Frayed Nerves : Coping: The uncertainity of whether the country will go to war has been grinding away at military families, with the toll most visible among children.

The day-by-day countdown to war has created an emotional pressure cooker for families with relatives who have shipped out to the Persian Gulf.

For those families, watching as the United Nations’ deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait nears, the anxiety is spilling out in homes and schools.

At schools like San Diego’s Will Angier Elementary, where 85% of the students are from military families, students have erupted into more fights and outbursts of tears, principal Ted Janette said Monday.

Barrie Leonard, like other waiting spouses, hates to see the news--yet she cannot help but watch.

“It’s been hell; I really have been trying hard to keep positive, but I find the more I watch the news, the harder it gets,” said Leonard, a mother of two whose husband is deployed in the Middle East. “I am starting to wonder if he’s going to come back--I long for a phone call.”

The toll has been most visible among the children of military families.

One 10-year-old boy went to the counselor’s office at Will Angier on Monday and sat silently for 10 minutes. Then he burst into tears, explaining that his father was in the Persian Gulf. Last week, 10 parents asked for counselors for their children--about three times the usual number of such requests.

In the Sweetwater school district, a young girl went into the school psychologist’s office and began to cry, saying that the conflict in the Persian Gulf was discussed in all her classes and was the only topic that held her mother’s interest.

“All I want to do,” the girl told the therapist, “is get away from it, get life back to normal.”

For many families in San Diego, where 51,680 sailors and Marines have deployed to assist in Operation Desert Shield, life is not likely to be normal in the immediate future, experts say. And the uncertainty, which seems to pose such agony to families, is not about to erased today.

“Certainly, this is going to be a time of tremendous anxiety and apprehension,” said Bob Prinz, a school psychologist with Sweetwater School District who also has a private practice. “Let’s say nothing happens today, what about tomorrow? And the next day?”

In part, the uncertainty of whether the country will go to war has been grinding away at families. But the tension has been compounded by the countdown to Jan. 15.

“This is the first time we have really faced a countdown to a war. The trauma and tension it provoked is incredible--the hopes of a peaceful settlement have been raised and lowered,” said Kevin Walsh, professor of early childhood education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Walsh has held seminars for military families aimed at helping them cope with their stress. “People have gone through incredible emotional ups and downs. Now that reality has finally settled in, now they have to worry about when action is going to take place.”

At local schools, crisis intervention teams of counselors and therapists are standing ready. Monday, teachers at Will Angier Elementary School met to prepare for possible emotional problems in classrooms, where students may have to cope with the death of a parent.

“What do I do if the worst happens and I have students come in who may have lost their fathers?” one teacher asked. Be warm, loving and send the child to one of the counselors who would be available, she was told.

Most San Diego-area schools serving military families are not in session this week, a coincidence of scheduling. But, at schools in session, teachers are seeing the stress played out in the classroom as well as the playground.

The child may also feel responsible for the deployment of a parent, said Alison Hersche-Howard, a counselor with San Diego city schools. This irrational feeling springs from the child’s sense that they either caused the parent to be deployed or should be able to “fix it” by somehow bringing the parent home.