Back to School
What your child's teacher might not understand
by Sarah Smiley
The first day of school is a stressful time, especially for military families who have probably just relocated and are not only new to the school and classroom, but to the city as well. Things can be made worse if your child's teacher is completely unfamiliar with the military lifestyle and therefore some particulars of your child's circumstances. Here are tips to deal with two big discrepancies.
The Info-About-Your-Parents Questionnaire
Many civilian children know their working parent's contact information like they know their own address. They can recite dad's work phone number as fast as they can the one for home.
Military children on the other hand might not know any of the above. Neither do their parents yet. If they've just moved to a new duty station, they have to look at their cell phone contacts list to tell you their new home phone number. They may or may not know their new home mailing address, but it doesn't really matter because half of their mail has yet to be forwarded from their interim address when they lived in base lodging, and the other half still arrives at the service member's home of record, where he hasn't resided in more than a decade.
On the first day of school, when the teacher asks students to fill out forms with their personal information, it's no wonder that many military children stare blankly at the card. It's possible that all they know is the name of the ship their dad will soon deploy on, and they're pretty sure he doesn't have a mailing address there.
If the teacher doesn't understand your family's delay in gathering the contact information for the school forms, suggest that they help you search for it in the blue pages of the local phone book. Once he or she sees that military addresses and phone numbers are like moving targets, that very few military personnel have a typical and consistent desk for which there is an address, and that often the easiest way to get in touch with someone on base is to call the main number for the operator.
The No-Children-at-Open-House Rule
One of the first official events for the new school year is an open house or initial parent-teacher conference. Usually there is an unspoken, if not explicitly mandated, rule that children are not allowed at these events. This puts some military parents in a difficult position. Unlike some of the other parents, they probably don't have nearby relatives to help, and if they’ve just moved-in, they might not have a babysitter either. Many military wives whose husbands are deployed have been given dirty stares when they had no choice (except to not attend and get dirty looks anyway for being a parent who doesn't participate in their child's education) but to drag their children along.
You can avoid this uncomfortable moment by explaining your predicament to the teacher ahead of time. Maybe the school will set up a movie in the gym for kids in similar situations. Maybe the school can suggest a good babysitter. Or maybe you might just have to get hysterical and tell the teacher and everyone else that if they think it should be so easy to get to open house without your children when you don't know a soul in the new city and your husband is deployed, then why don't they come over and help you do the laundry, cook dinner, unpack moving boxes and shop for school supplies at the same time, too. Don't be afraid to be honest. Cry if you need to and ask for help. Most people (especially civilians) don't understand what you're going through until you tell them.