Encouraged and for us to remember our roots. Ultimately i was asked to become a moderator. That started a series of 14 years of me advising encouraging and supporting Naval Academy parents. Through this time i had two more children who decided to apply and ultimately attend the Naval Academy. So as the years went by not only did i am children at the Naval Academy, now i have been on active duty. So parents kept saying they 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, lost his pension he ended up working for an airline in afghanistan. I followed him and taught for here in afghanistan so had his unique perspective of being a mother who have 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 to the Naval Academy but through army rotc. Now i have four children all serving. I had been in the war zone. When i came back people kept saying you need to write this done. At first i thought i would just write it down for my family. So i did, and apparently some lesser said they need to do more than that with this. He contacted the publisher and the result is be safe, love mom. Host so three go to the Naval Academy, one goes to the university of north dakota. They are all serving in different branches of the service. How did that come about . Guest when you go to the Naval Academy you can select either the navy or the marine corps. There are limited number of opportunities to Cross Commission. My daughter ended up going 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 aforesaid different standards. She had been an exchange at the air force academy. She was interested in space and so she was allowed to make that Cross Commission. So it was a total fluke that we ended up with the children in every branch. It was never intentional, but its 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 what this book . Guest my first audience is military moms. I say i speak for the moms and dads. I get these emails from dad sang what about us . I know that you care just as deeply about your children, but my first audience is moms that they know they are not alone that they can be encouraged and inspired and we can share information. In my website thats what im trying to do is build a community where moms can come and be supportive and find inspiration. Because we dont get Family Readiness briefings. We dont live on post or on a base. We dont 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 do realize that its not the same as sending her children off to college. There are a lot of differences. So i just want you to understand that there are people around who are carrying a heavier burden than it may appear. But its what we do and we took lastly because we love our country, but it still is a heavy burden. So i have two audiences i hope. Host now, you grew up in a military family. Your father served in the army i believe he went to vietnam. You write a little bit about your experience at a military child with your father deploying. Talk about that a bit. Guest im the oldest of seven and in the 17 times. I went to 12 different schools the my father was in the army signal 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 an Honorable Discharge because in those days you can have a child and a woman in the military. And so my fathers first tour of vietnam he was an advisor and i was eight years old. I did have a concept of what that meant accept halfway through was when it was there too, the military took over the government and we started sending in troops. So things change very rapidly from then on. It was very difficult. I hear a lot of controversy about should troops be thanked and im like yes troops need to be thanked. Everyone needs to be thanked because i grew up where i had to defend my father. And even when i was in rotc in the late 70s on the campus of Arizona State university, i was harassed. I was catcalls and i was spit at when i would wear my rotc uniform. I dont ever want to go back to those days we and feeling like you needed to apologize and defend your parent jesse lewis calling them a baby killer. 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 for 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. And i really treasure that. I treasure the people. Net because you dont have to waste time trying to fit in. Everybody is ready to make a friend because we are all so 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 they married somebody who was in the air force but he got out and then you moved 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 long extended period of time to me is very frightening. So here youre going to ratio children in one place or their entire, most of their childhoods. Talk about that transition. Guest i thought thats what i wanted. I thought it wanted to know what it felt like to it felt like the people do have stuff pilot in up in my basement and i have to pack one box of my special things every time we moved. It is a part of that that is very comforting, and they i know who my mechanic is and i know who my doctor is but i get in trouble all the time because i dont wave when people drive by. We live in a place where you dont expect them to anybody come you are not looking in anybodys car. But when you live in small town america, Everybody Knows everybody. But the joke is to come into my house in the dark because i do miss moving and i do miss being in new places. And so one of the ways i would cope with it is up with new furniture. Im not talking about moving just the couch in a different corner. I might turn the living room into the dining room into the bedroom around. So my husband would come in late at night and he wouldnt even of which room to go to. Thats always a running joke but there are parts of it that are wonderful and there are parts of it that you feel like a dandelion that is assembled for a brat you know 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 you first signed talked about joining the navy. Guest one of the things we did, we live in an area that is not predominantly military at all. Very few people are in the military, but we had my dad who was, we spent we were very fortunate because my husband flew for an airline so we would travel to visit them a lot. They hurt the family stories. We would come to d. C. A lot. We had a Family Tradition to come to the memorial day concert ever you. We did that probably for eight years to come and when the Service Songs would like they would stand up for grandpa and stand up for dad. So we made sure that they knew their family legacy of service and that this is 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. Because we felt like that was preparation for life. If you can follow through and be responsible, work hard and indoor discomfort, there isnt a whole lot that can be thrown at you that you cant have the. They learned how to build a. They learned how to feed the animals before they were allowed to eat. 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. We had him prepared. But 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 like wait a minute hes going to go into the air force. I was in the air force. But he just had that dream and that vision, and so as he got older we visited the academys. 