#010 - Patty Lutton - USNA MID MOMS!!! (and DADS!) Facebook Page Founder

In this episode, your host Grant Vermeer speaks with Patty Lutton the founder of the USNA Mids Moms (and Dads)!! Facebook page.  Patty founded this page when there were really no other communication and sharing tools for service academy parents other than email list servers.

Her page now has over 7,500 followers and is busy all the time with questions, issues, news, and celebrations.  She has intentionally opened her page to grandparents, sponsor parents and anyone who wants to know more about supporting midshipmen.

Patty and Grant talk about the unique challenges of being a service academy parent, many of the questions and concerns that come up for academy parents and even their favorite ice cream in Annapolis.

Patty has a son who attended the naval academy, a daughter who graduated from the coast guard academy and another daughter who went to a "regular college".  Her husband is a USNA grad.

With almost ten years of working with parents through her page as well as her own experiences as a parent, Patty has so much information and perspective to share.

I recommend every current, former and future USNA parent listen to this episode to learn from Patty.

During this episode, Patty recommends for care packages Monkey Butt powder.

Check out Patty's page USNA Mids Moms (and Dads)!! at https://www.facebook.com/groups/USNAMIDPARENTS/.

You may contact Patty on her personal facebook page.

Be sure to review and subscribe to The Academy Insider with Grant Vermeer podcast on iTunes or where you listen to podcasts.

Follow the Academy Insider on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

For any real estate questions, please text me at 650-282-1964

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The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.

This podcast is independently produced and reflects the views and opinions of its creators. It is not officially affiliated with, endorsed by, or representative of the United States Naval Academy or its affiliates.

Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all.  He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.

He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a residential real estate company that matches service academy families with trusted real estate teams all across the country.  Text (650) 282-1964 with any real estate questions.

We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.

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Transcript

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Grant Vermeer 0:03

This is your host Grant Vermeer Naval Academy class of 2017 and your academy insider. It's my goal to be your guide through the Naval Academy experience by sharing my stories and providing you insight and information into the life of a midshipman.

Speaker 2 0:16

Okay.

Speaker 3 0:21

Academy insider is in no way officially affiliated with the United States Naval Academy. All of the content on academy insider is my own and does not reflect the views of the United States Naval Academy, the United States Navy, nor the Department of Defense. My guest today on the academy insider podcast is Patty Lutton. Patty's the founder of the largest and busiest parent Facebook group at the Naval Academy. Yes, USN a mids, moms and dads. Patty is an expert in the Midshipman parent journey and in the over 10 years that she's been running her Facebook page with her team of other volunteer moderators. She's really seen it all as it relates to issues for parents at the Naval Academy. Patty shares all of that experience and wisdom with us on this episode. Patty's had children attend the Naval Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, and a civilian university. So her perspective as a college parent and specifically a Service Academy of Parent is tremendous. She's funny, she's candid, incredibly generous in sharing her experience and helping midshipman parents with some really great info. Her page is open to all parents, grandparents, sponsor parents, etc. So if you support or love and midshipman anyway, and you want to learn from Patty, joined her group, I know you all will love hearing from Patty and our conversation together and you'll take some great information away from this episode. So make sure to tune in. Let's get to it.

Speaker 1 1:47

Ms. Lutton, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us on academy insider. I appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me. I'm very happy to be here. Fantastic. Uh, and again, for everyone who's listening, uh, Patty Latin is the original creator of the original parents Facebook page. And with academy insider, I feel like the mission of academy and centers very well aligned with the mission of the parents pages on Facebook. And so I wanted to bring pat on the show to talk about the different resources out there that are specifically for parents. So this, this episode here is going to be a lot for parents, family, friends, and anyone who wants to support a Midshipman as they're going through their journey and also be supported because it is a very difficult journey for the families as well. So I'm really glad that Patty is able to come on today. And before we really get started again, just want to say thank you. But with that being said, as kind of the original creator of the parents Facebook page, how did you get the idea to do that? How'd you get the idea to get this started completely by accident? Facebook was, Facebook was new in my life back in 2011 and my son was a plead in 2009. So he was a new midshipman at the time.

