Military Parents: Discover Custom-Made Resources Designed for Your Family

If you’re a parent, you worry about your children and how to take care of them. If you are a military parent, you have additional worries: Are my kids making friends at their new school? Am I communicating with my kids enough during my deployment?  Can my kids feel my stress or do they worry about me while my spouse is gone?
 
To celebrate Military Children’s Health Month in April, this blog outlines some resources that the National Center for Telehealth & Technology (T2) produced in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization behind Sesame Street.

Resources for Parents (developed with the VA):

• Parenting for Service Members and Veterans: This online course offers help with parenting through interactive games and resources, and real stories from military families. The Parenting2Go app offers tips on-the-go from this course for managing stress or navigating challenging conversations with your children.
• Moving Forward: Another online course teaches you to how to improve your problem-solving skills and handle stress by breaking down stressors into manageable daily challenges and learning to set achievable goals. The Moving Forward app is the mobile version of this course.

Resources for Kids (developed with Sesame Workshop):

• Sesame Street for Military Families: The familiar characters on this website help parents talk to their children about military life situations like moving or deployment. Kids can find activities to earn “new friend coupons” from Bert and Ernie, while Big Bird and Elmo help children identify their emotions through the “Feeling Faces” guide.
• Feel Electric! is an app that helps grade-school children identify and express their emotions through activities and games. (Available on iTunes and Google Play.)
• The Big Moving Adventure app helps preschoolers understand that moving is a normal part of military life. They can even create a Muppet friend to help them with the move. (Available on iTunes and Google Play.)

From tips for managing stress as a parent to advice for kids from a friendly giggle-prone Muppet, you can use these tools to help your family with the unique challenges they face as part of military life.