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 ive grown up in the military and i understood it and i respected it 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 until that point, had you been involved i know there are social media ipod, had argued been contacting Naval Academy parents up until that point, or were you aware of this sort of great big Parents Group that is out there . Guest back in the day there was there was no facebook at the appointed time. Your child had an appointment you could participate. So its probably april and the kind of questions you asked were what do they need to bring ask what color tennis shoes do they need . All that that when youre a parent are special to him on the feel like youre in control because youre making sure they have everything they need. Thats part of the reality of ones 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 because 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 got. They are hacked with with machetes and now it was up to him. He was going to sink or swim based on his passion and his ability to survive. And that was, it was an immediate hes out of the nest moment. Host how much of a handson parent were you prior . I mean, would you describe yourself as a helicopter mom . Guest no. I call myself an eagle mom. We did a lot of things to have them be independent and to help them soar. And so i come we didnt run interference for them when they had difficulties. It was like okay you signed up for this. You are not quitting the team. You need to work it out. You need to show the coach what you can do. Anything they were excited about or passionate about, i was there for them. I was driving them theyre all involved in different sports. They did community theater. Katrina decided when she was 13 she wanted to climb the mount everest. I found an expedition that she could earn money. She and my husband joined an expedition and when she was 16 height cannot efforts for less than one would cost to take her family to assist lamp disneyland. She raised the money or so. So i was that kind supportive if thats what you want to do lets go forward 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 when i think of the helicopter. No its trying to smooth away instead of letting people fight their battle. Because thats how i knew and thats how i still know they are okay. Because i know they can fight these, whatever obstacles come in their path, i know they have the interval skills to handle it. Now, do i like sometimes feel like im standing on the sidelines biting my fingernails you know, 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 my come and my husband goal was creating an environment where independence and hard work is going to pay off. And 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 fellow navy Academy Parents as i say, a helicopter parent, you create helicopter parents when you dont give people enough information. Support of michael is to give them information about what to expect. Because when i know what to expect then i can relax and ease off and they 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 boils down to i mean, sometimes its once every two months, especially when they are deployed. I dont expect to hear from them every day or you know. Im grateful, im grateful for secondhand is from their spouses. But when i know that all i need to know is its okay then i back off. Host so its not so much a howto parenting book but it is sort of a how to navigate this new world and culture that is the military. You have a background being in a military family. You probably encounter everyday people think it is completely a foreign country. Talk about all of it about the unique culture that is the military family. And how sort of hard it is to convey to bring your parents brandnew people whose kids just enlisted or went to the Naval Academy of west point you know, how do you sort of help them navigate disney world . Guest i do a series, and now have a Facebook Page when i also write. I did a series called thats pretty much basic truth. For example, in a military rules are rules. Rules are not made to be broken. I used to teach energy not in High School Environment and most of my students there are not used to that kind of environment where a rule means its the rule so for example, i grew up only walking on sidewalks, never walking on the grass. Thats just Second Nature to me. That was part of military order and discipline. So the first thing is to explain the concept of military order and discipline, that whether you think its a stupid rule or not or whether you want to express her individuality or whatever, there is a reason why we need uniformity. Theres a reason why we need a chain of command, and there is a reason why we need to follow that for good order and discipline to end every military unit in the world has to that that basis. So explaining to parents it doesnt matter if they think upperclass a 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 theyre supposed to do when they are told to do it. Its just basic truth. People who didnt grow up in a military, many times dont have the confidence in the institution that i have growing up in it. Because as you get older and you look back you see a reason, a method in all the madness, you know, why should people be trained to behave this way. Because there are times when its critical that they need to follow procedures. And i go back my son now flies. My husband flies the 767. They have procedures that they had to follow in the event of emergency. To the letter, in order to keep everyone on board or keep themselves safe. Its the same thing. So many things that they do in the military are with Nuclear Weapons or they have men and women in their command 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 when theyre in a training environment, is what they going to be doing three years, four years, 10 years from now . If they are trying to be officers they are going to be responsible for other people potentially and lifeanddeath situations. Its important for them to be pushed, to know that they can perform even the most difficult circumstances. So thats why the screen. Thats why they do these things that seem ridiculous. It does they need to know that they can be unemotional and a time when most people would meltdown. And so as we go through these different phases then we get to the heart is the hardest one of all, which is you have absolute no control over anything from now on. You can council. You can give advice, but if they have a medical problem, the military is going to take care of it. 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 a great relief, wow, my job is over. You dont . You just guest 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 to worry about. I have enough other things i need to worry about, but for many new parents that come our when their son or daughter hits a bump in the road and they get a phone call or text message that says, you know this guy is doing is were whatever, and its just like when they went on the bus for the first time. What do you want to do . You want to get in there and fix it, educate people. You cant because its not appropriate. Its what they need to take care of. And so that is one of the hardest parts. And i think also coincides with time for a lot of women when the nest is starting to empty and then we start to redefine who we are. You know our role as mother changes. I think parenting adults, because you still. No your parents are still parenting you if theyre still alive. Its really hard. There is a way to expect when youre expecting for parentin