Patty Lutton 3:00

And uh, I was basically just trying to get together with friends and people that I had met on the lister of and on the service academy forums.com and so on. And Facebook just seemed like the logical way to do it. Um, I never intended it for it to be this big, but, uh, that's, that's kind of kind of where the idea came from and it just evolved from there. We started out trying to get together for lunch in Annapolis one day. And, uh, you know, we had a, basically a few of us miss the time that we were going to meet because everybody was on their personal pages as friends on Facebook. And so I decided to just, after lunch I said, you know what, I'll go home and I'll start up a US numb mid moms. It was actually called us in a mid mom's exclamation point. And then we had a couple of dad's sort of get on there and say, Hey, what about the dads? So the name became, it's the US and a mid mom's parentheses and dad's so much Facebook. And, uh, and then it kind of evolved from there into sponsors, alumni, anybody who really was there, the sharing of common interest and there was to, it was a common bond more than anything caring for mids or more than one. It wasn't intended for Midshipman to get on there. Yup. We do know they sneak in there once in a while, but that was the idea is that parents could ask there what they, you know, what they thought might be stupid questions, but that they were important to them and it just evolved from there. So that's really, and that Facebook page just gotten very large now. Right. Well how many, how many members of the group do you have right now? We currently have a little over 7,500 we are at 7,546 and that's great. That's a lot of people. So kind of with that, what motivates you to continue to be involved in the page? To continue to the page going and just, and just keep up with that piece. There's a lot of activity now with 7,500 parents constantly asking questions, answering questions, posting. How do you keep it under control and how do you stay motivated to continue to be involved in the page? Well, I think the support from the people who started in this on this journey with me that we have and people we've added over the years, I ended up adding a couple of parents from the class of 15. We just sort of have a stable group of seven moderator slash administrators even though, um, we have a set of rules. If you were to go on there and see the rules, you will see that they have, they have morphed over the years but mostly kind of stayed the same and trying to make sure that people that are on there understand that this is a social page and that we want to support each other and answer questions. But then we will always send parents to the official place if we find that, that we're in trouble and we can't answer something. I mean we've referred parents to chaplains, we've referred parents to the Pao at the academy. We referred parents to the alumni association because there are times we just can't handle some of the, some of the issues that happened. But we tend to be kind of a line, I'm going to say first line of defense, but when, when things happen, when they're good, it's great, celebrate with each other and then something is a little iffy or bad. We try to, to help and support those parents to support their midshipman from academics to physical fitness to girlfriend troubled, you know, everything is on there. We are just, we look out for each other's kids too.

Speaker 1 6:22

Absolutely. Sorry, sorry to call them kids. But we absolutely are right. And so, I mean we most definitely still our kids is where as we're going through college and at the end of the day will always be your babies too. Like that. That never changes. My mom have all the answers.

Speaker 4 6:37

I mean we, we've been accused of everything from being a helicopter parent. Do you, I mean we make jokes about ourselves and we're like no helicopters in the garage. It's parked. You know, I've taken the battery cables off, we'll go through and, and um, just really just try to support you guys through the journey and tie, take away a little bit of the pressure of the things that Midshipman have to answer. Yeah. At the time.

Speaker 1 7:00

And that's real. And I want to say thank you to you and thank you to everyone who was very active in the parents Facebook pages business. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to start academy insiders because I did a terrible job of not answering questions for my family. Right. I was constantly caught up with the academics, with the physical side, with all the military aspects that I never had time. And white parents would ask me a question, I'd say, Oh, well we did this and this. And they're like, well, what the heck is this and this? And you're like, I don't have the time to explain it right now, nor the energy, nor do I want to like, I'm so sorry, but this is not happening. And so that's why I took it on myself for academy insider to try and explain some of those things and be that source of information. But the parents pages do it phenomenally as well. And so I just constantly want to encourage all my listeners and if you are parents of incoming plebes are just people who are interested in the academy, um, is to get involved in these groups because of that. Does this have a tremendous amount of information? I'm like you're saying you can be that first line of defense to try and get some questions answered without constantly, uh, asking. You're bugging. And I wouldn't use the word harassing ever, but like sometimes when you're caught up in the, the grind and the Naval Academy, it feels that way sometimes as a midshipman going through. So it does take a ton of pressure off of everyone else. So thank you guys for that. And,

