The Hidden Costs of Caregiving: Meet the Kids Taking Care of Wounded Veterans
More than 2 million kids live with a disabled veteran at home. Calls are growing to extend more support to these ‘hidden helpers.’
March 20, 2025| Jennifer Brookland
It was horrifying every time it happened, every time Kylie Briest’s father choked on his food and started to turn blue, every time her mom, Jenny, sprang out of her own dinner chair to attempt the Heimlich maneuver on her husband.
Kylie lost count of the number of times she’d called 911, making quick explanations to the operator while her mind was spinning in the background: wondering if her dad would survive this night, hoping the neighbors were home so she could send her little brother, Connor, over. That way Kylie could shield him from the things she had to see, and do, and wonder.
Kylie was only 3 when a roadside bomb in Iraq left her father, Corey, with injuries so severe they told Jenny to plan his funeral. So this version of him—the version that can’t always swallow properly, or see, or walk on his own, or speak clearly—is all she’s known.
She’s grown up at his bedside, from the time she was a toddler helping the nurses add Daddy’s medication to his feeding tube to helping carry his wheelchair up the stairs of her sorority house at the University of South Dakota so he wouldn’t miss out on parent visitation day.
https://thewarhorse.org/kids-caring-for-wounded-veteran-family-members-receive-little-support/
