Stress In A Military Family

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The Odyssey Research Paper Ashanti said, "I have a tremendous amount of respect for military families. To have to worry about your loved ones and still try and live a normal life is extremely hard." For most military families it is hard to maintain a normal life with the constant worry about a loved one in the military on your mind. This worrying causes a lot of stress and puts enormous strains on military families. Statistics show that Students with deployed parents experience significantly higher rates of behavioral issues than their peers. Military children also tend to experience increased school movement, which decreases achievement and increases the drop-out risk. (Rossen 1) The strain put on military families is very intense, and it …show more content…

(Rossen 1) Lower grades are very common in children whose parents have been deployed. Not only are military children’s grades low during deployment, but their grades also tend to struggle when their parents are home. A child could be worried and stressed about his parent getting deployed which will distract him from his schoolwork. Some family stress from military deployment gets bad enough to the place of a child dropping out of school. Along with low school grades comes many emotional challenges like anxiety and neglect from parents. Children of military families are twice as likely as those from nonmilitary families to report elevated anxiety. (Rossen 1) Also, it is very hard for children to deal with neglect from their parents. This neglect is very common in military families. Life would be really hard on a little girl if her mother was deployed and she couldn’t share sentimental time together with her mother. It would also be really hard on a little boy if he never got to play catch with his dad because he was away at war. It would also be hard on a new born not knowing its father for the first year or so of its life. He could miss when the baby was born or the first time his baby crawled, talked or walked. This could be very detrimental to the child and the parent later on in their lives. …show more content…

Soldier can often experience depression sometimes in the form of a disorder called Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD.) Parents with PTSD may spend less time with their children, develop short temper, behave differently, be reluctant to travel, and have difficulties reconnecting with their children. In May 2010, the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center reported 178,876 cases of traumatic brain injury among returning military personnel since the year 2000. Coming home to a different family might also put strain on the returning soldier. The wife may have moved on to another man if the soldier had been gone too long. This was Odysseus’ problem. He had to return home to a household of suitors to fight away from his wife to return to his normal family. He struggled with not being able to embrace his family as soon as he returned, but, instead, Odysseus had to remain disguised to defeat the suitors first. These may not be identical to the problems returning soldiers face today, but they are somewhat similar. Soldiers today face many problems such as: being away from their family, PTSD, and returning to a different family. All of these problems can relate to Odysseus’ struggles during his journey

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