Speaker 4 8:13

and, and the thing is, everybody's experience is different. Yep. So there are going to be differing opinions on there. And so it, I would just caution any parent to make sure that you find the group that is the best fit for you. And then anything that we say is taken with a grain of salt, obviously were once twice removed. Some of the, I have an academy Grad husband, I have a son who went to the Naval Academy, a daughter who graduated from the Coast Guard Academy. But that doesn't make me an expert in anything. And that's what I think is valuable to have all of these different people in the group that are active from, again, grads who, whose kids have gone on to attend and graduate from the academies. People whose son went on to be a surface warfare officer or a or a medical officer, um, or their daughter's flying jets. I mean it's just everybody's different. Or their son went to flight school and then didn't make it through and now a civilian or selling real estate or whatever. We find that Naval Academy grads and Naval Academy students, even if they don't graduate, are very successful in their future lives because it took something special to get in there to begin with. So we keep it going. We are, again, we're social, we have, you know we use try to use the golden rule do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. You don't want anybody telling you you're saying something dumb or doing something done by the same token, don't do it to others. We're not always under control. We are not perfect. But again, there are a lot of groups out there. There are class specific groups, there are community specific groups. Once midshipman graduate, a lot of our members who have gone on to formula, the submarine officer parent page and those first warfare officer in the Marine Corps page and you'll see some of the same names in the same parents crop up, but it's because they want to talk about specific things I have to do with their community and the parents have a plead might not really want to hear that. You know, somebody's just got promoted to lieutenant and they're, you know, doing whatever, um, you know, they want to know about plebe summer and they really know about the mail and they want to know about what time did you, their mids have to wake up and how long are we going to have parents weekend and do we let them sleep or do we take them out? You know, we do, well, what did we do in Annapolis? Nothing. You can eat ice cream or drink alcohol. Wait, not 21. So, um, we, we've had conversations with a former people who graduated from there, my husband, one of them, and he says, you know, it's great. Annapolis is great. You can go out on the weekends, go out to the bars. I'm like, honey, you were 17 when you went 18 as a, as a third class. And you could drink wine and beer back in the 80s when you were allowed to you. You could. And so now Annapolis is bars, overpriced ice cream and overpriced food. So midshipman walk around in their whites and eat ice cream, you know, and, and uh, here's the, here's the real question though. Are you in Annapolis Ice Cream? Akil wins kill all the way, all the way. I love it. I love it. Yeah. We actually have had quite a few debates about the ice cream. There's a few moms who were very, very much all about kill wins. And we used to go, we would go and take pictures and post them on Facebook and be like, we're having this in your honor, Carla. Here we are. But uh, yeah. Killings all the way, especially, um, the owners are sponsors. Um, nick and his wife. Yeah. Um, and that, yeah, they've sponsored, should've been for years. They, I don't know if they still do, but they used to live upstairs of the, of the ice cream shop. Wow. And would offer for not only their sponsoring meds, but anybody, any other meds to just come out.

Speaker 1 11:56

Brennan hang out. They have little kids. Did you ever see the little kids that walked around in, in summer whites? Yes. [inaudible] those kids are famous. They're the best. They're super cute. They started wearing those. I, I want to stay back in like [inaudible] nine or 10 there were little, like three years old. Yeah. I had no idea. That makes me so happy because I'm a Killens guy to, to my core. I love the caramel apples. I love the ice cream. I love the fight. I love everything. It's also good for walking chocolate. Yes. Okay. Oh, that makes me so happy. That makes me love killings even more. Yep. They're huge supporters. Ketamine, so that's fantastic. All right. But what you're saying is, earlier you kind of mentioning that there are a bunch of different pages that kind of serve different purposes in our more unique or niche or specific to a certain thing. Right. What do you think is the greatest benefit or service you believe that your page serves? Uh, with the U S and a mom's and dad's page that

