Military Children are always described as resilient. But what resilience begins in ignorance, in the carefree unawareness of life, just shifting all around them? My babies focus on the texture of grass, the clouds in the sky, and the bee that almost ran into their noses. Was it a bumblebee or a wasp? To my five-year-old, that’s an important detail in her day!
Every time the month of April comes around, my heart hurts a little more each time I hear the continued “resilient” label our military children are gifted with. Because for a while, they knew nothing different. They are hit with the constant shifts of homes, friends, schools, hobbies, and places. And they think it’s normal!
We’ve been blessed with a little girl who loves to sing. With her growing love for music, she’s asked for songs for the places we’ve lived: California, North Carolina, and now South Carolina. This is something she loves to tell friends she meets along the way. She always gets the most excited about her favorite, New York. New York is where my husband and I both grew up. It’s our home. I swear, every time we see the state border sign, we must make sure everyone is tracking that we are officially “welcomed to New York.”
I never really thought about why this mattered so much to my daughter, until I realized it’s her way of keeping track in a life that’s constantly shifting.
Each song marks a place we’ve lived, a chapter of HER story, but New York is different. New York represents the people, places, and routines that never change when she is visiting. For her, it’s the one place that feels normal.
Military children are labeled as strong and adaptable – and I truly believe they are! But in the beginning, that strength is rooted in ignorance, which is later followed by the flexibility and grit they are known for.
A Military Child’s Resilience
My daughter’s resilience will cry when she realizes the activity is missing a key person from that core memory before, a friend who just moved and won’t be there. Her resilience will demand a phone call to her friend because she saw the photo her mom put on Facebook. Her resilience will get angry when she can’t go to her bestie’s birthday party because it’s in Texas and not around the block anymore.
In the moments of “see you later,” my children do not fully understand what it means until the normal they know is taken away.
For now, resilience is all they know because their ignorance is still blissful.
I pray that next time, instead of tears and waving goodbye to friends while chasing the moving trucks, we might see our children dancing and laughing in an empty, boxed-up room again. Because that innocence, that joyful ignorance, is the spirit of a military child, before they become aware of the new normal waiting around the corner.
Military children’s resilience should be a quiet reminder to the rest of us that even in a life full of change, there is still joy to be lived along the way. We just need to find it and embrace the unknown as our children do. Every. Single. Time.
