Military Mom's Deployment is "Sucky" for Teenager

Deployed is a military term meaning to arrange in a position of readiness, or to move strategically or appropriately. Simply put, it means Department of Defense leadership sends me and other military members to places throughout the world that might need certain skills. My expertise is public relations.

Yes, the military has public relations in a war zone. I am currently deployed in support of the War on Terrorism to an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia, where I have been for four months—two to go.

Deployment means just that to me… it’s my time to go, so I go to do my job wherever they decide to send me. I proudly serve and I think I do a pretty darned good job if I do say so myself.

But to my teenager, “deployed” means something different. It means living with unfamiliar people because his father and mother are deployed at the same time. It means uprooting his life (friends, familiarities, home, school, local hangouts, etc.) and moving to a state 1,000 miles away. To him (in his words), “deployed” is a “crappy, stupid, sucky” word that means his world gets turned upside down.

I’m a single mom serving in the military and don’t have the luxury of letting my spouse stay home to watch our child and try to keep as many of the normal things in play while I am gone. “Deployed” means different things to different people. To me, it means work. To my friends it means separation. But to my son, it means 100 percent “sucky.”

This being my fourth deployment, I’ve learned a few things. The most important observation is that when children are younger, it seems the deployment separation is harder for the parent. On the flip side, as children get older, the harder the deployment is on the child. My first deployment, my son was two years old. I sent him candies and post cards. He had my photo and his other normal activities. He really had no concept of time so he didn’t know I was gone four months—it could have been four days to him. As long as he had his basic needs cared for by someone, mom being gone for a little while was just that … mom being gone for a little while.

I, on the other hand, felt the utterly devastating guilt of leaving my toddler with family. Literally every second of the day passed by at a slug’s pace. I watch these young mothers leaving their toddlers home to be deployed over here with me now and my heart goes out to them. It’s absolutely crushing to miss your child so much that you can barely eat or sleep much less work 14 hour days in a strange, desert environment. But then for your child to be so young as to not want to really talk to you on the phone much, must be torture to these deployed parents nowadays.

When my son was about five years old, I was deployed again. This time, it was a little harder because he was older, knew more about the concept of time and had factored me into his routine for five years. Those three months were difficult for him and me. We missed each other so much and called whenever we could. He didn’t understand why I left him. But he could still function and adjust because his needs were being met, his father was taking care of him and he didn’t have to move away from his friends. The leaving was the hardest part because he didn’t know when I was coming home. He thought he had to say goodbye forever.

Fast forward nine years and my “little boy” is 14, I am 40. Things change when you grow up. He now realizes that I will come home after my deployment so saying goodbye wasn’t that hard. But it’s the in-between part that he has trouble coping with. Saying goodbye was easy enough, I just dropped him at the door of his new school and he waved bye. That difficult in-between part is gruesome to him and me, it’s that “sucky” part.

Because mom and dad are both deployed, he had to give up everything to move to another state to live with family members. The part where he can’t come home from school and tell me who irked him. The part where he can’t just text me to ask if we can go out to dinner with friends. The part where I’m not there to talk about trying teenage times. Those parts really DO suck!

So, how does he deal with it? He has adopted the “out of sight/out of mind” concept. If he doesn’t talk to me, then he won’t miss me and it will make the time pass by faster. Of course this is torture on me but, as a mom, I do whatever it takes for my child to be happy. This is the way he wants to cope so that “deployment” is not scary or “sucky.”

So be it. The only thing I can do is be there. I kept my cell phone connected just so he could text me or call whenever he wants (at $2 a minute and 50 cents a text mind you!). Even a deployed mom can be there in mind and spirit (and Skype), even if her teenager pretends he doesn’t want her to be
.
Tune in next time when I tell you how we communicate on Skype… (Hint: Teenagers Skype and text to each other, not really so much with their moms.)

SJ is a military mom raising the most awesome teenage son in the world all by her self, one step at a time. One mistake at a time. One laughable, incredible moment at a time! She blogs at And One More Thing…