Speaker 4 12:53

even though we are selective of our members, we very early on made it so that it wasn't just parents and it wasn't just parents of the class of 2012 or 2013. We opened it and we brought in sponsors very quickly because they are your parents away from home? No, absolutely. Brought in alumni, grandparents, aunts and uncles, anybody who's heavily involved in the care and feeding of a midshipman. And uh, I think that's what makes us different from the class specific pages. We may be a little bit stagnant in our admin group right now. We don't have any new parents and I'm actually getting ready now that, that you contacted me and were sort of talking about this. I've got some renewed interest in trying to see if I can get some new blood in there. Yeah. Just because we're, again, my group is a little bit removed and I think we try not to control too much, try not to moderate too much that. Then we say that in our roles we're not, we're volunteers. You know, we pretty much will address something when it really gets out of hand and that would mostly be political discussions we're on. We've had two presidents now since the group started. Yeah, two different parties. And so you have, you know, people will get some pretty strong opinions in the end. Everybody just ends up being very needy, supportive and patriotic. But it's still sometimes crops up so we have to deal with that sometimes. Sometimes we have to deal with, you know what we call it, we call it, we say moms and dads is an odd combination of friendly strangers. You know, I'll shave some sizes, backgrounds that we have that common thread and so we have to always keep that in the front. Yeah, absolutely. And we did not set out to have any rules. We were the rebels that happens through rebellion. This, you know, when you are near the rebel and suddenly you become having the established method, it's hard, you palm. But we, the different groups are a class specific and typically you're part of that group while your son or daughter is at the academy. And then that it remains, it remains static, you know. So the class of 13 page is just class of 13 parents. Yep. No sponsors, nobody else. And I know for a fact that there are class specific pages open right now, probably through the year 20, 30 something. I think 20, 36 is the farthest out that I saw. So there's open, they are set, there's no members, there's just admins. Um, and uh, we had kind of pushed for the alumni association to kind of take this on because then they would, could become, you know, good contact for the alumni association. I don't know where that's gone. We tried to hand over our group and uh, they were not interested. They, they thought it would be too cumbersome. So that's why we are still private. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's not absolutely why not too much. I'm on a tangent that I love it. I love it. Kind of moving on there, so with so many parents and family members and just supporters kind of posting, what are some of the most frequently asked questions that you receive? Kind of what are the hot topics that are often brought up in the parent's page? It really depends on the time of year, so if it's a, right now we are in appointment season, right? Appointments have been accepted and so parents are starting to come on that are brand new plea parents. They're getting all of their congratulations from us and then they're starting to ask all of the questions, okay, what kind of tube socks? How tall do they have to be? How much underwear should they bring? Should they really bring as much as it says, you know, what kind of paperwork do we give them their original social security card or do we give them a cost certified copy? What there's obviously the academy sends out the information but, but these parents will sometimes be pretty savvy and ask more questions because they see that 70 pound bag, should my son get his hair cut before he goes, should he let it grow out? Should my daughter got hers haircut, that sort of thing. When do we get to see them? How long is the meet and greet, you know, after, after the swearing in, when will I get my first letter they'll but just your normal, that kind of stuff. And then then we started getting into, you know, through plebe summer you can have all the excitement with the photos that are being posted. People will go to the yard and take pictures and post them and you're doing where's Waldo, where's Faldo? And at that point all the graduation stuff has died down. But right now for example, we have a lot of people saying well now that graduation is over, what can you tell us, you know, Grad parents recommendations for next year. Cause I'm trying to get myself squared away for 20, 21 or 2020. So we get a lot of that. Absolutely. Once the academic year starts, while we get up, we get a lot of questions about hello night. I want to know what that is, is that window. And so we kind of give them, give them a rundown. Yeah. And just kind of is it, look, it's fun. It's this, you know, don't be scared. We tell them about the um, oh we've had a few parents kind of freak out about the Christmas music coming out of Bancroft at the end of parents' weekend. And when we say that that stuff's in, is going on since as long as there was music, you know, they ask about seeing their mid, we have a lot of parents who we hold them head them off at the past. Um, the ones who think, oh, I'm going to go to Annapolis over the summer just to check it out. How can I see my med and I see my plate and uh, that sort of thing. And then academics starts and you get the hole in my plead got these classes and struggling in calc one and what should you do? And so we start sending them to the academic, to the academic resource center, the Academic Excellence Academic Center for excellence, Ace, that one. Um, and we used to know the director, I don't know if we have that information anymore, but we just kind of make it very generic and say you need to encourage are meant to go there. And then we get this whole, what, six weeks? What's 12 weeks? Then when you know, that's pretty much it other than the mail, the mail, what's up with the an with the post office, why aren't they getting their mail? And that's where we've, we've actually a few times taken a few parents aside and we private message them and say, please don't, don't call the superintendent's Office is fine for the mailings or please, you know, the food is good. It is what it is. You midshipman is not starving. You know, there, there are rules. They will eat everything they need. They're going to be okay. They will survive with the lost laundry. Laundry is a real thing. The last time you say yes. So then we're like, ah, encourage them to try to get themselves over the niche store and buy some nail them. I used to mail my son underwear.

