You might not need to imagine the stresses the children of military people go through. It must be very devastating, the pain and worry they go through. I can only go by my relative’s painful stories. My sister, who died of cancer and a broken heart, had a son who went into the military just after high school. That was just about the time war broke out in Iran/Iraq.
My nephew and his cousin decided to enlist together. They were shipped out to Afghanistan. I can just imagine, what my poor sister was going through. Worried about her son. I remember my nephew saying, when he was in battle, it was like killing his own relatives. Some of them looked like they were his brother, Chuy, and his uncle, Isidro. This pretty much traumatized, my nephew. “It felt like I was killing my own family.”
My nephew is now severely traumatized from his experiences in combat. My other nephew never made it back home. He was killed in combat.
I also worked with a co-worker who was in the military as well, I was to review, him, but meanwhile, he had to be deployed to war in Iraq, as well. He ran the facility like the military. He was a supervisor of a cleaning crew for our facility, using a whistle he’d gather up the crew, made up by some of our clients, part of a work-for-pay program used for experience in preparing them for work and a resume.
He controlled everyone with a whistle, “I want everyone here by 1600 hours”. He always used military time. When he left, I saw his itinerary that he had left behind and written it down for me.
He wrote down an hour-by-hour plan for his family at home as well. I could not believe he ran his home and his kids the same way as a military camp, I wonder, how that worked out for him? He had four children and was in the process of adopting a black child. Secretly, I always worried about his adopted child.
Last I heard, my coworker, made it home safely, but he had a mental breakdown. But they saved his job for him. If he ever recovered, his job would be waiting for him.
Military children, sounded like they have it worse. They are constantly moving, leaving friends and relatives behind. Especially when dad has to go to other areas of the world. I had a girlfriend whose father was an important Army soldier and they had him move to Spain. She was born there and had dual citizenship.
When she came back into the United States, and ready to retire, she had to hire a lawyer, just to get her retirement, to get proof of her citizenship. Dad too ran the family like the military camp.
My friend told me stories, how dad did not want her to date others from those countries. She said she left the family at age 16 and came back to the states. She had a hard time getting information to prove her dad was assigned to Spain and was born there, but mom and dad were U.S. citizens.
How does all this affect the children?
Some want to follow in their parent’s footsteps. Others have a different idea of family happiness and do not want to do what their fathers did. Worry the family like that.
It is hard enough if there is a war, but to move and leave all the friends and family. Statistics show that some of the family kids, especially the males in the family, become drug addicts or alcoholics. The trauma becomes too much.
Does the military teach you to speak with love?
How does it teach you, how to speak to your child, wife, people in general? I don’t think so. There are harsh rules and regulations you should not bring home.
- Military only- teach men and women, to become a person who has to survive if you are at war.
- Military education and training- a process that intends to establish and improve military roles.
- Recruit training, which makes use of various conditioning techniques.
- To re-socialize trainees into the military system,
- Ensure that they will obey all orders without hesitation.
- Teach basic military skills.
Do these sound like family orientation roles?
Why, then do family men and women, believe a home should be run like this?
Because the military ingrains these rules into our men and women, so intensively, that it has to become an everyday regimen to survive a crisis for war. Understandably. But what does it have to do with having to raise a loving family? Two completely different roles.
Some military men and women get it, some don’t.
Of some of the clients I see, they share common characteristics.
You think that by now there would be help for fathers and mothers to get briefed by a physiologist or receive some form of family counseling before going home and re-trained for civilization outside the military life.
May God protect us at all times. With or without war times. May God forbid.