David H. Lipp/DoD

A U.S. Army officer holds the hand of his son upon his return from deployment.

Kids who grow up in military families can have a hard time. They usually move over and over again and they have to deal with having a parent leave for multiple deployments.

Rudy and Mia De La Rosa thought they were helping their two daughters, Juliet and Samantha, cope with those stresses when they sought counseling for them as teenagers. But they ended up preventing them both from following their father, grandfather and great-grandfather into military service.

Karen Jowers, a senior reporter with the Military Times, found that the Department of Defense has a policy of merging dependent and new service member health records so that, unlike their civilian counterparts, the military had access to the De La Rosa daughters’ medical history when they enlisted.

The Show spoke with Jowers about what that policy could mean for other U.S. military families going forward and what happened after the De La Rosa daughters got counseling as young teenagers.