And now after words on booktv. Elaine lowry brye the mother of four military officers talks about what families go through during times of deployment. She discusses her book be safe love mom with Patricia Kime senior military writer for military times. Host welcome. I am here with Elaine Lowry Brye to discuss her new book be safe, love mom a military moms stories of courage, comfort and surviving life on the homefront. Welcome to washington. Guest thank you so much and thank you so much are being here to talk with me about it. Host tell me a bit about your book. Guest i never intended to write a book. What happened was in 2001 my oldest son headed off to the Naval Academy and at that time there was a place where parents could communicate with each other and engage in just kind of connect and so i began posting on that listserv. Along came 9 11 and everything changed. My son had gone to Peacetime Navy and within a few short hours everything changed. So i began to write more. I would write about being encouraged and for us to remember our roots. Ultimately i was asked to become a so that started a series of 14 years of advising encouraging and supporting naval parents. Through that time i had two more children who decided to ultimately attend the Naval Academy. So as the years went by not only did i have children at the Naval Academy, now i have them on active duty. And so parents kept saying you need to write this all down in the book. You need to write this all down and as our life continued in its twists and turns my husband after his airline declared bankruptcy and he lost his pension he ended up working for an airline in afghanistan. I followed him in top for a year in afghanistan so i have this unique perspective of being a mom who had had children deployed to afghanistan and now i was there in kabul at the same time our youngest son the rebel, decided to join the military not be the Naval Academy but the army rotc. Now i have four children all serving. I had been in there were some and when i came back people kept saying you need to write this down. At first i thought i will just write it down for my family. So i did and apparent from the listserv said you need to do more than that with this and he contacted the publisher and the result is be safe, love mom. Host you had three go to the Naval Academy in and one goes to the university of north dakota and his army rotc. They are all serving in different branches of the service. How did that come about . Guess that when you go to the Naval Academy you can select the navy or the marine corps in their limited number of activities. My daughter ended up cross commissioning to the air force primarily because she wanted to try and fly and she had a medical condition that precluded her from doing that in the navy. The air force had different standards. She had done an exchange at the air force academy. She was also interested in space so she was allowed to make them across commission. So it was a total fluke that we ended up with children in every branch. It was never intentional. But you know the kind of fits with each of their passions and what they wanted to do and the active duty military service. Host who do you feel your audience is for this book . Guest my first audience is military moms. I say that i speak for the moms and dads. I get these emails from dad saying well what about us . I say well i know you care just as deeply about your children but my first audience is moms. They now that they are not alone, that they can be encouraged and inspired and we can share information ended my web site that is what im trying to do is build a community where moms can come and be supportive and find information. Because we dont get Family Readiness briefings. We dont live on a base. We dont give that support get that support that comes from the traditional military. Thats my first audience. My second audience is the Greater Community to say i want you to understand what this is like. I want you to realize that its not the same as sending your children off to college. There are a lot of differences, so i just want you to understand that there are people around you that are caring and heavy burden that may appear. Its what we do and we do it gladly because we love our country but it still is a heavy burden. So i have to audience is i hope. Host now you grew up in a military family. Your father served in the army i believe and went to vietnam. You write a little bit about your experience as a military child with your father deploying. Talk about that a bit. Guest i am the oldest of seven and i moved 17 times. I went to 12 different schools and my father was than they army corps. He met my mother when she was in the army as well so i joke about my First Military duty was giving my mother and honorable to charge because in those days you could have a child and be a woman in the military. My fathers first tour in vietnam, he was an adviser and i was eight years old. I really didnt have a concept of what that meant except halfway through was when there was the coup, the military took over the government and we started sending in troops. So things change very rapidly from then on. It was very difficult. At a hear a lot of controversy now about should troops be thanked and im like yes troops need to be thanked. Everyone needs to be thanked because i grew up were ahead to defend my father. Even when i was in rotc in the late 70s on the campus of Arizona State university i was harassed. I was cap called and i was spit at when i would wear my rotc uniform. I dont ever want to go back to those days when feeling like you needed to apologize and defend your parents because someone was calling you and that happened to me. So now as i look at the way this current generation of troops are being valued, its very heartwarming to me as a mother. I think its a great thing but i had six younger brothers and sisters. Some of them really struggled with the constant moving and it was a very difficult time. On the other hand there is no place where i feel