Speaker 1 19:55

Oh absolutely. Yeah, that's been fine. And my parents would send me constantly, uh, extra, uh, compression shorts and just underwear. I mean, so, so for everyone who doesn't know, I'm sure everyone probably pretty much knows Maryland's hot and it's very humid. And your plebe uniforms are, they're heavy, they're not, you know, they're not like very breathable. Again, you're not getting much of a breeze or a cool down. So in terms of undergarments, you want a lot of them cause you go through a lot of them. Yes. And then the Ow, ow. Tons of baby powder.

Speaker 4 20:26

Absolutely. There's this wonderful stuff called monkey butt powder monkey pod, powder monkey. But yeah, we recommend it for everybody. It sounds awful, but it's amazing. It's anti chafing powder. Oh

Speaker 1 20:36

really? Yeah. Okay. Well that's fantastic. No, that's great. Um, for everyone who's listening endorsed the product. Oh no, that, yeah. I mean, hey, we'll, we'll throw it down in the, in the show notes if anyone's looking that powder just to give you a link to it just so you can check it out. They have it at Amazon. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh that's, that's great. Good stuff. That's beautiful. And uh, parents will ask, you know, what should I send my mid and were like, you need to ask them. But yeah, no mind like fruit, those food, snack things, snacks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just little tips and tidbits and things like that. Absolutely. We did. We did recommend that they get their haircut mostly before so that they wouldn't have that the tan lines sunburn from longer hair. They're all very obvious, but definitely, and I'm just going to take a quick second to shameless plug. A lot of that too. You should always continue to ask those questions within the parent's page. But if you go to academy and [inaudible] Dot com I provide my opinion, which again is just one person's opinion, one plebes opinion into a lot of those questions in terms of what to send, what things to appreciate. What hello night is a lot of the things about plebe summer. I've already written articles or done things about. So if you're listening to this podcast and you don't know much about academy insider, if you go to my Facebook page and academy and [inaudible] Dot com all of that content is up there and we'll constantly post it on the Facebook page as we go through plebe summer. But yes, just constantly use all of your resources to learn as much as you can to best be able to support, uh, your midshipman. And that's, that's kind of what this is all about. Exactly. And you know what, and I'll just add onto that shameless plug right there. I've added you to the US limit parents page, so I welcome you to actually share those links. Oh, fantastic. If you want to just add, start sharing those links in there and we can send parents right over there. Oh, fantastic. Thank you. I appreciate that. Anything that's already done, it's great. Like I said, we've got, we have a lot of files in, in the US, the mid moms and dads page. Yup. A lot of them that you would have to kind of go through. The titles are self explanatory, but some of them we do have to clean out. So, um, if yours are yours are cleaner than ours and that'd be really cool. Oh, absolutely. And then for all of the parents, uh, if you are listening to this and you have a, a plebe in the class of 2023 or something, go to naps or whatever it is, I've actually just released an online course for plebe summer preparation, which would apply to naps as well. And so if you, if you do want to learn just a little bit about what they may experience and how kind of best to prepare and kind of help, uh, your plea prepare for plebe summer. The, shoot me an email to support@academyinsider .com or just via Facebook. You send me a message to, and I'd be glad to help you get enrolled in that course is again, I just want to provide as much information when we're talking about preparing for these events. So that's great. Anything that sets them up for success. I mean, so I think that's, that's where we all are, so that's great. Absolutely. All right. Now kind of to some of the other sides of the parent's pages is one when you have a lot of people post, and I mean, and this has happened to my mom a lot where she'll ask me questions or my dad will ask me questions and I provide them a half answer and then I kind of give him a little bit of information and they may take it the wrong way or interpret it the wrong way. And that kind of gets passed around. And some of the parents pages, what's the most common misinformation sometimes parents received. And with that, how do you, how do you kind of handle a thread in which there's not a certainty of an answer and there's, you know, sometimes some misinformation going around. How do you, how do you handle those situations?

