South Dakota Babies
hardest part?
ok so my husband is not in the military yet but will be finishing everything up tomorrow.. as long as everything goes as planned, he will be leaving june 10 for the GED+ program, then he goes straight to boot camp, then training for his job... my question is.. if your husband has been deployed or enlisted and has been gone for a while.. how do you prepare your kids for that? Although my husband works nights and my son doesn't get to spend alot of time with him, he does get to see him every day.. he is also very close with his daddy, so how do i prepare him so he understands?? he is 3 1/2 years old, but doesnt comprehend that great.. any feed back would be greatly appreicated! thanks again!
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Re: hardest part?
My oldest was just under 4 when my husband joined in 2005. She handled it great. My second was just under a year. We talked about daddy having to go to work for his new job so he would be gone a lot. Not sure how much she really grasped but she didn't really have a hard time. I wrote to him in basic every day. She would make pictures for him and if there was something she wanted to say I would write it down as she told me what to write.
Our first duty station was Germany. Our (kids and mine) passports did not come back in time so even though we had concurrent travel, he had to go alone and we met him about 4 weeks later. It was very hard on her at the airport. Once we were on the plane she was fine though. I think it made it harder since my sister and niece were there with us and even got to help us right to the gate.
My husband has been deployed twice since he has been in. The first time it ended up being 15 months instead of 12. That one was hard on me but only because my grandpa died, a good friend in Iraq, and my dad died. I was in Germany so I had to travel back home for my dad and grandpa's funerals. The kids did great during the deployment. We did the same as with basic, they made pictures and other art type things, I sent a ton of pictures of them, and we seen him online a lot. We stayed busy with friends.
The second one was pretty easy too. I was 13 weeks pregnant when he left. Again, we just stayed really busy and time flew by.
I don't know if all of that did any good. Sorry for just running on lol. Each kid handles it different. Let him know it is okay to be sad but try and stay busy to make things fun for him too.