more at home than on a base or a post. And there was a connection between our family that was so tight because no matter where we were we had each other. Maybe not my dad but we had our siblings and our mom. I really treasure that. I treasure the people that i met because you dont have to waste time trying to fit in. Everybody is ready to make a friend because we are also transient. So that part of military life was really continues to be very special to me. Host i find it interesting that you grew up in that environment and married somebody who was in the air force buddy got out and then you move to a small town in ohio, a farm in ohio. As a Military Spouse myself the whole concept of actually living in one place for a long extended period of time to me is very frightening. So here you are going to raise your children in one place for their entire most of their childhoods. Talk about that transition. Guest i thought thats what i wanted. I thought i wanted to know what it felt like to be able to have stuff pile up in my basement and not have to pack one box of my special things every time we moved. And there is a part of that that is very comforting and i know who my mechanic is and i know whom i doctor is that i didnt travel all the time. I dont way when people drive by. When you live in a place where you dont expect to know anybody you are not looking at anybodys carpet when youve carpet when you live in small town america Everybody Knows everybody. But the joke is dont come to my house in the dark because i do miss moving and i do miss being in new places. So one of the ways i would cope with that is i would move furniture. Im not talking about moving just the couch. I might turn the living room to the dining room and move the bedroom around. My husband to come home late at night and he wouldnt even know which room to go to. Thats always a running joke that there are parts of it that are just wonderful and there are parts of it that i do feel like that dandelion that is a symbol for a brat. Im ready to fly on and be in a new environment. Host how did that experience of growing up on a farm in ohio influence your children to go into the service if it did, and tell me a little bit about what you thought when your first son talked about joining the navy. Guests know one of the things we did we lived in an area that is not predominantly military at all. Very few people in the military but we had my dad. We were very fortunate because my husband flew for an airline so we would travel to visit him a lot. They heard family stories. We would come to d. C. A lot. We had a Family Tradition to come to the memorial day concert every year. We did that probably for eight years and when the Service Songs would play they would stand up for dad so we made sure that they knew their family legacy of service and this was something to be valued so they were exposed to that. At the same time my husband wanted them to learn how to work hard and be uncomfortable. He felt like i was preparation for life. If you can follow through and be responsible, work hard and endure discomfort there isnt a whole lot that you cant handle. They learn how to bale hay and how to feed the animals before they were allowed to be back, all these things so ultimately when eric spent his first summer at the Naval Academy one of the letters we got home was this is a lot easier than being at home bailing hay. So we thought, we succeeded to him prepared that we knew from the time he was a very little boy he wanted to be top gun. My brotherinlaw was a Navy Recruiter and we would get boxes of posters and airplane pictures. My husband was it was like wait a minute hes going into the air force. But he just had that dream and that vision and so as he got older we visited the academies. We looked at different options. And because he knew he wanted to be a military pilot. So when he was accepted to the Naval Academy i was so excited and proud of him because he was realizing the beginning of his dream. There was a lot more to happen before he would get his wings. And at the same time it wasnt until that very first day induction day, even though i had grown up in the military and i understood it and i respected as an institution that first day all of a sudden it hit me that this was going to be totally different than any other military Family Experience that i had had up to that point. Host and you up in 2000 that point had been involved i know baerga serves and we have social media. Have you been contacting Naval Academy parents up until that point or were you aware of this great big Parents Group that is out there . Guest back in the day there was no facebook at that point in time. We have a listserv and once your child had an appointment he could participate. So it was probably april and the kind of questions you asked were you know, what do they need to bring and what color tennis shoes today need, all that minutia that when you are a parent or especially a mom you feel like you are in control he could you are making sure they have everything they need. Thats part of the reality of once they hit that door there is nothing else that i can do that is going to prepare them anymore than i already have and now its up to them. That was for me very difficult to close i wanted to be able to do everything that i needed to do for them to be successful but the Apron Strings were cut. I say theyre not just cut, they are hacked with a machete and now it was up to him. He was going to sink or swim based on his passion and his ability to survive. And it was an immediate hes out of the nest moment. Host how much of a handson pair were you prior . Would you describe yourself as a helicopter mom . Guest no. We did a lot of things to have them be independent and to help them soar. So we didnt run interference for them when they had difficulties. It was like okay you signed up for this, you are not putting the team. You need to work it out. You need to show the coach we can do. Anything that they were excited about are passionate about i was