They announced this week that they were going to keep my husband longer in Iraq. BUT their is still a catch 22 going ... I was told 4 extra months, so far they have not announced that. Call it they want individuals to calm down or that they want families to calm down.
But facing the truth the best way to do this. You do not tell a group one time & know that you will be adding an extra month to it. That's gonna anger them even more ...

Supposidly there was a "leak" on this matter. Honestly, they only "leak" that should have happened was them notifying all families, but some decided to keep it to themselves. They reason they did not announce it, money. "Would they get this money or not?" Who really cares, we all want them to come back, We all deserve to know the truth on this matter ... you could have announced it without mentioning the anything financial. That would have prepared them.
In the end, you could have dealt with that when it happened. You should have getting individuals in there for the families & especially the kids. Someone they know will be there & know will help ... bring them to that group & get them talking. Once you do that, it will help ... it will give them something more to consider.

Instead, we watched a wife crying on the news. Talking about this or that death in front of her children. That is not exactly what should have happened ... not for those children.
Today, a few days after all this has occured ... my children are doing fine. Because I had time to get them adjusted & time to deal with it myself. I knew last month, so I was able to deal with this myself & once I had I was able to sit my children down. Once we did that, we were able to talk & discuss this, to get over the angry, and shock. So when they did that horrid announcement, my children were prepared.
That is the only thing I want for my kids, to be prepared & to know ... so they can deal with it in all ways. Children are acceptable to angry, shock, disappointment, sadness & everything that goes with it. Between them & my husband, those are my main concerns. To get this done & make it though this deployment.

After that we will work on recovering from the deployment ... it's just going to be a few more months longer than we expected.