When she returned from Iraq, Guy met with her children's teachers to see how the kids were doing. The teachers told her that Leila, then 6 and who suffers from epilepsy, and Harrison, then 7, both had trouble concentrating in class.
"Harry was all over the place and wouldn't pay attention," Guy says. "Leila would be just fine and then, all of a sudden, she would cry."
The kids are calmer now, though Leila clings to her mother when talk of military services comes up at the kitchen table. The girl throws her slender arms around her mother's neck and buries her head in Guy's shoulder. Leila's hands are clasped tight in the embrace, as though not letting go will keep her mother in their kitchen forever.
Children's fears that a parent may leave again for military duty are not uncommon - which is all the more reason to study more deeply the impact of deployment on children.
The military routinely assesses its service members' condition in battle zones, says Charles Figley, an expert in combat stress and a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans.
"We should be doing the same thing at home to find out how the home front is doing," he says. "The whole country should be pulling for these kids. We should be doing everything we possibly can."
Resources for Military Families
The Defense Department's Military OneSource, www. militaryonesource.com.
The Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University, www.mfri.purdue.edu.
The Sesame Workshop's Talk, Listen, Connect initiative, www. sesameworkshop.org/tlc.
Operation: Military Kids, www. operationmilitarykids.org/public/home.aspx.
National Military Family Association, www.nmfa.org.
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Contact staff writer Carolyn Davis at 215-854-4214 or cdavis@phillynews.com.
Staff writer Edward Colimore contributed to this story.
