By Karen Pavlicin-Fragnito 

Deployment involves uncertainty about many things, including the duration of the separation. Sometimes an assignment is extended, just when a family begins to see the light at the end of the deployment tunnel. An extension for any reason can bring on a host of fresh emotions, worries, even physical symptoms, including exhaustion and pain. 

To deal with a deployment extension in a healthy way, find a safe outlet for your initial reaction to the news. Be angry at the situation, but don’t blame individuals, especially your spouse. Service members may feel badly that they won’t be coming home and worry about additional stress on their family; kids may wonder if their behavior or fears caused the extension. Try to work out some of your emotions and help those around you do the same. You have no control over your new timeline, but you can control how you respond to it. 

“You have no control over your new timeline, but you can control how you respond to it.” 

A few tools you can put in your deployment extension kit to help you combat the negative effects and turn back to the positive approach of celebrating each day: 

• Put on good dance music. It’s hard to be angry or depressed when you are listening to music that makes you want to dance. 
• Put a photo on your bedside table – one that depicts a wonderful aspect of your loved one’s personality or your relationship – so the first thing you see when you wake up and when you go to bed is a reminder of your love.
• Watch a funny movie. Laughter and a sense of humor can change your perspective, helping you face the situation with a little more patience.
• Surround yourself with positive people and influences. Find inspirational sayings or scriptures and post them on your refrigerator and bathroom mirror.
• Create a worry notebook. Any time you have a worry, large or small, write your fear in the notebook. Write down worries and questions to get them off your mind and find answers later. Allow no more than 20 minutes once a week or less often to look in your notebook and examine your worries. Use the rest of your time to live your life. Take actions or seek answers to questions you have written down, but don’t spend more time worrying.
• Don’t neglect time for yourself: Every day has 1,440 minutes. Sixty minutes is not too much to give yourself. Exercise, meditate, shop, pray, participate in a creative outlet, whatever you need to keep balance in your life – that still leaves 1,380 minutes for everyone else. Give yourself an hour a day just for you, guilt free.
• Make sure that you and everyone else in your family gets enough sleep, healthy food, and exercise. Get the basics every day.
• Express your love. Make time in each communication for affection – include it in every letter, email, or phone call with your service member and each interaction with your family at home. During a deployment extension, reaffirming your love and commitment can go a long way to helping each person in your family feel more positive.
• Plan at least one fun activity for yourself and your family during the extra time of separation. Give yourself permission to really enjoy this time.

Consider this deployment extension as a new beginning. If there are things you wish you had done during the deployment, you can do them now. If there are routines that aren’t quite working, go ahead and change them.

Anger and disappointment are common responses for both children and adults, but families should pay attention to more severe or lasting reactions including depression, apathy, withdrawal, or increased physical stress. Seek help from a professional when these symptoms persist. 

Yes, deployment extensions are disappointing, but a few extra days or weeks is a short time compared to spending your life together. Take all the positive things you learned during this deployment and use them to turn the extra time into a positive, rewarding experience.  

Karen Pavlicin is the award-winning author of  Surviving Deployment: A Guide for Military Families  and  Life After Deployment: Military Families Share Reunion Stories and Advice.

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Children are especially vulnerable to emotional struggles during deployment. They may not know how to process changes in their family or to express the uncertainty they feel. They also may not know how to talk about their worries for the absent parent.

Children may seem a bit restless, often moody and occasionally downright unmanageable when a parent is away. It is important to remember that these behaviors are often the way children express negative feelings like fear, worry, anxiety, and loneliness. Children show us how they are feeling by their actions more than their words so we must pay careful attention to body language and behavior. Simply punishing these behaviors won’t stop the stress a child is feeling and may even increase it, but condoning inappropriate behavior is not productive either.

The American School Counselor Association and the National Association of School Psychologists have many suggestions for parents and school personnel to help support a child of a deployed parent.

Consistency and Routine:  Structure is particularly important during this time. Children feel insecure because of all of the uncertainties regarding the deployment and they need a predictable routine and home life.