Speaker 4 27:04

Goodness. Um, you know, I hadn't even thought about this and the first thing that comes to mind was a big kerfuffles that we had a few years back about tango company. Okay. There were all kinds of rumors going around about, you know, Tango Company being now open and what was going on there and who was there and what was the situation, you know, what was the status of Midshipman that were in Tango Company? And it was all just fear and just it was just wrong. But we ourselves didn't know a lot about it when, I mean, I think I was two years out of, of plebe year when that happened. And, um, we actually did have one of our, um, parents, one of our admin parents who is also a Grad and had connections ask the powers that be so that we could try to, you know, quilts, whatever was going on in our group. And so we ended up not deleting the thread but it had really gotten out of hand. So we stopped commenting on it and then came out with official and official description of what tangled and he was at them at that moment. So we just, when we don't know how to handle it or we think that something's getting out of hand or we know that it's wrong or not entirely right, we do try to get the official word. Other ones had been when Mitch Shipman had been involved in any kind of scandals, we've had the spice scandal. We had, you know, um, things happen with cars or, or just tragic accidents that have happened. Sometimes they come out really quickly on the parent's page and we do watch for that. We take them immediately down and a warn everybody that they need to wait on official word before anything can be shared. So that's, that's, that's what's coming to mind right away. Anything more mundane probably, I can't think it's not coming to mind right now. Anything, you know, less important than those, those, those crises are the most scary yeah. To us because it can get out of hand, get out of hand fast. Absolutely. Rumors. Um, and when they start naming names and we have to take them down right away. Yeah, that's tough. Yeah. But that's, I mean, that's something that we've had to just kind of learn to watch it. That's been tough as volunteers. That's been tough because sometimes they do get away from us for a few, for a few hours. Yeah. Especially the west coast, east coast, and that's where we have a couple of, we have admins in every time zone, but

Speaker 1 29:32

yeah. You're 24 hour coverage. Yeah, the best ones. The one from

Speaker 4 29:37

California, he's an attorney, so he's really on top of things, so that's good. Yeah. Right. I'm kind of moving on now. So as a naval academy parents and as even a Coast Guard Academy parents in service academies in general, how does that service academy experience as a parent differ from having a child go to a normal college? Or what do you kind of think is unique about being a parent for eight, having a child at a service academy? Well, the coolest thing is you don't have to go college shopping. True. Our third is a civilian. She's in a regular school and she's at June. Just finished your junior year. So we finally did get the real college experience other than the, Oh, what was interesting, I think up until then is the only experience in regular college for anybody in my family among the five of us was mine. And so my kids kind of grew up with the whole academy mentality from my husband. And um, [inaudible] just thought it's just harder. The misconception that regular college is easy. I think it was probably the hardest thing to contend with. And um, I think the biggest difference is of course, being able to take your kid to college, not had anybody yell at her. Will, my daughter did get yelled at, her brother and sister went to try to give her the plebe summer experience Flagler. So there was, there was a lot of yelling and a lot of staring and I'm sure that was quite the spectacle. It was. It was quite rambunctious. But, uh, she then set up her bed with her pink comforter and put posters on our wall and all of that. So that, that was, yes, yes. What I loved her. The bed was in that country. We got our memory mattress, but I think more than different in the end, the college experience is still very much the same. It is what you make of it. You have to work hard. You have to attend class. It's different at a regular school because nobody's telling you when nobody's yelling at you, you know that you have to, nobody's putting you in study, study hour, study hall, nobody's making you have lights out. So it's almost harder to some extent. At least that's something. Um, my daughter talked about, she says, you know, I have to make my own decisions for me. And even though it might be hard to live in that bubble of the academy with all these duties and all these collateral things between military and physical and academic and the pressure and the expectations, your expectations from home, I think if you are committed to your higher education, you're going to have those same expectations for yourself and regular college. And it's not as, it's not as carefree and easy as everybody thinks. I would say for us as parents, the biggest difference though is the fact that our kid is signing up to be in the military. You're not ours anymore. You belonged to the navy, you belong to the Coast Guard. And um, it's, there is

