Parenting Advice from Joy Berry: Military Families and PTSD

When I pass by an accident on the highway, I never look. This is because the one time I did look, the images I saw were indelibly imprinted on my brain and they still haunt me to this day.

So when I recently saw a headline that read, “1 in 8 returning soldiers suffers from PTSD,” I thought to myself, “They must mean 7 in 8 returning soldiers suffer from PTSD, because 1 in 8 simply can’t be true.”

Just think about the things that soldiers see in combat zones. Could anyone see the horrors that soldiers see and not be traumatized for life? It is no wonder that some people who serve in the military during wartime come home and have complete meltdowns.

And it’s not only soldiers who suffer. What about the spouses and children of soldiers? First there is the major adjustment they must make to the forced separation from a loved one. Then there is the major adjustment to living with a traumatized family member who returns home. The truth is, war represents years of hell for military families.

That’s why, even many years after the Vietnam War and during the Gulf War, several titles from my Good Answers to Tough Questions series sold more to military families than any other buying group in America. This included schools and libraries—which have always purchased lots of my books.

The families who utilized the books appreciated having something that could (1) explain what was happening, (2) acknowledge and affirm the resulting difficult emotions kids were experiencing and (3) tell children exactly what they could do to adjust to their situations and make their lives better.

What were the titles of these books? They were, Dependence and Separation, Change and Moving, Divorce, Trauma, and Death. It’s easy to figure out why these titles were in such demand with military families.

What is difficult to figure out is how we can stop the madness that causes all of the hurt and pain that military families are forced to endure. But until we do this, we need to be committed to loving, supporting, and caring for our soldiers and their families in every way possible—right now and for as long as it takes for them to be made whole again.