Good Communication: Kids often have a lot of questions during deployment. Daily, honest (and age appropriate) discussions about feelings (yours and theirs) can help ease tension and relieve concerns.

Attention and Good Times:  Children can feel neglected during deployment because one parent is gone and the other parent is busy and stressed. Children should have many opportunities to feel loved and cared for during the deployment. It’s a good time to plan special events and start new hobbies.

Healthy Lifestyle: Children need to have fun, and they also need to be healthy. Maintain healthy diets and provide opportunities for exercise. Avoid too much time with electronic forms of entertainment, which can be sedentary and isolating.

Let Kids Be Kids:  Be honest but don’t discuss your fears in too much depth with children. Also, don’t expect them to fill an adult role while a parent is gone. Be careful about how much exposure your child has to media that may carry unsettling news or images.

Reassurance:  In deployment situations children often feel a loss of control and stability; they have experienced a major change. Reminding them that both parents love them no matter what will help ease their anxiety. Assure them they are not alone, that they have support from family and teachers.

A Good Behavior Plan: While it is important to understand that misbehavior during deployment can be a result of negative feelings, it is also important to set limits and have consequences. Parents can eliminate a lot of problems by making a chart and pre-determining consequences for specific behaviors.

Physical and Emotional Expressions of Love: Hugs and high fives go a long way in helping children cope with difficult situations. For parents, reassure your children verbally of your love, and that you are walking through the deployment with them.
Helping kids through a deployment is a challenge. Having a plan, sharing feelings, enjoying special times and enlisting the help of family, friends, teachers, and support services will make things easier on both children and parents.

By Lizann Lightfoot

So many important life decisions come up during deployment, when spouses are on opposite sides of the world. Many of my husband’s deployments were followed by either reenlistment or a PCS move, so we have discussed many career and housing options while communicating long distance. Once we even bought a house on the East Coast while I was living on the West Coast, and he was deployed to Japan!

Making family decisions together during deployment can be especially challenging. There are two ways to handle huge decisions during deployment: go crazy thinking about the possibilities or remain calm while patiently waiting to learn more. We all want to live in that second category of peace and patience. But we all experience moments of extreme frustration. Before you pull your hair out, here are some ways so get your sanity back:

Don’t dwell on what you can’t control. In military life, so many things are beyond our control. The service member is often at the mercy of people completing paperwork. They might get orders to their preferred duty station, or they might be sent somewhere you’ve never heard of. Trying to wrap your mind around every possibility will just make you more stressed. Instead, recognize when an outcome is out of your hands. Then, let it go.

Regain control with smaller tasks.  If you are facing a PCS move directly after a deployment, you may not know where you will live, but you can start cleaning out closets. If you’re expecting a baby soon, you may not know whether your spouse will be home for the delivery, but you can start making a list of baby needs or wants and perhaps create a gift registry. You can regain a sense of calm about the future when you find steps to take in the present.

Communicate honestly. Deployment communication can be infrequent or glitchy, so don’t waste precious time arguing or dropping hints. Be up front. Let your spouse know how you feel about decisions and possibilities. Be prepared to explain conclusions and priorities. Be prepared to listen as well. Thoughtful and respectful exchanges of feelings and information will make the most of deployment conversations.

Take one step at a time. Rather than be overwhelmed by a major decision and all its ramifications, break big steps down into smaller ones. Work backwards to decide where to begin. For example, you don’t need to choose a house until PCS orders are official. Orders won’t come until you and your spouse decide whether to remain in the military. Identify the first step: Weighing the pros and cons of remaining in the military and go from there.

Don’t set your heart on one outcome. In military life is that nothing is ever certain, and no decision is ever permanent. Things can change—quickly. It’s best to take all news in stride, whether it is exciting or disappointing. When a door closes, a window opens. Not getting a desired duty station may turn into a wonderful opportunity. Unexpected orders may be a much-needed change. You will remain calmer about military life’s uncertainty when you try to see the good in each situation, even the unexpected.

