Stop it! That really can't be true...although after all the whining on FB maybe it can be true??
Ask anyone from the Supe on down to the company senior enlisted leader about calls and emails from parents. This does not surprise me. It used to take time to sit down and write a real letter, find the right address and send it, and sometimes that provided a cooling-off period.
The advent of email, websites with “Contact Us,” social websites, a dissolution of boundaries and the trend of over-involved and time-extended-into-adulthood parenting style of SOME parents plus SOME young people who have been raised to discuss every little issue/problem/frustration with parents as the go-to fix-it team, has led to a toxic little brew of “failure to launch” adjustment situations. As I am fond of saying, ”It’s not necessarily wrong, just different.”
As a BattO, I had calls/emails:
- The West Point grad dad who screamed at me because his son was not going forward to Brigade-level midshipman officer staff interviews. He also called me a filthy name related to me being female, and it didn’t rhyme with “witch.” [No, I didn’t report. No witnesses. Some battles you walk away from.] His son had not authorized release of his personal information to his parents, but he had privately shared with me one of his main motivations for going Navy was to get away from his parents’ service, and that he wanted to stay in company and do deck plate leadership as a Company CO. He went on to do very well in the Navy.
- Too-many-to-count calls and emails about why their mid said I wasn’t allowing them to come home for name-the-holiday but overlooked informing them about the misconduct hearing that led to the restricted status.
- Too-many-to-count calls and emails about roommate squabbles, room temperature, laundry, blisters, running when it was raining, someone yelling at their mid, why they found birth control pills from the Navy pharmacy in their daughter’s belongings while she was home on leave, having to strip and wax a deck and do other manual cleaning chores, about food - endless in variety and number.
- And some truly saddening ones - why was the Battalion Chaplain from a non-Christian faith group counseling my son and could I prevent his exposure to non-Christian chaplains, could I remove a roommate of color from a room simply because of race issues. One father was concerned having a female company officer and female BattO would not give his son the masculine role models he expected. One mother was upset I hammered her mid for having racist jokes on his computer and sharing them over govt systems, because “he only shares them with his white friends.” There are more in that category, game face required when listening to them. Sadly, reports from my contacts over the years say these types of incidents are still out there. For better or worse, Midshipmen reflect the values of the family and society in which they were raised.
It has only gotten worse since my time on the staff.
Happily, there are many parents who launch their new mids, and then bite their tongues, hold down their typing fingers, and let their young adult soar, flop, fail, succeed, struggle, figure it out, recover, succeed again, grow. That is the best gift they can give, to allow their fledglings to fly in the relatively safe environment of USNA.
