I expected my children to be ecstatic when we put on a recording my husband sent form 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. This is how the program works: The deployed servicemember visits a USO center, 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 sending us a special DVD, and 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 children — ages 1 ½ and 2 ½— got tired and moved around looking for something new to 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?”
“I am not sure what you mean sweetie — this is daddy,” I answered. “He recorded a video, and sent it to us. It’s your daddy.”

My daughter became more frustrated with this answer and proclaimed, “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.”

“Is the real one coming back?” She asked with tears streaming down her tiny face.

I thought her confusion conveyed how tough it is for young children to understand interactive image versus a recording, and the feelings associated with deployments, such as separation, fear of abandonment and resentment.

As parents it’s important to acknowledge their feelings and the sacrifices they make. April is the month of the Military Child and it’s a great reminder of how precious our little ones are.

I can relate to my daughter’s frustration with technology. I tried to upload some videos to my website, not only for my work, but also in the hopes that my husband and family overseas would enjoy seeing them. I had to resort to a professional when at 2:00 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.