Lizann Lightfoot, the Seasoned Spouse, has experienced many deployments and other transitions in her 11 years as a Marine wife. She is the leader and creator of the Deployment Masterclass for military spouses.

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Military children with a deployed parent may be susceptible to feelings of sadness during the holidays. However, military kids are also resilient and resourceful, and with a little planning the adults in their lives can ensure a holiday season full of cheer, warmth, and cherished memories. Rachel Robertson, educator, and author of Deployment Journal for Kids, offers these ideas for celebrating with children during deployment.

Honor traditions. Don’t underestimate importance of continuity and beloved rituals in a time of change. Familiar celebrations are comforting to a child. Modify if necessary when managing the holidays on your own, but keep some familiar traditions.

Start new traditions. Deployment may be a good time to try new ways to celebrate. For some children, the usual celebrations seem sadder without mom or dad, while others may take comfort in them, so involve kids in your decisions. Encourage their creativity, while being sensitive to their need for continuity.

Celebrate long distance. Perhaps you can Skype or Facetime with the deployed parent during your holiday party or dinner. Send care packages ahead of time with treats and decorations, if deployment conditions allow. Ask your deployed spouse to send a decoration from their location, if possible. The more unusual, the better!

Focus on the meaning of the holidays. Regardless of which holidays your family celebrates, all are enhanced by kindness, caring, love, and peace. Focus on the things you are grateful for instead of the things you wish were different.

Document the event. Take photos and videos. Take notes! Create a scrapbook of the holidays to share later. Kids and teens might enjoy taking photos or sharing creatively on social media. Don’t forget to use good operational security as needed.

Take care of yourself. While caring for your children during deployment, caring for yourself is important too. Make sure you talk about your feelings, spend time with friends; pay attention to good eating and sleeping habits.

Don’t be alone. Celebrate with other military families. Invite family to visit, or go to visit them. Regardless of whom you feel closest too, it is okay to ask for support.

Talk. Let your family know you are there to talk if they need to. Share your feelings as well, modeling positive communication. If the kids know you are sad, too — but still able to be hopeful and happy — they will feel much better.

Spread the cheer. Reaching out to help someone else can shift your focus to the positive. Help a new military family, donate toys, visit a nursing home, or serve at the chow hall. Helping others is good for you and a great model for your children.

For military children, life is full of change, new schools and neighborhoods, friends who move, and deployed parents. Holidays full of laughter, traditions old and new, and quality family time provide continuity in their lives and memories to last a lifetime.

As well as Deployment Journal for Kids, Rachel Robertson is the author of Deployment Journal for Spouses and Deployment Journal for Parents.

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A few books we recommend for deployment and reunion:

For Kids

For Grownups

by Karen Pavlicin

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is a complex health condition that can develop in  response to a traumatic experience, usually a life-threatening or extremely distressing situation, such as combat, a natural disaster, car accident, or sexual assault, that causes a person to feel intense fear, horror, or a sense of helplessness.

PTSD can affect a person of any age, race, gender, or job. While there are many instances of PTSD outside of military life, service members in combat and first-responder roles are generally exposed to more potentially-traumatic situations.

Col. Bob Stewart, former chief of the Department of Behavioral Health at Fort Belvoir explains that PTSD can manifest within days of a traumatic experience or take years to emerge. “Victims of other traumatic experiences, such as rape, are usually quicker to diagnose. When they relive the trauma, it is not the norm for their daily life so it usually stands out immediately,” he says. “In combat situations, after a trauma has occurred, we send our troops right back into the environment in which the trauma was experienced. … Avoidance symptoms are coping mechanisms…within that environment. … But when the soldier returns home, the symptoms are not typically accepted by spouses and others. Suddenly it’s a different environment and that’s often when the realization of what has happened starts to catch up with the combat veteran. It often takes service members between six months and two years before they seek treatment for PTSD.”

