We think of military kids as little. We think of newborns meeting their dads for the first time at Homecoming. We think of cute little preschoolers waving their tiny flags as a ship pulls into port. We think of sweet elementary age daughters writing heart-felt I-miss-yous to their deployed moms.
We do not think of military kiddies as those half-baked semi-adults playing video games, racking up the pizza boxes and talking about looking for meaningful work.
Yet seven percent of all military dependent children are age 19-22. At our SpouseBuzz LIVE event in Miramar, we gathered a group of spouses with these post-high school type kids. While most “dependents” of that age were in college or working at jobs that didn’t pay the rent quite yet, these moms had a problem child or two. They laughingly compared these top ten plans to get their man-boys and their Princesses off the couch and into an apartments of their own.
- Scrawl STOP ENABLING HIM across your bathroom mirror.
- Develop a kind of senility that allows you to consistently lose your car keys in a place where the Princess can’t find them.
- PCS to somewhere the Man/Boy doesn’t want to live.
- Encourage your darlings to follow their dreams—in Tibet.
- Make them a pair of bacon pants and dangle them in front of prospective mates.
- Join a new church that offers lots of opportunities for missions overseas.
- Resume their true childhood: serve all beverages from a sippy cup.
- Drive slowly past the military recruiters office and remind child how much they always wanted a uniform of their very own.
- Develop new habit where you walk around in your underwear.
- Resume rousing newlywed-style sex life with husband of 25 years.
If all these plans fail, this group said that they would go back to their original plan: Sincerely help their child establish a plan for the future and help them follow through--which is what they've been doing all along.
This Top Ten list was assemble at SpouseBuzz LIVE in MCAS Miramar in San Diego, CA by Michelle Hankin, Linda Baker, Natasha Bivens, Jose Hernandez, Roxanne Dittsworth, Virginia Rubio, Donna Harris, and Shelly Carter.
