By Lori Stoffers
A “feeling thermometer,” which gives young kids a creative way to express their feelings.
Let’s face it – deployments are NEVER easy. My husband Eric and I have been married for 12 years and have been through a few deployments. I worked full time before kids, was involved in our church, and kept myself busy during those separations. Needless to say, having kids while on shore duty in Hawaii, and then coming back to sea duty, was a very big adjustment! Not only were we returning to the land of deployments again, but this time we were doing it with kids! Our son Jacob was 3 and our daughter Hannah was just 18 months when we were stationed at NAS Whidbey Island. Like so many PCS moves, we hit the ground running: our goods shipped, we unpacked, set up house, and bid “Fair winds and following seas!” to Eric.
I attended a spouse meeting where Tracie Smith, a Families OverComing Under Stress (FOCUS) Family Resiliency Trainer at NAS Whidbey Island, and her colleague were giving a presentation about FOCUS: what the project was, what benefits they offer, and even a little demonstration about the “Feeling Thermometer”. It was only a couple of weeks into Eric’s deployment, but I knew then and there that I would be giving Tracie a call the following day.
And so I did.
Separations with kids involved are just a whole different animal. Especially when they are as young as mine were when we started FOCUS, kids often have a hard time verbalizing and expressing their frustration, anger and sadness. FOCUS was an invaluable resource in giving us tools to help our kids articulate their feelings. It gave us a common language with which to communicate.
The first of these tools was the Feeling Thermometer. Tracie worked with us and helped us articulate those “red, uncomfortable feelings”, the “green, happy, comfy feelings” and all of the emotions in between! She also helped us get “back to the green” if we were getting to orange and red!
While attending FOCUS training sessions, we also got to complete a family deployment timeline to mark important life events and keep track of the time until Eric got home. It had been suggested that we do countdown with paper chains links, or mark off days on a calendar, but our kids were just too young to really grasp those concepts. Tracie came up with the fantastic idea to do a timeline of sorts, with big events to cross off. With the progression of events toward Daddy coming home, it made the concept easier for our young children to understand.
We came up with our Daddy Countdown Track!
Our son, Jake, is VERY into cars, so we designed the timeline to look like a race track. It was a big hit! Both kids got a big kick out of crossing off the holidays as they came and went. Arrows pointing in the direction of a picture of Jake with his Daddy and the cars zooming to the finish line “drove” the point home!
Even with all the skills we were learning at FOCUS, I often found that Jake still had difficulty expressing his feelings, so we got a puppet and named him Pirate Pete! Jake and our daughter, Hannah, both were able to talk to Pete about missing their Dad without me “being there”. (You know, other than my arm!) I would pretend to not listen and just do the Pirate voice and ask them questions. Of course I felt silly, but it worked for us!
The FOCUS program inspired us to get creative with our communication skills and gave us tools to help make things a little easier as we counted down to Eric’s return. FOCUS is such a great resource for families going through the ups and downs of deployments and reintegration. I would HIGHLY recommend anyone going through separation to check out the program! Even if you’ve “been there, done that” – there is always something more to learn, and tons of tools to make the difficult deployment days just a little less hard.
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FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress) is a resiliency-building program of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED). FOCUS promotes family strengths by training military couples, children and families in core resilience skills. These skills increase closeness, support, communication and adaptability. Couples and families learn to work together to manage difficult emotions, set goals and problem solve, communicate clearly and effectively, and develop customized strategies to deal with ongoing stress and change.
FOCUS, in partnership with the UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center (http://nfrc.ucla.edu), recently released the new FOCUS On the Go! mobile app for iPhone and iPad. FOCUS On the Go! includes a suite of games for children and families to learn and practice key resilience skills and provide parents with educational resources that are consistent with the Families OverComing Under Stress™ (FOCUS) model.
To learn more about FOCUS, visit www.focusproject.org or www.facebook.com/FOCUSresiliencytraining.
To learn more about FOCUS On the Go!, visit http://nfrc.ucla.edu/focus-on-the-go or www.facebook.com/FOCUSOntheGoApp.
