Grandparents become mom and dad when parents deploy with military

McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) - "Good. Nothing. Good." The stateside half of a telephone conversation between 6-year-old Emma Tackett and her mom, Jeannette Tackett, who is in Iraq with the Washington National Guard, leaves much to the imagination.

Like many kids her age, Emma is a girl of few words when she's on the phone. She leaves most of the talking to her mom.

But there's one message the kindergartner wants to deliver loud and clear.

"When are you coming back?" she asks her mom.

It's a question every child of a deployed soldier wants to know.

And it's one that grandparents like Carolyn Burt of Tacoma, Wash., must grapple with as they bear a double burden during a time of war.

Burt worries daily about her daughter Jeannette, a single mom who is serving with the Washington National Guard's 81st Brigade in Iraq. At the same time, Burt is re-learning the joys and challenges of having a young child in the house as she cares for Emma during the deployment of her mom, as well as her father and her stepmother, Paul and Shawna Tackett. They are also with the Army National Guard.

Emma's mom left in August. Her dad and her stepmother deployed in March. That's when Emma came to live with Burt, her grandmother.

"I have to be upbeat and positive with her, and reassure her that Mommy's going to be home soon," says the 60-year-old Burt.

A NEW RHYTHM

Dee Smethurst, 65, is another Tacoma grandmother who stepped in to help when her daughter Rochelle Smith and son-in-law Scott Hall _ both captains based at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina _ were sent to different parts of the world.

Smethurst welcomed her grandson Josiah, who turned 1 in July, to her home.

Hall left for Iraq in April 2008, and Smith went to Kyrgyzstan in July 2008. Smethurst cared for Josiah until his dad returned in October 2008.

Smethurst's months with her grandson proved an education in how much parenting has changed since her own kids were little.

Start with the sheer volume of equipment that accompanies young children today.

Smethurst took Josiah and his car seat to the Mary Bridge Children's Hospital car seat inspection program to make sure the seat was installed properly. She asked a neighbor to show her how his high-tech stroller folded away when not in use. And she adjusted to new absorbent Pampers.

But she confesses that she didn't use the baby monitor that Josiah's parents left for him.

"It wasn't familiar to me," she says. Besides, she could hear Josiah no matter where he was in the house.

Josiah's mom says knowing her son was in trusted hands allowed both her and her husband, Scott, to focus on their jobs while they were deployed.

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"This was our first time being deployed with Josiah" as part of the family, says Rochelle Smith, who returned home to South Carolina in January. "If my mom weren't part of the equation, we would have to look at other options."

Most challenging for Smethurst was the need to adjust her schedule.

"I like to stay up late, but he's a little baby," she says. "He gets up at 5 a.m. It's draining. You lose your rhythm."

Josiah went to day care for eight hours each day. It's a routine he was used to at home, and his parents didn't want to change that. So Smethurst counts herself fortunate.

She's retired from her job in state children's services, but she found she needed those daytime hours to "do all the things I had to do, when I didn't find it easy to take him around."

Somehow, Smethurst found the energy to keep up with the little boy. And she also treasured the joy Josiah brought to her life and the spirit he brought to her home.

"As we get older, we don't realize we're missing spontaneity," she says.

DUAL DEPLOYMENT

Asking grandparents to take the kids when couples deploy has become commonplace within the armed services.

"There are so many dual military couples," says Roberta Antry, chief of the military personnel division at Fort Lewis.

She's not aware of any Army-wide statistics on how many military families are affected by both parents being deployed simultaneously. But she says it's not uncommon for both parents of a child to be on active duty, or for one parent to be active duty and married to a reservist.

"That's also a dual-military couple," she says.

Since at least the mid-1980s, the Army has required families led by single parents or those in which both parents are members of the military to file what's known as a family care plan. The plan outlines who will care for a soldier's children in the event of deployment. It must be renewed annually or before any major deployment, says Wayne Johnson of Army Community Service at Fort Lewis.

Members of the Air Force have similar requirements.

Each soldier's commander must validate the plan and make sure it will work, but "taking care of a family is the soldier's responsibility," says Antry. Even if a grandparent isn't able to care for a soldier's child, an aunt, an uncle or another person might be available. Sometimes relatives and guardians actually move onto the base to care for a child who lives there while parents deploy.

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But for soldiers on long deployments, she adds, most caregivers are grandparents.

WEAVING A SECURITY BLANKET

Burt says her granddaughter Emma is doing well, despite missing her parents.

The little girl loves school and has earned awards for math and citizenship. Emma and her grandmother, a retired teacher and artist, spend time painting together in Burt's basement art studio. Burt takes Emma to plays at Tacoma Musical Playhouse, and she accompanies her granddaughter on school field trips.

"I've been focusing on giving her lots of experiences," says Burt.

Burt's husband, Chuck Gourley, has learned to love kids' TV shows like "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "iCarly."

"You have to take it one day at a time and just do what makes sense," he says.

Burt says the hardest times for Emma arrive with the darkness. Each night, her grandmother tucks her in, closing the sheer curtains of Emma's princess canopy bed around her, pulling the Dora the Explorer quilt up to her chin, trying to create a net of safety around her.

But Emma sometimes awakens in the middle of the night and goes to her grandmother.

"She's looking for security," Burt says. "Things are changing all around her. Right now, I'm the one constant in her life."

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Resources

For soldiers and families:

www.militaryonesource.com

1-800-342-9647

For grandparents:

www.aarp.org/family/grandparenting

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© 2009, The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.).