Parenting is forever a game of second guessing yourself. There are
moments where I feel I’ve done enough or exactly the right thing, but
they are rare. Most of the time I wonder if I’ve read a situation wrong
or should be doing more or less or something entirely different. When I
make Aden read to me and she fusses about it I worry that I’m taking
the enjoyment out of reading, but when she’s watching a cartoon I feel
like I should be making her read whether she likes it or not. I have to
balance out what I think is right with what is practical at any given
time and hope for the best.
But the added complication of Ian being deployed throws a peculiar
sort of monkey wrench into the works which makes parenting even more
tricky. When the kids act out or experience frustration or sadness or
simply aren’t behaving well, I have to stop and decide whether the
deployment is a factor, and if so, does that change what my choices are.
For instance, separation anxiety is a whole different story when your
kids have had to say goodbye to a parent who is then gone for a year. I
mean, think what that feels like to a kid–they said goodbye and now
daddy is gone. For my son in particular who was two when his dad left,
‘Daddy’ is almost like a story we tell and not a person. When I leave
Quinn with someone to go anywhere alone and he freaks out, is it fair to
treat him the way I would in a normal situation? Does Quinn just not
want me out of his sight because he’s a little kid who likes being with
his mom, or is he scared he won’t ever see me again? I can’t tell. It
makes it much harder to try and brush off the screams when I have to
leave him because I worry that it could be more serious than the regular
manipulative drama.
Any behavior that appears regressive is troublesome. If one of my
kids goes back to thumb sucking for awhile, or has a toilet training
accident, or seems to take any developmental steps backwards, I hesitate
before doing whatever my parental instincts suggest I do. Those are
the kinds of signs the endless mountains of pamphlets the Army sends all
try to warn me about. But what if it has nothing to do with the
deployment? I suspect most of the time it doesn’t, but I don’t know.
Odd little incidents give me pause. For instance, the other day my
son was playing with a bubbly water tube with plastic fish in it that a
neighbor gave us. There are four fish in the tube, and Quinn declared
that the biggest one was the mommy fish, and the other fish were the
kids, “But there is NO daddy fish.” I asked him where the daddy fish
was and he said firmly, “The daddy fish is dead.” Normally this would
go under that category of silly things kids say, but there is nothing
amusing about it when his actual dad is in a war zone. Did it really
mean anything? Probably not. But is that a moment I should be doing
something important to reassure him about his own dad, or if it’s not
related is that putting an idea in his head he doesn’t need there? I
did end up saying something like, “Oh, poor daddy fish. Good thing your
daddy is fine.” Quinn just kept smiling at his toy fish. I still
don’t know what to make of that whole scene.
Aden associates her dad with feeling sad. I understand it, but I’m
trying to uncouple the two things where I can. I try to tell funny
stories about her dad to make her laugh, so when she thinks of him she
might smile more. Right now whenever Aden is depressed about anything,
she mentions that she misses her daddy. There is a chicken and egg
problem here, because I really can’t tell if being sad reminds her that
she misses Ian, or if missing Ian is the thing that actually made her
sad to begin with. Could be either. But it makes it hard to know what
to do with her, because if I think she’s being melodramatic about
something and I need her to buck up, I could be wrong and compounding
the problem by ignoring sincere pain. I can’t bend to her every whim
just because she gets sad, but I want to be sensitive to something as
big as her missing her father if that’s what’s triggering an outburst.
Mona lives in the moment more than anyone else in our household. I
can’t tell how the deployment affects her. She’s too young to have any
sense that her dad could be in danger. He’s off with the Army in some
place called Iraq. She knows her dad wears a uniform. She’s excited
when he comes home and looks sad for five minutes after he leaves. Then
she wants to play with her Webkinz toys and buy them virtual hair
ribbons and shoes online. Mona doesn’t talk about her feelings very
much, so when she’s angry it’s anyone’s guess what it’s about. I
suspect that the deployment impacts her in a second-hand way through
me. When I’m stressed out my temper gets short, and she seems to
understand that that’s related to her dad being away. But it’s always
surprising how much that little girl knows that she doesn’t let on. I
often wonder if there are signs about how she’s dealing with the
deployment that I’ve simply overlooked. I hope not.
The whole experience makes parenting that much harder. There was the
last deployment, then the adjustment to their dad being home again, now
this deployment, and most of next year will be about adjusting to his
being back…. It’s hard to have a clear perspective on how the kids are
developing when we’re always taking a certain amount of disruption into
account. All I can do is offer myself as a constant and hope that
helps. I never liked the idea of being predictable, but now it’s the
the most loving thing I can provide. I’m far from perfect, but at least
I’m predictably grumpy about the same things all the time. My back is
always itchy, they can count on me to put breakfast on the table in the
mornings, and they know I come kiss them in their beds every night
before I go to sleep.
I may second guess a lot of what I do as a parent, but as long as my
children feel safe and loved I’m doing well enough. Deployment can’t
interfere with that. I refuse to let it.
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