The best advice I can give to parents whose son or daughter is deployed is that they make sure the relationship they have with their son or daughter is loving and open. If a relationship is troubled before deployment, it is sure to be troubled during this more stressful time. If your relationship with your adult child is difficult, make sure you work on it before he goes off to a war zone. If there are things that have gone too long unsaid (“I love you,” or “I’m sorry”), say them now. Don’t forget to also say “I’m proud of you.”

Of course, if your child is married, then you want to have the very best of relationships with his spouse too because that’s often the route you’ll need to take to stay as informed as possible. Now is the time for you to be loving, understanding, and supportive, not judgmental or jealous. If your daughter only has time for one phone call, she’s probably going to call her husband, not her mother. When that call is over, you want your son-in-law’s first thought to be, “I’d better call her Mom; I know she’ll be happy to know I heard from my wife.”

Parents need to be extremely flexible during deployment. Military deployment often comes at a time in your child’s life and in yours of great change: your son or daughter may be finishing an education, getting married, possibly even having children of his own. In addition to watching your child leave home for a dangerous location, you yourself are going through some changes: empty nest syndrome, menopause, and other changes associated with midlife. The parents I know who managed this time the best did positive productive things for themselves. One mother went back to school to get a law degree. Others took up hobbies such as photography or gardening. I decided to show my support with a weekly care package and letter and to start a serious fitness program. Eventually, I decided I’d learned enough from my experience to write a book about it.

These things you do for yourself help with your relationship with your military son or daughter too. I mentioned telling your child that you are proud of his service and proud of his accomplishments, but make an effort to do something that makes your child proud of you, too. You don’t want him to call you and hang up thinking how hard it is to talk to you because you are so worried about him. You want him to hang up the phone and turn to his buddy and say something like, “Wow, my mom just got an A on her first college paper.” My own feeling was if I could keep my son’s thoughts about home positive and uplifting, that was one less worry he had to deal with. I figured his job was important and serious enough to warrant my effort to keep him from being worried about his family at home, and that by doing so, I was contributing to his ability to stay alive. If I kept him from unnecessary worry, that would help him stay focused on the very present and daily danger he faced in Iraq.

One other thing you as a parent can do is establish a relationship with some of the other parents in your son’s or daughter’s unit. Ask for a phone number or email address of his friend’s parents or spouse. Reach out to these people who share your concerns. There is strength in numbers, and you can establish your own little support group. Some of the friends I made during my son’s deployment, other parents associated with the 66th MP Company, are still close friends today. We shared a pretty unique experience, we all grew together, and some of us maintain contact five years later.

—Sandy Doell
Mom’s Field Guide