April is the Month of the Military Child

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Submitted by on Mon, 04/30/2012 - 11:30am

The Month of the Military Child is a month “set aside to honor and celebrate the significance and resilience of military children and youth. Military families face many unique challenges and many times their children experience frequent moves, new schools, new friends, long deployments, and much more. Through all of these challenging experiences, military children learn to be flexible and adaptable. Whether they know it or not, they contribute to unit readiness and mission success for their military parents. They develop character and courage, and make sacrifices daily.”

Earlier this month, the military’s top brass honored some very special military children, one from each service plus the Coast Guard -- for their resilience, strength of character and leadership at the Operation Homefront’s 2012 Military Child of the Year awards gala.

The honorees included a 9-year-old who started a blog to support other children dealing with deployment to a 17-year-old who dealt with her Army father’s illness, then the loss of her soldier brother in Afghanistan.

Though people have said military children are tough and resilient despite their hardships, the chairman said, he takes an opposite view. “I think that our military kids are who they are because of the hardships,” he said, citing their adaptability, strength and ability to embrace diversity. “Kids become who they are because of what we ask them to do and because of what they see us do [and] see their moms and dads do.” These children are the nation’s future leaders, Dempsey noted. He said Nathaniel Richards, the Navy’s Military Child of the Year, put it best when he wrote this on his blog site: “Even though we are young, we still have great ideas. We can help. e can make a difference.”

Even though April is coming to a close, there are many benefits offered to military families to help them throughout the year including access to free summer camps, scholarships, and of course, K12 online education options to help bring consistency to their children’s schooling.

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