Helping Kids Cope With Daddy (or Mommy) Being Gone

In honor of Joel ALMOST being home (just eight more days!), I thought I'd finally finish this post on how we helped our girls cope.

This year with Joel being in Afghanistan has been hard. And it's so much harder when you're small and can't quite understand why Daddy isn't always around. Joel and I talked for several months beforehand, and came up with a few ideas.

First of all, we talk a lot about Daddy. I encourage it, and I make sure they feel comfortable to bring him up whenever they need to. After talking with a psychiatrist, I learned that kids at the preschool age need help expressing their feelings. They need help "naming" that thing that is going on inside them. I thought I would be putting that thought into their head by doing that, but in actuality the "naming" it helps them get it out. We have been using this tactic with Abby for a few years now, and it has really worked wonders for her. "Remembering out loud" seems very popular with my girls also, as they seem to be reliving the good memory playing with Daddy while they relate it back to me. So even after 200 times of hearing the same story with the same punchline, I sit there and listen.

Also, we try to talk via Skype as much as possible. It doesn't always happen every day - the time change and bad connections, not to mention both sides having to coordinate busy schedules - makes it difficult. But being able to at least see Daddy in the computer really helps. It also makes for some very interesting conversations, as I had to explain to Lily's preschool teacher why Lily says her Daddy lives "IN the computer."

Before Joel left, he video recorded himself reading books to the girls. Since bedtime stories was "Daddy's thing", this was our way of continuing that ritual. (However, if you do this, find someone more tech savvy than us to help you do it. We attempted to burn these to DVDs and never could get that to work. So these ended up only working on my desktop computer. Slightly inconvenient.) We chose books in both English and Spanish, and most of the books we chose had some sort of "Daddy" theme. It was our original idea to record new books each time he came home to visit, but since we had such tech troubles, we gave up and stayed with these recordings. The girls didn't care either way.

The girls flipping pages following Daddy reading.

Watching the Daddy videos

Right before Joel left for his first segment away, we went to Build-A-Bear. We let the girls pick out their bear and its clothes, and Joel helped them "build" the bear. Build-A-Bear also has a little recorder you can record a short message and slip inside the bear's paw; when the girls squeeze the paw, they hear their Daddy talk to them.

They love this, and these bears are almost always in their beds, if they are not dragging it around.

Abby with her Build-A-Bear from Daddy. And of course it's pink.

We tried one idea given to us, which was tearing one loop off a paper chain for each day that Daddy was gone, with the idea being that when the chain was gone, it would be time for Daddy to arrive home. I hate to say it, but this only works if Mommy actually remembers to tear the loops off every night!

About 2/3 way through the year, when the girls were having a particularly rough week missing Daddy, I came up with the idea for Daddy pillows. I got the idea from this site: Hug a Hero

To make my own, I took two of Joel's old T-shirts and used some "stitch witchery" (This is like iron-on tape for clothes. Great for fixing hems if you stink at sewing like I do.) Basically you iron closed the openings across the bottom, the neck and one sleeve. Then I pulled the stuffing out of a very cheap pillow and stuffed the shirt, then ironed the last sleeve closed! Voila! Not very fancy, but the girls love them. You can even spritz it a little with Daddy's cologne so it smells like Daddy, too.

Lily sleeps with her "Daddy Pillow" every night.

And because we are currently working on learning the calendar in our homeschool work, we are now using a calendar and counting down the days until Daddy returns! I didn't start doing this until Joel actually had his flight reservations, so we'd know the exact date. I really hope his flight isn't delayed and this comes back to bite me in the behind. Before, we've always been able to fudge a day here or there if we needed.

And finally, I've tried to make each of Joel's arrivals back home special. The first time we dressed up and surprised him at the airport. The second time I picked him up early, and we surprised the girls at their preschool. Now THAT one was awesome. I about cried at their reactions (Abby kept asking if it was a dream!) And I'm working on a big surprise for this last one, if I can figure out a way to pull it off. I'm hoping I can get Santa to do a special early delivery. . . .