Counting down the days until mommy or daddy is home from deployment is one way to keep the families eye on the prize, the homecoming. There are a few different ways to have a countdown. We are going to go through our favorites today.
- A Kiss A Day while Mommy or Daddy is away. In a jar, decorated, place Hershey Kisses for every day your service member will be gone. (If you have more than one child, it would be best to have more than one jar so the jars can accurately reflect how many days are left and the kids are not fighting over the kisses.) Either every morning or every night, depending how your family decides to eat the chocolate. (Don’t worry, we will have sugarless options as well.) It’s like getting a little kiss from the deployed parent!
- Patriotic Day Down, Days to Go! Set out two flower vases or jars, in one jar place American Flags, toy soldiers, or other symbols of patriotism. The items should equal the amount of days your service member is gone. It will help your child visualize how many days are left. The visualization can make it easier on them instead of just hearing a number, 50 is a large number to a child, but seeing 50 toys isn’t as scary. It is also a good way to visualize a half way point or when the days are closer to the service member being home. (Disclaimer, you can do this with any thing, doesn’t have to be just patriotic)
- Sticker board! On one wall of your home, place either a poster board or laminated sheet with the number of days on it. For each day your service member is gone place a sticker on the number or box. You can do this one of two ways. You can go reverse as a count down to how many days or left or you can count the number of days he or she is gone. Either way works, we like the count down method though. 😉
- Mommy or Daddy Wall. Choose one wall in your house to dedicate to your service members safe return. Have two clocks on the wall, one with their time and one with your time will be helpful the kids to understand why your service member calls at weird hours or isn’t always available to Skype before their bed time. This is also a good place to hang a welcome home banner that you and your children work on through out the whole deployment. It will continue to build excitement for the home coming. We also like the idea of pockets on the wall to keep pictures, drawings, or other things to show the parent when they return. Another pocket for things the children want to send to mom and dad is a good way to encourage them to write letters or draw pictures for mom and dad to have over seas. (We also like to add a map, who says we couldn’t make this a learning experience for everyone involved!)
We understand that there are many other ways to count down the days! Feel free to comment here and add your favorite way! t
Today is National Women and Girls Sports day. Sports are a vital part of growing up, whether it be team sports or individual sports. Activities like these teach discipline, respect and build confidence. Dance is no different, as it can be performed in a group or individually. For Sabina, it also fills a hole that her father’s deployment has left. To have a parent deployed can cause stress and anxiety in everyday life. A deployment is a family job. Chores need to be picked up from other people in the family, school doesn’t stop, and the parent’s absence becomes a missing piece in the family puzzle. Sabina finds solace in ballet. Ballet is calming, disciplined, and distracting in a positive way. She has been dedicated to ballet for 10 years and two deployments. “Ballet for Sabina, I have found, relaxes her and keeps her centered as we know the music alone is very soothing. The stress that our military children go through is more than we know at times,” Sabina’s mother said, providing some insight on her daughter. Sabina is the oldest of three children whose ages range from 1-16. Sabina’s father is a Navy Reservist and a lifelong Texan. He is currently serving overseas and started deploying to the Middle East in 2010, leaving his wife at home with three kids. 
At the age of 16, Sabina is now driving and able to get herself to dance which helps her mother, but there are still other burdens for a military family throughout a deployment. Financial burdens are one of the most common challenges during a deployment. “Financial awareness is a constant awareness for deployed family members to ensure that family is taken care of back home in this regards to allow the service member to be fully focused on the mission. One of the key advantages to the grant offered by Our Military Kids is this peace of mind knowing that the grant will be allocated for extracurricular activities-lessening one more financial consideration on our family,” commented Sabina’s father. Our Military Kids has helped Sabina continue to dance. “These grants are a HUGE help. Cost of deployments are sometimes so much more as we need to rely on extra childcare because one parent is gone and so the cost of this taps into other funds and many times sports or extracurricular activities have to be scaled back,” said Sabina’s mother describing a few difficulties military spouses face.
As the first month of the year, January is a time of new beginnings. New resolutions. New goals. A new chance to grow. Here at Our Military Kids, we strive to capture this spirt all year long. It is our hope that our grants provide military kids the chance to discover something they’ve never discovered before whether that is a new activity, a new skill or a new appreciation of what they are able to offer to the world. Participating in an extracurricular activity teaches so much more than just the skills of that activity. Kids learn about teamwork, leadership, commitment, and problem-solving, all of which contribute to higher self-esteem and self-efficacy. It becomes a family affair, with parents supporting their kids and kids sharing the experience with their parents. Siblings see what is possible. All kids can benefit, and all of them need a place to start. Our Military Kids is proud to help provide that new start. In January, Our Military Kids distributed over $130,000 through 306 grants. Of these, 241 were to kids we had never served before. That is 241 new beginnings for kids in 41 states, Guam and Puerto Rico, participating in activities such as dance, motorcross, STEM, scuba diving, choir and art classes. For many of these kids, this will be their first extracurricular activity. The first time they dribble a basketball or solve a quadratic equation or call someone ‘Coach’. It is only the beginning. What a joy it will be to see where it will lead…
For the last twenty minutes I sat here making a list of all the attributes I feel like myself and other Military Brats possess due to the way were were brought up. We’re resourceful, we know the value of hard work, we’ve sacrificed alongside our mothers and fathers to our country, but the most important of them all is that we’ve experienced the world in a way that makes our viewpoint incredibly unique. We see purpose and meaning in everything, and in a professional world this means that we’re able to look at problems and solve them in ways that others don’t see. Military Brats want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, understand their place in the world, and strive to make a difference. This desire is something that’s embedded in our DNA. There have been times in my life where all I’ve wanted was to be inadequate, to strive for less than greatness, but my past experiences, my role-models, and my work ethic won’t let me. This need to be efficient, to make the tough decisions, and to be the best version of myself that I can be, are all a result of the way I was raised as a Military Brat. Military Brats grow up overcoming giant obstacles, which make everyday struggles less daunting. If you’re a Military Brat reading this you’re probably thinking “As much as traveling the world with my family has been an immense blessing, it has also been a curse.” We all have moved more times than we can remember, said more goodbyes than we’d ever like to, and have grown up in single parent households. 
We aren’t “normal” people: we grew up without a “hometown,” but, if you’re like me, you look back on all of this and understand that you’ve been tested unlike any of your peers. I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve thought to myself “I’ve navigated the public transportation system in several countries without knowing the language, this task is a breeze,” or “I walked 2 miles in the freezing snow to and from school every day for several months because they wouldn’t close the schools in Germany, what is x compared to that?” Since graduating college just two years ago I’ve moved to 4 different states, taken complete leaps of faith, and there’s no way I could have done that if I hadn’t moved as often as I did growing up. We understand sacrifice in a way that nobody else does, and because of this, we are the ideal team player. The best part about being a Military Brat, is that as I sat down and began to write, I couldn’t possibly narrow down all of the great qualities and experiences that have shaped my life into a concise paper that wouldn’t put the reader to sleep. Although it hasn’t come without struggle, the members of this fraternity are blessed with an abundance of experiences, unique qualities, and stories to share that make them incredibly attractive assets in the professional world. Of all my friends that I’ve met through the military, not one of them are unemployed, and I imagine they have similar stories to tell. For all of you Military Brats out there getting ready to take on the professional world, you’ve grown up with a network of fellow Brats, you’ve been professional your entire lives, now go get ‘em! -Kaelan Dorr, Army Brat