By Terri Moon Cronk
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, April 1, 2014 – The Defense Department believes
military children serve their country alongside their service member parents,
DOD’s director of the office of family policy/children and youth said.
When military children serve, they do so by making
sacrifices when parents are deployed, through frequent moves, starting new
schools and making new friends on a continuing basis, Barbara Thompson said in
a recent interview with The Pentagon Channel for the Month of the Military
Child that’s being celebrated in April.
“We feel it’s important for the nation to know that military
children also serve their country,” Thompson said.
To honor military children for their sacrifices and service,
DOD and the services have planned activities this month that range from
installation-based fairs, parades, and literacy and art events, she said.
Military Kids Day, April 15, marks the third-annual “Purple
Up!” day when adults wear purple to show support of children from all the
services, Thompson said.
DOD has numerous year-round programs and awareness efforts
to honor military children, and Thompson elaborated on some of those
initiatives.
To help children build their resilience, DOD has coordinated
programs with Sesame Street to help with ongoing change in military children’s
lives, Thompson noted.
“Sesame [Street] has been an outstanding contributor to the
well-being of military children,” she said, naming a series of DVDs that cover
such topics for military children as divorce, grief, separation and deployment,
resilience skills, and visible or invisible injuries.
Sesame Street also recently launched two new smartphone
applications.
“One [app] covers relocation, and another is to help
children learn self-regulation skills so they become more resilient,” Thompson
said. “And everything is free.”
Thompson emphasized that April also is Child Abuse
Prevention Month and said awareness in this arena is important to DOD.
“Child Abuse Prevention Month is particularly important
because it’s a social responsibility for all of us to make sure children are
safe and their well-being is protected,” she said. “Everybody has a
responsibility.”
Giving parents the tools to make them strong supporters of
their children and to keep them safe from predators and from violence within
the family is crucial, she added.
“Parenting is tough, regardless of the situation and the age
of the child. They each bring their nuances to the table, whether it’s children
at [age] 2 who say ‘no,’ or a teenager who’s sometimes a little defiant,” she
said.
DOD offers parenting skill resources, Thompson noted, such
as the newly launched Parenting Course. The course, she explained, examines
parenting from the context of the military lifestyle, which revolves around
deployments and parental separations from their children at different stages of
their development.
And an installation-based initiative, the new Parent Support
Program, involves home visitation for new parents of children up to age 3, “to
help parents reach their full potential working with and being responsible for
their children,” Thompson said. The Marine Corps’ program supports parents with
children up to age 5, she added.
“The New Parent Support Program is a part of the Family
Advocacy Program, which has a prevention piece that offers courses and
opportunities for support groups. We want to make sure we address the stressors
in families’ lives before they escalate,” Thompson said.
“Sometimes [certain] things really push our buttons,” she
added. “So we need to have the tools, to know how to cope with those kinds of
stressors and how we react to them.”
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