How Kids in Military Families Can Cope

The United States has an all-volunteer military, but one group is "drafted" into the lifestyle from birth: military kids. They may face multiple moves, nationwide and overseas, and deal with fear and uncertainty as parents are deployed to faraway war zones. Meanwhile, it's up to the spouses staying behind to look out for kids' physical and mental health, and keep their families on an even keel.

Army Life: What's Next?

The Army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is buzzing with news: 1,500 more U.S. troops have been authorized to go to Iraq. Not only that, Fort Bragg will be one of the five military bases used as a quarantine location for troops returning from their Ebola response mission in West Africa.

Lakeshia Harney, 32, doesn't know where her husband, Army Sgt. Terry Harney, will be stationed next. For the time being he's home, and the second pair of hands helps with children Lanadia (14), Zay'sean (8), Zy'ir (4) and the baby, 9-month-old Zachariah. Besides taking care of her kids, Harney works 30 hours a week at the Fort Bragg Exchange. Not knowing where your spouse is going next "can be kind of a hard position sometimes," she says. "It could be a last-minute thing."

Her husband, who's been in the Army for 10 years, just reenlisted. "He's making it a career," Harney says. Overall, she says, the benefits of serving or being in a military family outweigh the downs. She enjoys meeting a lot of new people from different places, getting to know them -- at least for a while -- and making friends.

Deployment can be stressful, Harney admits. "They have free counseling for military wives if you need someone to talk to about what's going on," she notes. "When you can't talk to [anybody] because your husband's gone."

Sgt. Harney has been deployed twice so far, to Afghanistan and Iraq. Daughter Lanadia handled the separation well, her mother says, and her father was able to call almost daily: "Whenever he did call and talk, she was happy."

"My other [children] didn't really understand that he was going to be gone for a certain amount of time," Harney continues. "Lanadia understood it, and she went about her day."

Air Force-Navy Team

Navy veteran Jeremy Hilton, 42, used to be one half of a dual active-duty couple. He was a lieutenant in submarines and married to Air Force Lt. Col. Renae Hilton. Nearly 12 years ago they had their first child, who was born with significant medical needs.

Their daughter requires intensive medical care, along with ongoing therapy for developmental issues. Early intervention and continuity of care are essential for her to do her best. However, Hilton says, "every time you move you're dealing with a new school district, new therapists and new doctors."

The couple concluded that continuing only the wife's Air Force career would allow more stability. Hilton resigned in June 2003, when their daughter was about 7 months old. That done, he approached his role -- equal parts case manager and home therapist -- with military spirit.

"It helped for me some coming from the active-duty lifestyle, because I had a little bit of a leg up in that I was already kind of mission oriented," Hilton says. "We knew in our daughter's situation it was going to take a kind of all-hands-on-deck effort to do all the stuff that we really needed to do for her."

Recent assignments, including the Pentagon, have allowed the Hiltons (including a 4-year-old son) to remain in the Maryland/Virginia area.

He points to findings from a Princeton University-Brookings Institute collaboration that focuses on the strengths allowing most military kids to flourish. Resiliency -- the interaction of positive personality traits within a supportive environment -- really helps.

Still, resiliency has its limits. More than a decade of war and multiple deployments take a toll, Hilton says. "Either the children become amazingly resilient or may also have significant mental health issues." He thinks most military families could benefit from some kind of counseling. As a member of the nonprofit Military Family Advisory Network, Hilton advocates for military families with special needs children.

Marine Corps: Life Overseas

Sophie Roth-Douquet, 16, is a Marine Corps kid. Now in 10th grade, she's attended 10 schools in the U.S. and overseas, including one "very small" school in Germany. She didn't speak German when she arrived, so the only people she knew were the 12 people in her grade, and they weren't necessarily friendly.

"I experienced some bullying in my first year and a half," she recalls. But, she adds, "In the end I've learned another language. I wouldn't want to go through it again, but I do think it's a good thing for me to have gone through."

It was hard on her brother Charley, now 12, to leave his friends behind for deployments, Sophie says. He would cry when he left and miss them for months. For her, happier memories from Germany include watching this year's FIFA World Cup on a giant screen, along with three friends and "a huge crowd" standing outside a beer garden.

Sophie's father, Col. Greg Douquet, has served in the Marine Corps for 29 years. She was 12 when she learned he was going to Afghanistan for an entire year -- and leaving in a week. She had walked in the house laughing and happy. "Then my mom told me to come sit down on the couch, and I thought I was in trouble," she recalls. "When she told me my dad was getting deployed, I started crying hysterically."

The family is now settled in a Northern Virginia community. But Kathy Roth-Douquet, 50, Sophie's mother, recalls life on base -- including Parris Island in South Carolina and New River Air Station in North Carolina -- as a wonderful experience, and says military bases provide a sense of community and a safe, supportive environment for children.

Roth-Douquet is an attorney, author and CEO of Blue Star Families, a group that connects military families to civilian communities. Every year, Blue Star releases its Military Family Lifestyle Survey. In 2014, spouses responded that deployments and isolation from family and friends were their top stressors. Employment for spouses, deployment's impact on children and military lifestyle uncertainty were among the top five issues ranked as most concerning.

Strong Spouse -- Strong Family

Behavioral psychologists and other experts have found several keys to raising mentally healthy kids in the military, Roth-Douquet says. "One is that if you, the mom, are OK with what's happening, your kids will be OK too." Another key is for kids to have important adults in their lives other than parents -- trusted mentors they can confide in. And third, Roth-Douquet says, is that kids can handle difficult, even bad things, "if they feel there's a higher purpose."

"I think that's why it helps our kids a lot when our country is generous to military families and to people who serve, when they say things and when they recognize them," she says. "It reinforces to the kids that their family's doing something worthwhile and it's OK for it to be hard."

For the Many Military Kids

Ron Avi Astor, a professor in urban social development at the University of Southern California, says with an estimated 4 to 5 million kids nationwide whose parents have served in the military since 9/11, public school principals and teachers often have military kids in their classes without realizing it. He's involved with a variety of programs to help these kids, including the Student-to-Student program through the Military Child Education Coalition.

"For military family members, the struggle is having to do things so hard you don't think you can do them," Sophie Roth-Douquet says. But "you can do it," she adds. "You can get through it. And one of the best things about being a military child is that you learn early on just how much you can do."

Lisa Esposito is a Patient Advice reporter at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at lesposito@usnews.com.