Speaker 1 32:35

a much higher, much more final commitment that we as parents feel because you're signing on the dotted line. Two for seven is hard. I think every parent who sends their first child to college of course comes home from dropping them off and experiences that empty nest. You know that, that emptiness, I'll never forget coming home after dropping off our son after the swearing in and everything and the big doors closed, you know, we followed them all the way in and the yelling started and we came home and everybody was kind of quiet and somber. It was, it was excitement and sadness at the same time. And I went into his room and I sat on his bed and I shed a tear, you know, cause he, I would never have him again. Yeah. That was it. After this you're grown up, you're getting paid your have a job, you have five years afterwards that you know you never come home again. Yeah. Not the same. So that's different. College kids come home for the summer and they still sleep on your couch and watch Netflix, you know the car. And there was no seriously, and my sister literally just graduated from college about a week and a half ago and she's moving, moving back home and obviously working. Yeah. But like you're saying, you get them back sometimes, but you have the ability to get him backwards. Me As I graduated. And then within a couple of weeks, I was already at my first military, like training for my officer designated or, and I was already going through school and starting my qualification process, which was down in Florida, which is for me being a California kid again, all the way across the country. And then I finished that and then I moved to Maryland and I'm living in Maryland and there was never that transition period back home. And then even during the summers you get three weeks at home instead of three and a half months at home, which is tough. And you know, at three weeks plead year you'd do something, but by the time you get to third class here, you gone off with friends. Oh, you're taking, yeah, spring breaks and summer vacations. You're, you're doing fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 4 34:29

