A Family's Guide to the Military For Dummies

Sheryl Garrett, Sue Hoppin

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN:
  9780470444726
• Print ISBN:
  9780470386972
• Edition: 1

Expert advice on all aspects of military life

A Family's Guide to the Military For Dummies is for the millions of military dependents, family members, and friends who are looking for straightforward guidance to take advantage of the benefits and overcome the challenges unique to life in the military. This comprehensive guide covers such key topics as introducing military life to readers new to the armed forces, financial planning, relocation, deployment, raising kids alone while a partner is away, and taking advantage of the available benefits. It offers tips and advice for dealing with emotions that surround events like deployments, deciphering the acronyms used in daily military life, forming support groups, keeping track of a loved one's whereabouts, and surviving on a military base in a foreign country.

Part I:

Reporting for Duty

In this part . . .

Before you can embrace the military lifestyle, you need to understand the basics. In this part, you’ll get a primer on military protocol and traditions. You’ll also learn the basics of what you can expect on a military installation.

Chapter 1

Living Life As a Military Family

In This Chapter

Becoming acquainted with military culture

Maintaining flexibility

Talking the talk

Getting to know everyone

Figuring out if living on the installation is for you

Some people believe that being in the military is no different than working for a major corporation with multiple outlets around the world. But what corporation do you know requires all their employees to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year?

Military service is a demanding way of life and there are very few people willing to sign on the dotted line and add themselves to the 1 percent of our nation’s population that makes up this nation’s All Volunteer Force.

If your servicemember is part of this All Volunteer Force, welcome to the club. Life in the military is wrought with its own challenges and rewards. But success is 90 percent attitude. Throughout this chapter, we draw a broad picture of what sets military families apart from their civilian counterparts, talk about some of the idiosyncrasies of the military, as well as let you know what you can expect right off the bat.

Getting a Grasp on the Military Culture

The military certainly retains its own culture. When your servicemember joins the military, you’re exposed to a tight-knit community of people supporting a cause greater than themselves and dealing with issues that the average soccer mom would never encounter. In the sections that follow, we help you understand the military culture by giving you an idea of why servicemembers join and stay in the military as well as how connected you become to your community.

Believing in something bigger than yourself

Ask 100 people why they chose to join the military and you’ll probably get about 100 different answers that might include travel, thrills, opportunities, money, and benefits. For those of us with wanderlust, the promise of travel still serves to lure some to military service. Certainly with the temporary duties (TDYs/TADs) and opportunities to be stationed overseas at exotic locations, wanting to see the world is as good a reason to join the military as any other. There are also some thrill seekers who are drawn to the military by the promise of adventure and tough challenges that only jumping out of airplanes or landing on an aircraft carrier can deliver.

Many choose service as a way of upholding family tradition. For some, it’s all they know. If they’re military brats, they may loath to imagine any other life. Others are looking for job security or opportunities to learn new skills and better themselves. The benefits of the Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB) still draw people looking for a way to finance a college education. Although there are definite financial benefits to military service, not too many people are going to say that they did it solely for the money. So what keeps people in through the deployments, family separations, and constant moves? Simply said, that belief in something bigger than themselves. Ask 100 people why they chose to stay in the military and you’ll probably only get a handful of answers that include honor, pride, and a desire to serve their country. The decision your servicemember made to join the military means that you are now part of this great tradition.

Making lifelong connections

The military seems to draw together a diverse group of people from all walks of life. However, that common bond of believing in something bigger than yourself ensures that you already have a strong tie to the friends you make in the military.

You’d think that the constant moving would guarantee that you are forever saying goodbye to friends and starting over again. To a certain extent, that’s true; but in the military, you never say goodbye, just “hope to see you again soon.” With a finite number of installations you can be stationed to, chances are good that over the years, you’ll keep running into some of the same people over and over again.

Don’t burn bridges because you never know when you’ll run into that annoying soccer mom again somewhere down the road.

Civilian friendships are forged over shared experiences such as attending the same schools, vacationing in the same places, and living in the same small town for your entire life. The military’s not so different. Think of a culture where you all move in the same circles. Even though you’ll move from base to base, you stand the likelihood of living in the same towns (although at different times), vacationing in the same military hot spots, and going to the same base schools. Your best friends become those who served with you on the PTA board, the mother of your son’s best friend, or your neighbor on base who watches your kids so you can get a haircut or make a commissary run without your screaming toddler in tow.

So what’s different about the military? Well, some of your best friends will also be the ones who help you weather that second, fourth, and fifth deployment. The ones you call at 3 a.m. because the news just reported some casualties in the field. They’re the ones who babysit your kids who are running a 101 degree temperature when you can least afford to miss another day of work. They are the same people who cry with you because your spouse is passed over for a promotion or rejoice with you because he or she is chosen for one. They understand without words what you are going through because they have walked in your shoes. Your military friends become an extended family and these are relationships that you will come to count on throughout your time in the military.

Like everything else worth having, these lifelong connections need to be nurtured. There are certain things you can do to develop and maintain these strong connections:

Meet the other families in your unit or squadron.

Get involved.

Be there for your friends and recognize when they might need some extra care and attention.

Stay in touch.

Share your milestones (such as promotions, graduations, and new additions to the family).

Make the effort to send change of address cards.

Send those annual holiday cards and letters.

Follow the golden rule: Always write in pencil.

Being Flexible — the Key to a Happy Military Life

If you’re the type of person who likes to control your surroundings, you’re going to have to let that go. After your servicemember joins the military, you’re no longer in charge of your life. Of course, you still have some input, but ultimately, your life is out of your hands.

With all the things you can’t control, you may find it easy to start thinking that you have become an unwitting pawn in someone else’s life. Don’t get sucked into that mentality. True, military life demands that you look at things from a different perspective than civilian life. Moving every 2 to 4 years gives you an opportunity to recreate yourself every time. Think of the opportunities you can have that others can only dream of. While your civilian friends can only look at pictures of the great works of art, you can visit them in Paris, London, or Florence. Your friends at home learn a second language in an academic setting while you have the opportunity to immerse yourself in other cultures and languages. You get the idea — it’s all in the perspective. Rather than lamenting about how the military limits your choices, start thinking about how it broadens your horizons.

In the sections that follow, we give you some advice on how to control the things you can control and let go of the other stuff . . . for now. Maintaining a good outlook ensures that you will be open to opportunities that present themselves.

Adjusting to different directions

So you may be thinking that your servicemember is given orders, you follow them, and that’s that. Well, that’s just the beginning. A lot can happen between being given an order and preparing for it. Be prepared to adjust to situations, such as the following examples:

Just when you think you’re headed to Hawaii on assignment and begin dreaming of Mai tais on the beach, a change in orders occurs and you’re headed to Iceland — start dreaming about geysers and five-foot snow drifts!

Your servicemember deployed in the last...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part I: Reporting for Duty
• Part II: Understanding Your Financial Issues and Benefits
• Part III: Supporting the Military Family
• Part IV: Mastering Deployments
• Part V: Transitioning Out of the Military
• Part VI: The Part of Tens