Brave While Waiting

A Deployment Workbook for Military Children

Waiting for someone you love to come home can feel really big when you're little.

Deployment can bring a lot of feelings for a child - sadness, worry, confusion, pride, excitement, loneliness, and sometimes all of them at once. Brave While Waiting was created to give military children a gentle place to understand those feelings while staying connected to the parent they miss.

This 32-page interactive workbook uses simple, child-friendly language, creative activities, calming tools, games, drawing, and reflection to help make deployment feel a little easier to understand.

Children can explore what deployment means, identify how they're feeling, discover ways to feel close to their deployed parent, build their own "brave plan," practice calming strategies, create messages and memories, plan special connection ideas, and prepare for the day their parent comes home.

Inside, children will find activities such as Brave Words Word Search, Deployment Day Bingo, 5-4-3-2-1 Calm Down, Brave Breathing, My Hard Day Plan, My Small Brave Steps, connection activities, drawing pages, reunion reflection, and more.

The workbook also includes an A Note for Grownups section to help parents and caregivers support children through separation and a special Certificate of Bravery to celebrate everything they accomplished while waiting.

Brave While Waiting isn't about pretending deployment isn't hard. It's about helping children understand that they can miss their parent, have hard days, feel big feelings, and still be incredibly brave.

Digital PDF | 32 Pages