Before I got married and had two cool kids, I was a middle school English teacher. I was assigning book reports and grading essays. I was low-key panicking trying to figure out how to teach my son the ABCs. My brain could not compute how to teach a child the first layer of reading and writing.
Then, one glorious day, with absolutely no prompting or help from me, during a commercial break from late-morning television, he suddenly broke into song: “A, B, C, D…” He nailed it — all 26 letters. While I was losing sleep over how I would help him learn the alphabet, he taught himself (with a little help from his tablet and shows — one point for screen time).
I dust off this 12-year-old story to illustrate that our kids don’t only learn from us. They learn from their surroundings, their peers and everything in their world. The advantage military-connected kids have is that their worlds are wide, diverse and often challenging. Now that our kids are in middle school (and I’m much more comfortable helping with English homework), an age when they’re growing and changing physically and mentally, I can’t help but feel that they’re at the forefront of the maturity race, along with the other MilKids at their school.
Much like the ABCs, I don’t think this maturity comes from me. It’s shaped by moving every few years — leaving friends behind and making new ones. It’s about experiencing different cultures, whether that’s across the globe or from state to state. It’s prioritizing time and experiences over material things. It’s about stepping up and being brave when their dad had to be away from home. It’s understanding how precious family and life are and how quickly both can change. Of course, it’s about spending impressionable years with adults who treated them like honorary nieces and nephews.
If you don’t have a middle schooler at home and it’s been a while since you walked those halls, I’ll quickly refresh your memory. This is the time when kids are learning who their real friends are — some new ones are coming into the fold, while, as devastating as it can be, others are drifting away. Most are terrified of looking stupid or being excluded; FOMO (fear of missing out) is raging as wildly as hormones; and everything their parents or siblings do is humiliating.
Military-connected kids, including ours, are not exempt from any of this, but nearly every stereotypical middle school behavior is countered by something that makes me a proud mom.
Recognizing the new kid and befriending them — that’s something military-connected kids do, and I’m proud to say our kids do it too. Respecting different beliefs and cultures, embracing differences and tuning into others’ feelings aren’t always top of mind at that age. To be fair, many adults haven’t figured it out either. Military-connected kids exposed to diverse cultures and perspectives can get good at reading people. It’s a skill they develop every time they enter a new environment where they don’t know anyone, which can make them highly attuned to others.
Our country likes to talk a lot about the struggles military-connected kids face and sure, those struggles are real. But they overcome each one, and they’re stronger on the other side.
In the last several weeks, I’ve been approached by both of our kids at different times and in different ways, but the complaint was essentially the same: This person or group of people is so annoying because [insert reason]. In both cases, I asked to hear more about the situation. If you have a middle schooler, you know that I had to be very sly with this investigation. After hearing the facts, it was clear to me in both cases that the issue was a maturity gap. Whether it’s someone not pulling their weight in a group project or coming to class unprepared and asking to borrow supplies every day. Whether it’s finding out someone said something hurtful about them or not being able to understand why someone would say something hurtful to another student, we’ve faced it all this school year. Each time, the question is always why. Why would someone do that? Why would someone act like that? Children that have had to learn to be responsible, that know what it feels like to be new and not have a single friend in the room, those kids are naturally going to mature faster than someone who hasn’t been challenged in the same ways.
I often say that I’m jealous of our kids. They’ve had so many incredible experiences I never had just because they were born military-connected kids. It doesn’t come without its challenges, but that just leads to a whole other reason to be jealous of them. At almost 12 and freshly 14, they’re mentally tough, compassionate, independent, and they aren’t afraid to do the right thing or step into a completely foreign place. To my MilKids and yours, never forget that your challenges are becoming your strengths.
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