When your "daughter" starts saying she wants to join the **MILITARY**?? What do you do?

@hannuhylu: DH and I are two years further along on this road than you. Our son went to an elite prep school with a fully funded 529 and Ivy-level stats. Our jaws hit the floor when he told us just prior to junior year that he would be applying to service academies as his first choices. We were NOT a military family (guess we are now), and I have to say that I still tend to side more with the comments of “not my child,” but I would also say “not yours or anyone else’s either” as I just don’t get the attraction, and who is OK with putting their child in harm’s way? Don’t kid yourselves; all military personnel face that risk. Anyway, our son was the only student in his class to pursue this path, and his GC just shook her head every time we talked. As did just about everyone else. What the heck was he thinking?

But here’s the thing. Our son eventually turned 18, and there wasn’t a dam n thing we could do about it. Yes, he’s at an academy training to be an officer rather than enlisted, but he is still in the army, still in the military, still subject to the commitment and service requirements, and still facing that pesky potential for making the ultimate sacrifice during a time when the world is not getting any safer. We tried like heck to talk him out of it. It seems like all we did is talk. We probed every aspect of service we could think of with him to make sure he understood what he was getting into – as much as could be understood before the fact. Some of our questions included:

Do you understand how long the commitment is?

Do you understand that you will not be calling the shots?

Do you understand that the Army/Navy will use you where it sees fit, based on its needs, not yours?

Do you understand what an order is and its ramifications?

What is your understanding of “service?”

Whom are you serving?

Where do you see yourself in service?

Do you understand what you might be giving up?

Are you willing to go this alone with no application support from us?

Do you understand the term “ultimate sacrifice?”

Are you willing to make it?

Are there any conditions or circumstances under which you would not make it?

Do you know how much we love you?

His answers were thoughtful and deep and showed us that he had been thinking about this path for a very long time before he mustered the courage to bring it up with us. This was no overnight whim as it seems your daughter’s might be. I’m with the posters who encourage you to talk to your daughter about the level of commitment she would be making and all the consequences of that commitment. Keep an honest dialog going. Listen to her answers. Try to see where this is coming from. Continue to probe. I say we tried to talk our son out of this madness, but we did it respectfully out of love and concern; we did not attack him or badmouth the military. We just tried to get him to see the magnitude of a decision to follow this path. Instead, he helped us to see that he was giving breath to a basic principle upon which he was raised: To him whom much as been given, much is expected. We talked to him about all the other ways he could give back, but serving in the military just felt deeply right to him. Eventually, we ran out of unanswered objections and there was nothing left but hugs and respect.

When that appointment came, we were neither happy nor proud but, as I said, he was 18 when the envelope arrived, so we bit our tongues, held back our tears, and buckled up for the long ride. He has two more years at the academy before he commissions, and he hasn’t wavered. Today I can say that although we still worry about his future and the military seems no shinier to us, we are proud of what he is willing to sacrifice, what he has stepped up to, what he stands for, the man he has become, and the love and respect he still shows us. We have no doubt he is in the right place for him and that he will be a fine, fine officer, so what we think has become immaterial. We keep our worries to ourselves.

I suspect that if your daughter’s announcement was done for shock value or is a passing fancy that does not withstand deep scrutiny then this, too, shall pass as they say. But, if she does decide to test her mettle in the military, she will be making an adult decision with or without your support, and I can tell you that “with your support” will better serve her.

(As an aside, to those of you who say your strong-willed not-about-following-orders liberal children would not be military material, I’m laughing. I was absolutely sure those traits would ultimately keep our son from ending up where he is. I was so, so wrong.)

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