Why We Sent Our Daughter To Military School This Summer & What It Has Done For Her
I would like to start off by 1st acknowledging my lack of blog posts the past few months. When you are finished reading this post, hopefully it can help you understand why it was tough for me to come on here a lot to talk about all of the “fun things” while I was hurting on the inside. I felt like that would be me being fake and I almost felt like I was keeping this giant secret. This post has probably been reread 100 times and also has been approved by my daughter. I am so proud she is comfortable allowing me to share this with you all and we both share this in hopes it will allow atleast one parent or one kid to know they are not alone. So here it goes….
I don’t know about you but if I could explain parenting in a nutshell I would say “It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and just hoping that it sticks”. For any of my parents reading this you know just how hard parenting can be sometimes. No matter what season of life your child is in, it’s still hard…the only differences are the types of “messes” they make and how much control you have to be able to fix it for them. This is something that has been a really hard struggle for me these past couple of years while watching my daughter Camryn go into her teen years. If you’re new here let me quickly describe her to you. She is a bright beautiful bouncy girl with probably one of the kindest hearts I know. I’m not just saying this because she is my kid I’m being so serious. She would never want to hurt or dissapoint anyone and when she does, she is very hard on herself. Like so many kids….we began to notice a change in her probably around the age of 11 or 12. She all of a sudden seemed so unsure of herself on everything. As she grew further into the teenage years even close family and friends began to take notice and she just seemed so frustrated and unhappy with herself. Naturally as her parents, Steve and I just kept wanting to fix it for her. We thought “okay maybe if we take ‘XYZ’ away she’ll pull it together”, “Maybe if we take her to talk to somebody it will fix all of this”, “Maybe tutoring will help!”. If there was an option out there to help our kid, we tried it. The frustration continued to grow and things only got worse. So what the hell do we do now?
One night when I was out with a couple of girlfriends one of them began telling all of us how when she was younger she went through something similar as Camryn and was just overall struggling. This is when I first learned about Oak Ridge Military Academy. Not going to lie, before that night….I had never known anyone to attend a military school, much less a GIRL. I remember saying “But wait, were you really really bad or something?” and she responded “Not necessarily, I just needed to get my ass into gear and have a reality check.” Sending our child somewhere was never an option we had even considered before but then hearing about it I was like “Hmmmm, this is something I’m going to look into”. Just an extremely brief history on ORMA (Oak Ridge Military Academy), it is THE oldest military academy in the state of North Carolina and one of the oldest in the country. It has an extremely old and rich history which is something I immediately loved about it. When we mentioned it to Camryn, obviously like most teenagers she was basically like “Yeah, okay….whatever Mom” and I’m pretty sure didn’t take us seriously. It wasn’t until the end of May (her 7th grade year) that we discovered how low her grades had become and that she just wasn’t taking anything seriously that we had had it! I can remember my exact breaking point. It was the day of our oldest Gabi’s High School graduation party and Camryn had a really sh***y attitude all day. That was when I made the decision to send her to ORMA for a 5 week academic summer camp.
As an adult we constantly have to make tough choices but making the decision to “send your kid away???”, I can’t even begin to describe how heartbreaking that is as a parent. I felt like the worst mom in the world like “Wow, you can’t even get your kid under control or get her to do good in school. So now you have to send her somewhere?”. Also the worry about what everyone was going to think or say about our family once word got out. Ugh, that was a tough one. I mean, although I personally don’t care what people think about me…it’s a whole different story if it’s something that involves one of my kids or how we raise them. I will rip someones head off when it comes to my family. Legit. Although it was such a hard choice to make…I knew in my heart I was doing what was best for HER. It wasn’t about how it made me feel. My job was for her to find an inner strength in herself and be held accountable for actions and let’s all be honest here folks….as busy parents trying to run businesses, juggle multiple childrens schedules, etc. that’s not always possible. Believe me I tried. LOL. I knew in my gut she was never going to get the reality check she needed as long as she was “grounded” at our house, in her private room with her own private bathroom, laying out by our pool. Ya know what I’m saying here? So we made the decision and stuck by it.
The days leading up to having to bring her were definitely filled with anxiety for all of us and she was just ready to get it over with. When I went to drop her off…I think I cried more than she did. It wasn’t like other camps I had sent her to before…this time I wouldn’t go to her dorm with her or help her unpack. She would do it all on her own. At first I was like “Wait…what? I can’t go with her?” but then I reminded myself to trust the process. These people know what they’re doing. ORMA is located near Greensboro, NC so although I could have driven…I figured I would need a couple of drinks after I dropped her off so I opted to fly up there. Luckily the airport was only 10 minutes from the school. The first few days she was there the Sgt. told us they were going to wait for phone calls for the first few days because they wanted to get the kids all accustomed but obviously if we wanted to talk to our kid at any time we could call them anytime and they would arrange for it. Two days after dropping her off was when we were leaving for our vacation overseas so it was imperative I spoke with her before then. I was so nervous before that call. I wondered “Is she going to hate me? What if she is so miserable? What if they are treating her so awful there?” My heart dropped when I got my call from her and I was SO pleasantly surprised that she sounded just fine. She was kind of quiet because it was before they were all allowed to start using their personal electronics to call us but she was okay. Okay! Phew! She’s okay!
