Tips For Mums Flying Solo While Daddy Is On Deployment
The lifestyle that military mums live while their partners are away on deployment is a bit like being single mums. It might not be a long-term thing – just a few months, but military mums are left to deal with the kids on their own.
For some mums the challenge of raising children on their own, while their husband is away, isn’t too tricky, for others it’s harder. How each mum reacts to being left to care for her children alone is different.
As well as dealing with the struggles of taking care of your children solo, as a military spouse, you are also dealing with the loss of your partner. Yes, it might only be for a few months, but it’s still hard to adapt to flying solo.
To help you get through your partner’s deployment as easily as possible, here are a few tips that you might find useful:
Move into a military community
Before your partner is deployed discuss the possibility of moving into a military community. Many military mums find it much easier to cope with their partner’s deployment when living in a military community as they have a lot more support.
Even if it’s just while your partner is away, discuss the possibility of moving into a military home. As well as giving you more support while your partner is away, you will also find that military apartments and houses are much cheaper to rent.
Get to know other military mums
Even if you have a great group of mummy friends outside of the military community, find some military friends, too. Your normal friends might offer you support, but they don’t understand what you are going through, not really.
Find yourself a couple of military mummy friends who you can talk to about how you are feeling. You will find it much easier to cope if you know that there are other women in the same boat as you, that’s why having military friends is important.
Keep busy while the kids are at school
Once you get the kids from school each day, you will be very busy. But, it’s during the day that you can end up being left alone with your thoughts, so it’s important to stay busy. If you don’t have a job – not many military mums do because it’s too tricky with moving around a lot, find a new hobby.
Is there something that you have always wanted to try but have never gotten around to? Is there an activity that you would love to do? Yes – then why not do it? You need to find a way to keep yourself busy during the day, so any hobby or activity is perfect.
Keep in touch with your husband
It can be hard being so far away from someone you love, so it’s important that you talk regularly. Make sure that as well as talking to your husband, that you also give the kids a chance to speak to daddy and tell him how they are.
A nice way to help your children get over missing their dad is creating him a care package. You could ask each child to paint daddy a picture and write him a letter, you could then fill a box with all of his favourite things and send it to him.
Being a military wife isn’t easy, especially when you are left to bring up the kids alone. However, it’s important to remember that you can do it, and soon enough your husband will be back. You might miss him like crazy, but he won’t be gone for long.
