Military Moms

I joined the Army when I was seventeen (mostly to get away from my mom – ha!). I spent five years in the Army before I decided it wasn’t for me. So, instead of getting out, I joined the Marines. Smart, right? Five years and a divorce later, I left the Marines to go to college. After ten years in the service, you would think I’d had enough, but the National Guard had this great scholarship program. So, I found myself a Weekend Warrior. Turns out the “weekend” part of that statement isn’t so true. I had my first two kids while I was still in the Corps and my last one while I was in the Guard. I found out a few things.

1. Military life before children is vastly different from military life after children. After you have kids, you lose all your friends and have to find new ones. You still live for payday, but for a completely different reason. Likewise, you still don’t get much sleep, but making yourself tired isn’t near as fun as it used to be!

2. Before you have children, you truly believe that applying the proper training techniques, dispensing praise or punishment when warranted, and establishing a routine for everyone to follow will quickly bring about the desired results in the behavior of your subordinates. (NOT!)

3. Military training is grueling and painful. However, after twenty hours of hard labor you finally understand the meaning of pain.

4. You may be the toughest woman to ever walk the Earth, you may be able to field strip a rifle in under thirty seconds, and you may be able to shoot a bird out of the sky at five hundred yards with an M-4. These skills do not qualify you to breast-feed, change a diaper, or properly bathe a wiggling newborn. God really does watch out for the helpless, because that’s the only reason my firstborn survived her first six weeks.

5. The military should make all new recruits spend three weeks walking the floor with a teething or croupy baby. Not only does it teach you how to deal with uncontrollable stress, but you realize that you can function with virtually no sleep for as long as it takes.

6. Most military wives do not like military women. For some reason, they think that the only reason we joined was to sleep with their husbands. However, after having two babies fourteen months apart, I wasn’t even sleeping with my husband much less one of theirs!

7. Soldiers and Marines never get to really know their kids. Their kids spend all day being raised by somebody else’s mom. And when it’s time to go to the field or on deployment, your husband is probably in the field or deployed, too. That’s when your mother-in-law or your sister moves in to raise your kids, because an imposition of that magnitude requires family!

8. Returning from war to your family is a lot harder than you might think. You’re nuts, the kids are nuts, even the dog is nuts!!! Trying to run your household in an orderly, military manner invokes mutiny and you’re right back in a combat zone. Throw the rulebook out the window and learn how to play again.It’s not all bad, though.

The military taught me several lessons that work very well, especially with older children. It seems like I always had someone who had a line for everything, and a lesson for everything, too. Their wisdom has helped me quite a bit in raising my children. Feel free to use these:

1. “I can’t make you do what I tell you to, but I can make you wish you had!” Normally, this statement was preceded by an episode of willful insubordination, not paying attention, not following instructions, or overstepping boundaries. This statement was also closely followed by a period of intense physical training. I have found that ten minutes of push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks in rapid succession works wonders with children over the age of five.

2. “That was a boneheaded decision. If you can’t make good decisions, then I’ll show you what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life.” Normally followed by a series of meaningless but time consuming janitorial, landscaping, and “site beautification” activities. Scrubbing toilets, cleaning and polishing floors, pulling weeds out of rock gardens, and painting rocks seemed to consume a lot of my time when I was a young Marine. I may have forgotten what I did to prompt my indentured servitude, but I finally learned the lesson. I had to modify this approach somewhat, but my kids can dismantle a toilet, clean all the parts, and put it back together. They are also experts at picking up pinecones and sticks, sweeping the driveway, trimming the grass between the cracks with toenail clippers, and moving bricks or dirt from one side of the yard to the other. Best of all, there are a myriad of age-appropriate activities you can use in conjunction with this statement.

3. “Privacy? You have no privacy! I own the air you breathe!!!” Start using this one early. My kids fully expect me to pilfer through their rooms and property at any time. It eliminates their ability to accuse you of snooping.

4. “That sounds like a personal problem to me. Do you really want me to get involved? Because nobody will be happy if I do. I suggest you settle it yourselves.” I’ve altered this statement a little, substituting “kid problem” for “personal problem”. If you’ve already instituted the practices listed in items #1 and #2, it nips tattling in the bud.

5. “Okay, if you think you can handle it I’ll give you enough rope to hang yourself. And when you’re out there swinging, I’ll be there to cut you loose."

6. “There’s a thin line between tough and stupid, and you just crossed it. Think you might recognize it next time?” This statement never needed any follow up, since I was either hurt or embarrassed and that was punishment enough. I haven’t had to use this with my daughter, but my sons are a different matter. I’ve used this one several times after skate boarding accidents, falling out of trees, etc. Works well as a reinforcement to the lesson learned.

While we were deployed to Iraq, my husband and I worked for a pretty interesting guy. He came up with several "rules for combat". It may sound strange, but some of those rules apply to raising kids, as well. Here are the rules that I think of when things get really hairy at home:

1. “Don’t be that guy.” You know that guy. He’s the one who stands out because he’s doing something really bizarre while everyone else is behaving. I have to remind myself of this rule quite often.

2. “Don’t make fun of another unit’s idiot soldier doing stupid stuff; as soon as you do, your soldier is seen by the Brigade Commander doing stupid stuff.” Translation for moms who don’t fit in: Don’t make fun of some other kid’s behavior. As soon as you do, your kid is caught by the principal or the preacher doing something stupid or embarrassing.

3. “Everything relates to Pulp Fiction.”
a. “Normally you’d be dead as fried chicken right now.”
b. “It’s a little early in the morning for explosions and war.”
c. “If my answers frighten you, then you need to quit asking scary questions.”

4. “You can’t fall asleep when you want to, and you can’t stay awake when you need to.” (This is so true.)

5. “The guy waving at you today will be shooting at you tomorrow.” Translation for moms who don’t fit in: That “Stepford Mom” who is being so nice to your face will be gossiping about you as soon as you leave.

6. “If a soldier has done something stupid or illegal, someone has a picture of it.” Change “soldier” to “your kid”, and you have the translation.

Needless to say, military moms do things a little differently than other moms. We do things differently, think about things differently, and deal with things differently. We’re weird. We laugh in the midst of tragedy because laughing keeps us from crying. When we can’t laugh, we don’t call on our family or friends to cry. We find a place to hide and cry alone. We don’t understand most women, and we don’t want to be just like they are. However, we are exactly the same as all the other moms out there in at least one respect – we love our children just as fiercely and just as wholeheartedly as anyone else.