Pick a day, any day—and make it special. If your child is having a rough time with your spouse’s deployment, turn an ordinary afternoon around by ditching the usual afterschool activities and going out for ice cream, painting your own pottery, or hanging out at the park. Assure relatives who want to help that it’s not hard to be a hero: in our case, my brother simply got down on the floor and wrestled with my son for hours—since during my husband’s deployment there were no men in the house for my son to wrestle with, and he missed it. I was grateful to my brother for doing “guy things” with my boy, who got the benefit of connecting with a male role model. My brother basked in the glow of being a hero, and knew he had done something good for people he cared for.