"Out of the blue" - life as a military wife

I fully expected my children to be ecstatic when we put on a recording my husband sent from Iraq, but was surprised by my 4-year-old daughter’s reaction.
We received hubby’s DVD through a program called United Through Reading, sponsored by The United Service Organization (USO) and the Family Literacy Foundation. The deployed military member visits a USO center, and the staff records him or her reading a story, and then the story book and the DVD are mailed back home.
My husband told me he was using this program, so when the package arrived, I made a big fuss about daddy having sent a special DVD for us, and I encouraged my children to be excited, mostly by being very excited myself.
When I started the recording all the kids were very close to the computer screen and seemed mesmerized. But, kids will be kids, and a few seconds into the story, the younger ones, ages one and a half and two and a half, after trying to touch the screen with their little fingers and being told no several times, got tired and moved around looking for something new that could entertain them. A minute or two later, my oldest daughter and my 5-year-old also started looking for other things to do. Surprisingly, my 4-year-old stayed glued to the monitor for the whole recording.
At the end, she asked me: “Is this a real daddy, mommy? Our real daddy?”
Me: “I am not sure what you mean sweetie — this is daddy, he recorded a video, and sent it to us. It’s your daddy.”
My daughter, with escalating frustration in her voice: “I don’t want this daddy, I want the real one — that one that was here before, and I don’t want the computer daddy,” now crying, “Is the real one coming back?”
I thought her confusion was revealing of how tough it is for young children to understand the concept of time, an interactive image versus a recording and the feelings associated with the absence of a parent, such as separation, fear of abandonment and resentment.
As parents it’s important to acknowledge their feelings and the sacrifices they make. April is Military Child Month, and it’s a great reminder of how precious our little ones are.
This week I also had my own little experiment with technology, trying to feel more connected through the Web.
With my new Web site, totalmomsolutions.com or anitadoberman.com, I tried to upload some videos, not only for my work, but in the hope that my husband and family overseas would enjoy seeing them. I had to resort to a professional when at 2 a.m. the videos were still not in the right place and everything else on the site was out of place.
Oh well, I can’t really put my children on video right now, but I can certainly acknowledge all the cute little things they do and be thankful for the many wonders of technology.
Anita Doberman and her family live on the Emerald Coast. She can be contacted at anita@anitadoberman.com.