Military deployments hard on local families

dtarrant@dallasnews.com


Stephen Stewart, 4, talks on the phone with his father, veteran Jeffrey Stewart, who now works as a contractor in Afghanistan, at Conder Park in Killeen. Stewart and Robyn Schultz, with Stephen's brother, Tristan, 1, divorced last year; the boys live with Stewart's parents in Alvin, Texas.
Starting when Gwendolyn was 4, her dad, Sgt. Glenn Roberts, has gone on three deployments in eight years – twice to Iraq. Each time, he has been gone a year.


Gwendolyn Roberts likes to draw. Her dad appears in many of her sketches. He and Gwendolyn hold hands, and she wears an ear-to-ear smile. But in one drawing, Gwendolyn watches as her father leaves home. Her eyes are wide, her mouth is turned down and a big teardrop sits on her cheek.

Her dad went on his last deployment to Iraq in December 2007. Gwendolyn, then 10, did not handle his leaving well.

"She was withdrawn, quiet and very worried," said Gwendolyn's mom, Martha Roberts, from her family's home near Fort Hood. "She worried a lot about her dad. She wasn't talking very much. She would just start crying because she missed her dad so much."

Parents, educators and policymakers have all expressed concern about military children whose parents deploy to a war zone. Yet there has been little research done on the effects of combat tours on their performance in school and social well-being, said Anita Chandra, a behavioral scientist at Rand Corp., testifying before Congress in March.

Advocates know that children in military families – especially those who have gone through long deployments – are experiencing problems. But they lack essential data, including basic information such as where military children live and what schools they attend.

Mary Keller, president of the Texas-based Military Child Education Coalition, estimates that Texas has 100,000 military children. But even that guess might be too low.

"They are the invisible children in the state of Texas," Keller says.

Collecting that data would enable support organizations to know where and how to target their services, Keller says. "We have to have information that's precise. That way we can also understand where to target programs and which ones work the best."

In one of the few studies of its kind, Rand Corp., with Chandra as the lead investigator, found that children in military families reported more symptoms of anxiety than children in the general population.

The study, published in December in the Pediatrics medical journal, also found that children whose parents had been deployed for longer periods over the past three years experienced more difficulties in school and at home. This was especially true for older boys and girls, the study reported.

Two years ago, Scott & White Healthcare opened a clinic in Killeen to serve Fort Hood military families. The hospital surveyed its primary care physicians. Those doctors reported seeing an increase in anxiety-related physical ailments among children.

"There wasn't anything really physically wrong, but the kids were having chronic headaches and tummy aches," said Maxine Trent, a counselor and coordinator for Military Homefront Services. "Those of us in behavioral health care know that's often [emotionally] related."

With more than 20 years of military service, Glenn Roberts was eligible to retire. He had promised Gwendolyn he would do so by the time she turned 11. But he still had one last tour to complete. This deployment was extra hard on the family because there was a newborn in the house. Gwendolyn's younger brother was named Glenn after his father.

A friend told Martha Roberts about the free counseling offered for Fort Hood families at Military Homefront Services. Gwendolyn started seeing a therapist there in summer 2008, about halfway through her father's deployment.

Gwendolyn talked about her fears to her counselor. Drawing became part of her therapy, another way to express her feelings. She mailed many of her drawings to her father – "pictures of me and him holding hands," she said.

"When your dad is deployed, you miss out on some of the father-daughter stuff," Gwendolyn said. Like bowling. Or playing video games, especially the Wii. "We usually would relax by watching TV together."

She particularly loved when her dad could make it to her dance recitals. But during his last deployment, she grew sad when she learned he wouldn't be able to attend.

The Friday night of the recital, she was getting ready in her room when her mother told her she had to leave the house to pick up a package. When her mother returned, she asked Gwendolyn to come to the kitchen. There, on leave from Iraq, stood her father.

"And she walked in and her face just lit up," Martha Roberts said.

"I was really happy," Gwendolyn said. "I couldn't stop smiling."


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