Let me start this by saying, I am not anti-military. I come from a stronly military family, there are only two cousins on my Nanny's side who didn't at least attempt to get into and/or serve in the military. All of her brothers served, two of whom were on a ship on their way to Japan before Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed. My great grandpa, whose house I live in, and his brother both signed up during WWI, and his brother died in training during the Spanish Influenze of 1918. Ok, so, I salute the flag support our armed forces, and pray for each man, woman, and their families.
Now that I've said all of that, my job has really opened my eyes to one major downfall of the military and the life that it follows. I work in Lawton, which is the home of Fort Sill, an army base. The school district does include several schools on base, but all three of my schools are not on base.
However, many of the kids are military kids who live off base and thus go to school inside the town. I have truly seen the affect of the nomadic lifestyles these kids endure, and for so many it isn't positive. It breaks my heart to see these kids who are struggling, are unable to read, or are just behind because they are in a new school every year or whatever.
Further than that, there are kids whose speech problems or learning issues are only aggravated by the deployment of one or both parent. I can imagine from a wife's standpoint how hard daily life would be to have your spouse gone for a year, to not have their support and help in daily decision making, but for a 12 year old to have just one parent. Even more than just having one parent, is having one parent who is stressed to the max and dealing with everything tough that's going on.
It's horrible to even imagine.
The fact from my point of view is, it's detrimental to a lot of kids. And then to be put in a place like Lawton, having a population of 110k when combined with Fort Sill, is like throwing them into the lion's den. It's scary for me to be in a hallway with 600 middle school kids swarming around you, usually against the stream, and I'm 23 almost 24 years old.
Anyway all of that said, I have a paper that I have to write about developing psychology, and I'm thinking it's going to be about this.
1 comments:
my brother was stationed in Ft. Sill last year. :)
i agree. raising kids in the military just isn't fair to the children. not that i have anything against the military life and all that, (because obviously, my and J's family is very heavily into the military as well) but if me or my spouse was in it, i would wait until my contract was up to have kids. i just couldn't bear to be away from my children, or pack them up and rip them away from their friends so often. not to mention the whole dying overseas thing. scary. it just makes everything harder... even marraiges are strained, and holding it together while on the move so often can be very difficult.
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