Sometimes the biggest fear we face is the fear of the unknown. We can talk about deployment with our kids, but children are concrete thinkers. They learn best through hands-on play-work. I believe it was Dr. Maria Montessori who once said “A child’s play is his work.” This experience allows military children an experience that helps them understand what their deployed/deploying parent may be going through.
HILL AIR FORCE BASE — Deployments to far off places are one of the hardest things military families go through.
Usually, children watch with tears in their eyes as parents board military planes and leave their family for months at a time.
But at Hill Air Force Base on Thursday, those roles were completely reversed.
Hill held its annual “Kids Deployment Day,” where more than 600 military children planned to go through the riggers of a deployment processing line.
Children from Hill Field Elementary received a field trip to the base in the morning and early afternoon, while school children from other schools across the Top of Utah were to participate Thursday night.
“It’s kind of an all day thing,” said Sgt. Terri Davis, the event’s organizer. “We’ve got so many military families in this area and we want all the kids to see a deployment from their parents’ perspective.”
The children, all under the age of 12, received dog tag issues, gas mask fittings, aircraft tours, military working dog demos, entomology exhibits, all of which helped the children see exactly what their loved ones would likely encounter while deployed.
