Soldiers' Children

Recently Jian Ghomeshi interviewed Murray Mclauchlan on ‘Q’ in regards to Murray’s new album. One of the things they talked about was that although Murray admired the courage of those Canadians willing to sacrifice their lives for principles in war, he still wasn’t in favour of war as a whole. This reminded me of an issue that gets very little play in our media: how children of serving soldiers are affected by their parents’ work.

In April 2007 the CBC had a news item that quoted Ontario’s Ombudsman (March investigation) as saying that “children are on the brink of suicide” at the Petawawa Military Base. The Ombudsman said that the number of children in need of counselling had increased ten-fold as a result of Canada’s ongoing mission in Afghanistan. Due to a lack of resources these children were waiting up to six months for treatment. In his press conference (you can read the transcript at http://www.ombudsman.on.ca/Files/sitemedia/Documents/Investigations/SORT%20Investigations/20070416_transcript_military.pdf). The Ombudsman (André Marin) mentioned a young girl who collapsed to the floor one day just because she was called to the principal’s office; she was sure she was about to be told that her father had been killed. Between September and November 2006 so many soldiers were killed that flags at Petawawa flew at half-mast for 49 days straight. Marin said that children were suffering from such conditions as attention deficit, low self-esteem, difficulty interacting with other children, and even suicidal tendencies. The Ombudsman was asked if the situation was as bad at other military bases. Though this was not part of his report, he said that he had checked into it and there were apparently not as great problems in getting services in other places.  Thankfully, as a result of the report and due to increased funding from the province, wait times were reduced to 4 to 6 weeks.

What I still haven’t heard, and can’t find is not so much what services there are and what the waiting lists are, but what the children of Canada’s military are dealing with on an ongoing basis and what effect that this has on them both in the short and long term.  Is anyone researching and studying this?

Imagine yourself at the age of 5 or 10 or 14 knowing that your father or mother is in Afghanistan (or any other place where mines are deployed, convoys attacked, etc.). Even if the rest of your family tries to protect you from the news, you can’t help but hear about attacks and people getting killed. Would you have nightmares, trouble sleeping, trouble eating, have stomach aches, want to hide in your house and not answer to telephone or the door? Whose responsibility is what we are doing to these children? Isn’t it first of all their parents – do they ever think about what their so called sacrifice is doing to their children? And of course, it is our government that is deciding to send soldiers to these places – what are they doing to support and help the families? Many in our society laud the sacrifice, the courage of the soldiers who go to help other countries to attempt to stabilize their societies. It’s time to think about the children of our soldiers and weigh the costs.