Keeping bonds strong with kids in military families

Watch Video: Keeping bonds strong with kids in military families by Catherine Mogil, PsyD, ...
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Keeping bonds strong with kids in military families

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One of the most important things for service members to remember as they're coming back home is that development has taken place. They're children have changed and that's a good thing. Coming home and expecting everything to be just the way it was is actually something you wouldn't want. You want your kids to have developed and grown up in your absence and so just remembering that and taking the time to know your child again. Maybe when you left they were 15 and now you're coming home and they're almost 17 and they're driving. That can be really hard for a parent to kind of catch up to that and become okay with their son driving, for example, or their daughter wearing makeup. But if they can take some time to understand that that's normal. That's normal development. Just really take that time to really get to know their child, where they're at now instead of thinking, really, where they used to be. The other thing that military service members can do when they come home -- I'm sorry, in advance of coming home --is that they can ask their kids to send them pictures or different, report cards or different reports or brochures that they've been in about graduations, for example, so that while they're gone they're keeping up with their child's development and even though they're not there for those developmental milestones, they're kind of aware of them and can celebrate them.
ALL PARENTS, Family Life

Watch Video: Keeping bonds strong with kids in military families by Catherine Mogil, PsyD, ...

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Catherine Mogil, PsyD

Family Trauma Therapist

Dr. Catherine E. Mogil is an assistant clinical professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and serves as the director of training and intervention development for the Nathanson Family Resilience Center and as the co-director of the Child and Family Trauma Service.

Dr. Mogil is also a consultant for the National Military Family Association's Operation Purple Family Retreats, the Uniformed Services University, and a special military project with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. Her recent research focuses on the effects of multiple deployments on military families, including the role of parental functioning on childhood mental health. Working with children of all developmental stages, Dr. Mogil has been involved in several intervention development and translational research projects that examine the efficacy of parent-assisted interventions for infants and toddlers in foster care, school-aged children with developmental disabilities, and adolescents with autism spectrum and other disorders.

Dr. Mogil is certified in parent-child interaction therapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, and leadership education in neurodevelopmental disabilities. She received her doctorate from Pepperdine University and completed her clinical internship at UCLA. Dr. Mogil also completed a postdoctoral fellowship specializing in the prevention and treatment of child and family traumatic stress at the University of Southern California and Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

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