the symptoms, Durham said, and parents need
to exercise caution. Include the person who has cared for the child in the reunion
process, he advised.
But adapting to the separation might be as easy as simply giving an attentive ear to
children, Durham said.
"We have to sit and listen to our children," Durham said recently to a group
of 23 soldiers gearing up for the trip home. Each returning soldier must attend the
mandatory reunion lecture, usually given by chaplains.
"We’re not telling them something they don’t already know," Durham
said. "But by making it mandatory, it makes them sit and up and listen."
The average father, he said, spends 36 seconds a week really listening to their
children.
"Some of us aren’t listening at all," Durham said, adding attention will
go further than all the gifts soldiers will bring home.
"If you’re quick to listen and slow to speak, you won’t come down with
foot-in-mouth disease."
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