A commercial came on (which is a rare event in our house-usually the boy is only allowed to watch movies or dvr'd TV and I never have time to watch TV live) and the boy's reaction took me by surprise. He was watching Beauty and The Beast live on the Disney Channel. The commercial was for the Joining Forces Campaign with the first lady and a couple Disney stars-I have no idea who they are...some teeny bopper boy band or Hannah Montana actors-is that even still on?-I'm not sure but thankfully we're not at that stage yet so I don't have to know such things.
I tried to find a youtube clip of the commercial so you could see it but I couldn't find it. Most of the commercial was the two young Disney stars talking about what it's like to grow up in a military family...the good and some of the bad. Mrs. Obama then made her plea to go to the White House's Joining Forces website.
Anyway, the boy was glued to the TV and I could see the wheels turning so when the commercial ended, I paused the TV and waited for him to say whatever it was that he needed to say.
Boy: "I don't like that."
Me: "Ok...what don't you like?"
Boy: "Their Daddy was gone."
Me: "Yes. Their Daddy was a soldier like your Daddy. They're a military family and sometimes military families like us have to be away from each other."
Boy: "I don't want to do that anymore."
Me: "Me neither little man. What would make you feel better?"
Boy: "Popcorn chicken."
Me: "That I can do."
So that's what we did. Sometimes I think I forget how hard this is on the boy because he's handled it so well. It's easy to mistake his ability to deal with the deployment as him being ok with the deployment. Other times I think I delude myself into believing he doesn't understand it when I know even without days like today that he understands it better than I do sometimes. He knew what would make him feel better and he let it work. We had popcorn chicken and now, he's scaring off an imaginary dinosaur from attacking his sister.
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