Early childhood help for children of deployed military personnel

Abstract

One parent shared with me that she was told 'You're just on your own until they go to school. There's nothing out there'. She was part of my research project to find out what 2-5-year old children understand and experience when their parent worked away due to military deployment and training. <br/> During the project many other parents and early childhood educators repeated this problem, telling me about the lack of resources. They told me they wanted storybooks and apps for children from Australian Defence Force (ADF) families to help them understand and build resilience to deal with the stresses they face. <br/> These stresses include: long parental deployments, frequent parental training, frequent relocations and a parent who may get injured or suffer mental health conditions when they return. Children can react to parental deployment in many ways, including emotionally, socially, physically and in their learning and development (cognitively).