Common symptoms of PTSD include:

• Reliving the experience
  > unwanted recollections or flashbacks to the threatening experience, nightmares, triggers that cause you to feel like you’re reliving the experience
• Overall anxiety
  > nervousness, always feel on guard, easily startled, always looking for an exit; anxiety symptoms, such as sweating, shaking, rapid heartbeat, rapid breathing
• Emotional withdrawal
  > emotional distance from other people, problems with intimate relationships,
  loss of interest in regular activities, depression, suicidal thoughts
• Significant changes in daily routines or health
  > trouble sleeping, changes in appetite, difficulty concentrating, loss of memory, unexplained illness
• Difficulty coping in a healthy way
  > overuse of alcohol or drugs, addiction, survivor’s guilt, unexplained anger or rage

It’s normal to be upset, feel anxious, or have trouble sleeping after a traumatic event. But if you or a loved one experience severe or ongoing symptoms, please talk with a doctor, chaplain, or counselor.

If you are in crisis: call 911, go the nearest emergency room, or call the Suicide Prevention Line 1-800-273-8255 (Veterans press 1).

Karen Pavlicin is the author of Life After Deployment: Military Families Share Reunion Stories and Advice, which includes more information about PTSD in the chapter “Stress and Other Things We Worry About.”

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by Michelle Judd

Life can be overwhelming, especially during the stress of deployment. Outside factors threaten, bills pile up, laundry too, and, all at once, even the safe confines of your home can feel like another part of a growing list of stresses. How do you find peace in the middle of chaos when you are too tired, busy, or angry to do all that needs to be done?

Find your happy place.

This is not about escapism into medication, TV, or other activities meant to numb our senses and feelings. It’s about finding one, simple space in your place that you can call your own.

Several years ago I found myself sitting in my living room, crying as I shared some personal grief with my sister over the phone. I stared into the dining room as we talked, and kept staring long after I had hung up and blown my nose for the last time.

It is hard to describe the emotional comfort I found in that small vista of my dining room.

The colors were so rich. The chairs stood at attention. The table top was miraculously clutter-free. No bags or laundry baskets hovered sheepishly around doors; nor were errant shoes clogging walkways. Instead, there flowed from the room a steady stream of impressions: it’s clean; it’s pretty; it’s calming.

This was not true of the whole house. One doorway away, the sink was filled, recycling bags overflowed, and clothes covered the floor—even so, subconsciously, I had found my “happy place.”

Whenever life threatens, I go to that room, kept clutter-free and ready for just such a reason.

This isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do in a busy household. It is stressful to manage alone, to try and hold everything and everyone together. However, the ability to find one corner of your house that is sane, calm, orderly, and possibly pretty, might be all you need to recharge and keep going.

Take a moment to stake a spot as your own. It might be in a bedroom, bathroom, or in a sunny patch in your kitchen. Wherever it is, find it today. Help your family members find their happy place too. Help each other maintain these happy places together.

Life can be sane for just a moment if we know where to look for support. Sometimes people support us, and sometimes our environment does too.

Michelle Judd is a writing coach who helps others break through the obstacles that hold them back from pursuing their dream of writing and publishing.

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Deployment changes many family operations, including the financial ones. Pay and taxable income are different. Expenses may be higher some areas, yet lower in others. Perhaps the spouse who usually handles the finances is the one deployed. Adjustments are necessary, as are new considerations about savings and discounts. Knowing the financial terrain will smooth the way, both during and after deployment. These four points on your financial compass will guide you:

Papers in order: Both spouses’ names should be on all your banking and financial paperwork, so that the spouse at home can take care of any issues that arise during deployment. Contact your local JAG office to update your wills and get a durable power of attorney.

Partners in everything: Even if one spouse handles paying bills and managing investments, both spouses should have a thorough understanding of family finances, including monthly budget, timing of regular payments, like mortgages or rent, utilities, credit card and other debts. When deployment rolls around, the spouse at home will be equipped to deal with finances, even if it is not his or her regular duty.

Regs in your favor: The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act caps interest rates for active duty military members for credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans, as well as providing release from lease agreements in some cases, but you will probably have to request those benefits to receive them. Also, ask your insurance company about reducing your interest rate for a vehicle you are not using. Additionally, the tax exclusion for pay received while in a combat zone means that you will not pay taxes on military income earned while deployed to a combat location.