By the end of the 1st week I was able to start getting Skype calls and Facetimes from her as well as texts and she seemed to be having fun! She had a roommate and then all of the girls shared a common bathroom in the girl dormitory. Although it wasn’t her ideal way to spend her summer, she said it was still kind of fun all living together. The girls were a lot like her. Some of them had harder struggles than her and some not but ONE THING we learned as a family was that there is a TOTAL misconception of the kinds of kids that go to military schools and what they’re all about. Our family quickly learned that. For example…everyone thinks it’s just filled with ‘bad kids’ and that they will just take anyone. That is absolutely false. First of all, what is a ‘bad kid’ anyway? I have worked with tons of kids from all backgrounds and I don’t truly believe in labeling any child a bad kid. Sure some may have differences but that doesn’t make them bad. Secondly, Camryn had to get accepted into this camp. They requested all of her transcripts and any info the school may have on her such as if she has had any behavioral issues and etc. They also make sure to rule out any children who have gotten into trouble with drugs or anything like that. As a parent, that immediately made us feel better about the choice we made in sending her there. As the weeks went on, I noticed a happier girl each time I would talk to her…and she even got all A’s in all of her classes. She kept telling me she learned so much about herself she hadn’t realized. Through the challenge of being away from us and being in that type of environment, it forced her to kick in survival mode which at the age of 13, shouldn’t we want our kids to start thinking more independently and realizing the reality of REAL consequences for your actions? Raising a girl into a woman already has it’s own challenges but don’t I want my daughter to be prepared in life to be able to take care of herself and feel confident in her decision making when I can’t be there with her?
The Day I picked her up from the airport it was like a scene from a movie. She saw me and we both just ran up to each other cried and hugged. After our happy reunion, we get in the car and she begins to tell me ALLLLL about it. It was crazy. She sounded so mature! She sounded so sure of herself and am I hearing this correctly? She even sounded like she missed it. As she was sharing all of her stories about many different Sgt.’s and things that had happened while she was there, she seemed happy and at peace with herself. Some of the things she shared sounded hard and some scary but again…she was happy as she was telling me this. Almost like really proud of herself. She was confident. Sure PT was hard sometimes, sure having to go to school in the summer sucked but she was PROUD. I could tell she felt good about herself. As parents….we never want our kids to want for anything or be stressed or scared. Why? Because we want what’s best for them but is never letting them experience fear or go through any kind of struggle actually helping them or are we hurting them? Is sending them out into the real world one day not knowing anything about life being hard setting them up to succeed or to actually fail? One of the best gifts Steve and I gave Camryn was sending her to Oak Ridge. She experienced life in a way most people will never experience it and she is so much stronger for that. She was able to get a hard dose of a reality check. She learned about respecting authority, respecting others and more importantly respecting herself. Character isn’t developed in the glory moments of our lives but instead in our struggles and now she KNOWS she can do it. She is able to carry a level of confidence and different perspective that she would have never learned being at home. There was one thing she said to me that was so profound and I will always remember it. She said “ya know, some of the kids who went there I would probably never be friends with just in my daily life or if they went to my school but since we were all there together…we all became like a family. It just goes to show you that literally any of us in the world could be friends if we wanted to but everyone doesn’t see it that way”. I will NEVER forget that exact moment with her and her words. It was the proudest I have EVER been of her. (Damnit, I’m crying as I type this.)
In a nutshell….no 2 children are alike and there is no such thing as the “right way” to parent. You try your best and hope for the best. Sending our daughter to a military school this summer wasn’t us giving up on her. It was us showing her we knew what she was made of and that is, she is a tough ass kid who is smart and can do it and now SHE sees in herself what we have always seen. Do we plan on sending her back there for regular boarding school? We’re not really sure. We are going to see how it goes here at home. See how her grades hold up and see how she overall is doing. She fully understands now what our expectations are and even better she knows we are all rooting for her. If it works out YAY! and if it doesn’t and she needs to go back, she is okay with that too and having that peace of mind now…that is absolutely priceless.
Obviously I could have typed a whole novel about this and gone into so many details but you literally would be reading a chapter book. HAHA! As always though, if you have any questions or comments for me at all, please feel free to reach out. I know so many of you are also struggling with these same issues with your child and it’s so important you know that you are not alone! Also… here is the contact info for Oak Ridge Military Academy below. No, this is not a sponsored post. I am honestly just a grateful parent for everything they did for my daughter and so many other kids.