Adjusting to a New Situation with Children After a Military Move

This week’s Podpost for Podcast Episode 33 is courtesy of Melitsa Avila who is part of an Air Force military family. She is busy raising three smiley active boys, one bouncy dog, and lots of dust bunnies currently in the UK. She writes about everyday play activities for the under 5′s and is the host of an Early Years radio show about Raising Playful Tots.

We’ve moved a few times as a military family. We’re in our ninth home. We love to travel but not to move. Who would? When you switch continents you have all your electricals that work in one country and now won’t work in another. Furniture is meant for your living room or outside porch and not wrapped, taped, shipped and taken thousands of miles. They won’t all make it and won’t necessarily fit in your new home.

You’re life is packed up along with your memories and sanity. You hope and pray that most stay intact at the other end. There are lots of military spouses at home with their little ones doing their best while their partners are serving their country away from home on a deployment or remote tour.

We’re in the trenches, but in a different way.

Learning to value

Perspective is a wonderful thing and having listened to a recent military edition episode of This American Life, I could totally understand the young wife’s perspective. It’s crystal clear why military members stick together in groups for support, as we understand each other. What struck me about her story and the other stories is the need (as military spouses) to tell our stories to a wider community.

Helping the children

This is what we’ve tried to do with our children as we moved them around with us.

• Take pictures of everyday actions in your home before you move. Photographs tell stories, especially for those too little to remember and with time we all forget.

• Enjoy maps- make placemats of maps and areas where you live, have lived, and where family live. Distance is much shorter when you can see it on a map.

• Play. Use everyday objects and find an opportunity to play. Post it notes and paper you’ll always find and can use.

• Reminders: photograph screen savers of times past serve as a reminder of the good, the funny, and the serious.

• Remember your rituals and routines and keep as many of them as possible. It grounds everyone when you’re in that (new) stressful mode.

• Know your story. Children didn’t have to say their city or explain where they lived in quite the same way when they lived in the previous country or place. But now that insignificant town or major city means different things. They’ll be telling their story a lot in the beginning so help them fashion it into something easy and clearly understood by adult or child.

• Invite over new playmates from playgroups, nursery, daycare, school, church as soon as possible. None of us feel like we belong in a new place until we can tell you the names of our new friends.

Our impressions matter to our children. Our positive outlook and take on the situation impacts how they see themselves and this new place. This will mean we have to be honest with ourselves and prepare our relationships and attitudes before we leave and adjust as we arrive. It means we maintain relationships and friendships from the past as well as look to new ones.

If you know of a military spouses in your community, especially if their partners are deployed or on a remote tour, reach out to them. They may be a long way from home and they would probably love to tell you their story.