there for them. I was driving down. They were all involved in different sports. They did community theater. Katrina decided when she was 13 she wanted to climb mt. Everest. I found an expedition that she could earn money. She and my husband joined an expedition where 16 hiked to mt. Everest for mt. Everest everest or less at no cost to take the family to disneyland. She raised the money herself so i was that kind of supportive if thats what you want to do lets go for it but i did not fight battles for them. I did not use my connections to help them improve their lot in life. My husband didnt coach so they could get a better spot on the team and thats the perception that one i think of a helicopter parent is trying to smooth the way instead of letting people fight their battle, because thats how a new and thats how i still know that they are okay. Because i know they can fight these whatever obstacle comes in their path i know they have the internal skills to handle it. Now do i sometimes feel like i am standing on the sidelines biting my fingernails and cheering them on . Of course but i need to have confidence that they are prepared for what is in front of them. So that was and my husbands goal was creating an environment where independent some hard work is going to pay off. Sometimes it wasnt there. Sometimes things happen where i really wanted to get more involved but i held myself back because that wasnt going to help them. So now what i tell Naval Academy parents is i say a helicopter parent, you create helicopter parent when you dont give people enough information. Part of my goal is to give them information about what to expect expect. One i know what to expect then i can relax and ease off and i dont need to be hovering. I say the same thing to my grandchildren. If you dont want me hovering just give me some crumbs of information. I just need to know youre okay. If you tell me you are okay then i dont need to hover and now it oils down to, sometimes its once every two months especially when they are deployed. I dont expect to hear from them every day. Im grateful for secondhand news from their spouses. But when i know that i know this is okay and then i back off. Host its not so much a howto parenting book but it was a how to navigate this new world and culture that is the military. You had a background in being in the military family. He probably encounter every day people that think its completely a foreign country. Talk about the unique culture that is the military family and how hard it is to convey to brandnew parents, people whose kids just enlisted or went to the Naval Academy or west point how do you help them navigate this new world . Guest i did a series and we have a Facebook Page where i also write. I do a series for new Naval Academy parents but its pretty much basic truth. For example, in the military rules are not made to be broke in. I used to teach in a junior high and High School Environment and most of my students arent used to that kind of environment where a rule means that their world. For example i grew up only walking on sidewalks and never walk in on the grass. Thats just Second Nature to me. That was part of the military order and discipline so the first thing is to explain that concept of military order and discipline. Where do you think its a stupid rule are not or whether you want to express your individuality or whatever theres a reason why we need conformity. Theres a reason we need a chain of command and a reason why we need to follow that for good order and discipline. Every military unit in the world has to have that basis. So explaining to parents doesnt matter if they think its stupid, they still need to do what they say because they are modeling behavior that later on in a time of war or a difficult time they need to be able to count on people doing what they are supposed to do when they are told to do it. Its just the basic truth. People who didnt grow up in the military many times dont have the confidence in the institution that i had growing up in it because as you get older and you look back you see a method and all the madness. Why should people be trained to behave this way because there are times when its critical that they need to follow procedures. I go back to my son now flies in date and my husband flies a 767. They have procedures that they have to follow in the event of an emergency to the letter in order to keep everyone on board and keep themselves safe. Its the same thing. So many things they do in the military are with Nuclear Weapons or they have men and women in their community that they are responsible for. Theres a reason why you need to follow the rules and follow procedures. And so it begins with that. The second part especially specially when they are in a training environment is what are they going to be doing three years, four years, 10 years from now . Of fair trading to be officers they will be responsible for people potentially life or death situations. Its important for them to be pushed to know that they can perform even the most difficult circumstances. So thats why they screen. Thats why they do these things that seem ridiculous because they need to know that they can be unemotional in a time when most people would meltdown. So as we go through these different phases then we get to the heart is one of all which is you have absolutely no control over anything. You can counsel, you can give advice but if they have a medical problem the military is going to take care of them. If they have a leadership problem, they need to go through the chain of command to take care of the situation they are dealing with. And that is probably the most difficult part of all of it is you cant call the counselor. Host i would see that as wow my job is over. Just go well, you dont. I do now. In the very beginning the first time i went through it it was a shock. Now i am relieved i dont have that to worry about. I have enough other things i need to worry about that for many new parents or when their son or daughter hit