This document discusses the challenges faced by children with parents in the military. It notes that parental deployment can increase anxiety and depression in children and disrupt their daily routines. It also examines the difficulties children experience when parents are injured, including worries over the injury, disruptions to family schedules from hospital visits, and struggles understanding the severity of injuries. The document also explores how a lack of communication during injuries can weaken parent-child relationships and how PTSD or depression in parents can impact their parenting and relationship with children.

1. Cynda Tate and Ella Wilkie
Lester Spring Research Project

2. • There is an increasing amount of parental deployments in
the United States.
• The absence of the father increases anxiety and
depression in children.
• Children with deployed parents are often compared to
those without, which is how most of the studies have
been conducted.
• Parental deployments lead to a complete change in daily
life, often times being a more troubling routine.
• It is often argued whether having deployed parents is a
catastrophic event, but it is proven that children in the
situation face unique challenges that others do not have
to endure.

4. • Often times, families hear false information about injuries,
leading to more stress and worry.
• These illnesses alter children’s daily lives, in many cases
causing families schedules to be disrupted in many ways.
• Illnesses cause children to spend many hours at the
hospital or even be in the care of another adult.
• Children have to be mentally strong to see their parent in
such bad conditions.
• Depending on the age and maturity of the child, it is hard
for them to understand the severity of the injury and the
reason why it happened.

5. • The different types of sicknesses cause a lack of
communication between parents and children, many times
weakening their relationship.
• Clinicians have discovered that lack of appropriate information
about the injury leads to unnecessary worry on the part of the
children.
• Depression in the healthy parent could lead to a lack in
parenting skills.
• Sometimes the injured parent’s sense of grief and loss
interferes with the relationship between her and her children.
• The impact of PTSD on children is significant because of the
difference in the parent’s actions and the way they treat their
children.

7. • Children who are constantly worried about their parents
dying are at a higher risk of developing psychiatric
disorders or other behavioral or emotional problems.
• Advertisement of the media causes stress about the
potential death of a child’s parents.
• In many cases, if death occurs, the surviving parent is too
depressed to take care of the child.
• If a parent passes, many families who were living near
the soldiers base may move back home away from a
supportive military family. Often times the move back
home leads to more depression in both the child and the
surviving adult.