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[Narrator] Getting Involved with School [Veteran] School is big with me.
[Wife] He jumped right in with things with school. That's been most important to him
is...Ryan had lived with his mom. He jumped right in academically, making sure that everything
was taken care of with Ryan and everything was taken care of with Ashley. Because Ashley
believed that because her dad was gone for a year, she needed to repeat that year. She
felt like because he had missed that whole year, she needed to try to fail so that he
could be there for that year that he had missed. And with Morgan being so young, academically
he just felt that, you know, that was most important. So, everything else he really didn't
integrate himself into, but school, and academics, and sports, was most important to him.
[Interviewer] So did you try to fail that year?
[Older daughter] I think I did. I don't really remember anything from that year.
[Interviewer] So when you were back and trying to re-establish yourself, did you find yourself
having to apply different parenting strategies to each kid, because they all sort of are
different? [Veteran] Yes, I did find out when I came
back, when I transitioned back to here from the military side each one of these kids had
developed their own personality the year I was gone. It was very hard for me to be able
to read them like I could the year prior. With Ryan, he had been living with his mother
at the time, he was at the age where he was the impressionable teenager who often voiced
his "I need my dad" opinion. Never prior to my deployment he never voiced that to me,
but when I came home it was "where were you, where were you, where were you." So I had
to apply my own father-son parenting skills with him. With the girls had been living with
me, them being there watching me get on the plane, and then me coming home a year later
and watching these two become somebody that I don't remember from a year prior. I used
to hear from Crystal "this is who Ashley is, this is who Ashley was, this is who Ashley
is becoming this year. She needs you here. You're not here. She's lashing out, she's
acting out. These are the consequences that she is pushing for -- the "I want to fail
this grade to be accepted into Dad's world" per se. So I had to engage her with a different
set of parenting skills. And with Morgan, being so young she was pre-K, she was in that
grey area where she didn't quite understand when I left, but she knew hey now that I came
home ... it took her a few minutes to realize "Hey, you're home, I can reach out and physically
touch you." I had to treat her with the kid gloves as well.
[Narrator] How does your child's personality affect the way you reconnect with him or her?