Everytime Rod calls and Ethan talks to him, after he gets off the phone he starts acting out BIGTIME. Both my mom and I noticed a total change in his behavior after the fact.

I am at a loss on what to do. Obviously I want them to talk to one another but man does he become very bad after he does talk to him. He acts out, disobeys, tests me etc. Any ideas?

Tandis is really bad about that. :( He will act out for a full 24 hours. Kicking the dog, throwing things, short tempered, whiny, clingy. It's hard to deal with. He also bit me today after I took the phone away from him to talk to my husband again. It's heartbreaking. Nothing seems to help him, but he does calm down for some cuddle time. We have juice and animal crackers while he sits on my lap with a blanket to cuddle and watch his Elmo dvd together.

Yeah this is normal..it is their way of showing the frustration and the stress... I would allow your youngen to have a bit of say but talk to them and try to give them words to describe how they feel try to make a routine after the phone call so that the behavior outburst can be controlled! Good luck, but this is SOOOOO normal!

I have 4 kids and everytime my husband calls or we use the webcam the kids always fight. It drives me nuts. He laughs and says it sounds like nothings change dhere. I think he is glad he doesn't have to deal with it. I tell him that when he gets back I am going away so he can deal with for months.LOL
As far as your little one keep trying new things to calm him down. A bath,drawing,making a video or maybe just acting silly together. Laugh, its okay to have some fun without daddy.

We didn't have children while DF was deployed, but. From what I've seen/heard, this is very normal. A way to deal with daddy being gone. Hang in there. :hugs

Its sad really. He doesnt ask about him etc. I show him pics and he gets excited and he talks to the camera when I videotape him for Rod. But otherwise he really doesnt ask for him at all. But he does act out when he calls. So I guess thats just his own way of dealing....

My daughter does the same thing.

It's really heartbreaking since they don't fully understand.

i have noticed that Caden does this too. i think he is truly worried about Dan, even though he's only 4 yrs old. kids get anxiety/depression just like we do. it happened last week when Dan called Caden on his birthday... i thought he'd be excited to hear from him, but he was a complete brat. at bedtime that night we had a long talk about Dan and i reassured him that he is going to come home and that next year he IS going to be at his birthday party. i think it made him feel better that he knew that i understood why he's upset.

and the other day i bought him a pack of those little army guys, the dark green plastic ones. he LOVED them! and i caught him pretending to be Dan and playing with them in his own little war scenerio. it was cute!