Money in the bank: Pay is increased during deployment, but what goes up must come down. Take this opportunity to pay off debts or build up savings, or both, rather than spending the surplus. Financial experts suggest having three month of living expenses in savings. Socking your earnings away in an IRA or other savings plan will pay dividends—literally—in the future.

Money may seem like the least of your worries as you prepare for a deployment, but a few simple steps will make the experience smoother and the rewards greater.

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by Karen Pavlicin

One of the most common challenges during a deployment is getting a restful night’s sleep.

Sleep is essential for making it through the long haul of deployment and reunion. We need sleep to keep us happy and healthy—for ourselves, our families, and our military loved one.

Try these tips to help your mind and body get much-needed rest:

Create a sleep environment
If everything around us says “wake up and do this” our bodies will stay awake. If our environment says “relax, it’s time to sleep” our bodies will shut down for the day. Make it easy to relax.

• Don’t watch TV in bed. TV stimulates your brain.
• Don’t check email at bedtime. If you do get mail, you’ll either be tempted to stay up and respond or you’ll be thinking about your response in the back of your mind.
• Do clear your bedroom of clutter and make it a place for sleep.
• Do allow yourself quiet time and space to stretch and relax.
• Make sure your bed and pillow are comfortable and don’t cause body or neck aches.
• Adjust room temperature and warm blankets to keep you comfortable.

Follow a routine
Think about a child’s nighttime routine: bath, pajamas, snack, teeth brushed, read book, go to sleep. Most children like to do the same things in the same order each night. As adults, our nighttime rituals should also signal to our mind and body that it’s time for sleep.

• Generally, try to wake up and go to bed at the same time every day. Go to bed when you’re tired, even if it is not yet your bedtime.
• Take a warm, relaxing bath or follow other nighttime rituals that relax your body and mind.
• Check all your door locks—put your mind to rest and feel safe.

Deal with your fears
Half the battle with fear is the unknown. If we give ourselves information, we fear less or at least are better able to manage our fear. Don’t bury it, face it.

• Make a list of the things you are most afraid of. Then write down what you think would happen if your fear were realized. What if your loved one were injured in combat? What if you were in a car accident? What if your home burned down? Many times, our greatest fear is how an event will change our lives. How would these things change your life?
• Plan for the worst, expect the best. Remember, your fears are not likely to become reality. There are some things you can do to help reduce the chances or prevent a fear from happening: Do you have snow tires? Fire escape plan? Check your smoke detector batteries? There are other things you can do to help make the best of an undesirable situation if your fear is realized. Do you have a will? Chosen guardians for your children? Sometimes, you just need to know how you would find out. Do you know how you would be notified in the case of your loved one’s injury or death? Is your emergency contact list up to date at school and work? Answer your questions to put your mind at ease.

Allow your mind to rest
Even when your body is exhausted, if your mind is still at work, you’ll have trouble settling in for the night.

• Make lunches, set out clothes—feel ready for the next day.
• Keep a pad of paper and pen next to your bed. Write down anything that’s on your mind or that you need to remember in the morning. That tells your mind that you’ll deal with it tomorrow and tonight it doesn’t have to work so hard to remember.

Exercise and eat well
We need a balance of exercise, healthy food, and sleep to keep running. When you do well at any one of these, it helps encourage the others.

• Exercising regularly gives you energy during the day and restfulness at night. Exercise for 30 minutes a day as many days a week as you can. You can choose from a variety of activities, but make it worth the time. Work your muscles and heart! Sweat!
• Drink a glass of water every hour.
• Choose healthy meals and snacks. Eat breakfast. Don’t eat late at night or your body will want to work at digestion instead of sleep.

Deployments are hard on everyone in the family. Lack of sleep can lead to irritability, increased sickness, impaired judgment, and lack of energy to tackle the additional challenges you face during this stressful time. Try these ideas and pass along others that work for you. And to all a good night!

Karen Pavlicin is the author of Surviving Deployment and Life After Deployment.

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