it is different. And let me just say one or the other thing that I told my kids when they went before they even went and said, look, you're going to feel really grown up. Please realize that graduation, you're gonna be 21 or 22 or 23 just like every other college kid that's graduating and going home for a little bit until they get a job. Okay. Yeah. The feelings so grown up, I don't know, hopefully I don't step on any toes. But kids, you meet a significant other, you might have the urge to get yourself engaged and married. Oh, that's very common because you couldn't, for some reason, the fact that they tell you you can't be married while you're there, it makes you want to go to that next step. And you know, I advise my kids, I said, look, you don't know who you are yet. You went from our house to the academy that told you what to do and then you're going to your training and your first ship or your first posting and that's where you're going to need to start finding yourself. And if you get married right away, you're never going to know who you are. And so a lot of meds that do married and they're happy and everything turns out great. But there's so many marriages that don't, like the failure rate on marriages is so much higher and it's sad, but it's true. So, so true. And like I say that because I did it, you know, and, and that I was married for about three minutes and you know, my husband now, it was my second husband and he's the father of my kids. But, um, yeah, I got married at 21 right out of college and I was not, not smart. And so I do talk to Mitch Shipman and we have talks with parents sometimes because they get all excited about the engagement and the wedding. And, um, and we're like, guys, you're thinking your kid is a lot older and a lot more mature than he is because he's wearing the uniform or she's wearing a uniform and has a career. So that's, that's something to think about. Oh, absolutely. By the kids. I Apologize, I cut you off here. But that is so true because at the academy, whether you like to believe it or not, you're basically treated like a child. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean that in a way of everything is provided for you. You can go down and you can eat every day. You have your same room, you live in the same place for four years. You're constantly around. You have all your friends, you have a time that you need to be back in your room and you sign, you have curfew, right? Like you're, you're not still get your cs. You're not an adult yet. And so, and you don't get that first adult experience until you graduate. And then the day you graduate, they're like, they drop you in the world that are like, they're like you're an adult now. And that, that adjustment, and like you're saying, finding yourself and discovering yourself and figuring out who you are as an adult, it takes a little bit of time. And that's a transition process. Absolutely. And so it's, my opinion as a recent graduate here is for parents to be as involved in their kids' lives when they graduate as possible because I don't know what they're doing. I mean, they really don't. We don't know what's going on. My daughter would call me, she wouldn't went to Wilmington. And she called me. She's like, how do I get a grass stain out of my, you know, my laundry, your laundry, you know, so how do I make this? And the power's out, what do I do? I don't know. You've got to call the car company. It's like she herself says she's an electrical engineer. And she's like, you know, I knew nothing about living on my own. You guys took care of everything from me in the academy, took care of everything. I was in this bubble and now I'm having to learn these things on my own. And um, she went straight to command and to see, and by the same token, another person, that young man that she knew from west point went straight to training and his continued training. And so he was still dilating that a little bit, that being on base and you know, being close to everything. So it's, it's different. A different experience. Absolutely. They do still need you. They will need how to, how do I boil water again and now I have no idea. Yeah. Google it, figure it out. And I had a plaque that I gave her and says, when in doubt, just call mom VA that that

Speaker 1 38:31

is the most a true statement I've ever heard in my life. Call my mom constantly. Um, all right, well perfect. Um, thank you. This puts us, uh, Ryan at the time now to start kind of our lightning round of questions. So I didn't really ask a lot of people, uh, very similar things when they come on the show. And so in this lightening round, your first question is what is your favorite spot on the yard?

Speaker 4 38:58

It's a, it's actually hospital point. Okay. Yeah. Why hospital point? I don't know. It's just peaceful. Used to take a lot of walks out there and I also have some friends, my sister in law's parents are buried in the columbarium. Okay. On the way there. So just kind of like that walk over there. Absolutely. I can see the academy from a different yeah.

Speaker 1 39:19

Point of view I think. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And so for everyone who doesn't know what hospital point is, literally across like a a foot walking bridge, um, his place got hospital point and there's a big grass field and there's tons of place just to sit out along the water and it really is very peaceful and very pretty and a nice place. A lot of people go on runs out there. There are a lot of intermural sports that happen out there. Yeah, it's, it's painful. It's good pick. I like it. All right. Second question is, do you have a favorite memory at the academy in terms of special event or just anything that's happening or maybe even it's just a favorite, a dinner that you had or whatnot? Anywhere in Annapolis?

Speaker 4 40:00

Actually, I thought about this a lot. I mean, we live in Maryland, so there's been so many events from the, from just going to watch the blue angels for the first time ever when I was back in college. Um, having never seen an air show before. Yeah. Um, two I would have to say the, what is it, the baccalaureate service at the end of the year when the senior sign the book in the temple. Um, and it was the end of my son's plebe year. Okay. And so he took us up. I, my two daughters who were still in high school and middle school and myself. It was just a really cool service. So that I would say that was probably a, an event that sticks out for me. Yeah. That and just like dropping my kids off for summer seminar for some reason. What was, what was it about dropping your kids off for summer seminar? Just that they're so excited to go check it out and that they got to go, you know, the oldest really wanted to go, so he was really excited. The middle one didn't want to have anything to do with it, but she did it because her dad wanted her to, and the youngest just thought it would be the coolest thing to go do what her brother had done because she was so young when he went and they had some French midshipman made her cry while she was playing a game. But she has PTSD from pizza. That's what she'll tell you. All right. Um, all right. Next question is, what do you suggest to parents and appointees to best prepare for plebe summer? Well, that's a two part question. It is. Okay. So for, for parents, just enjoy the ride. Okay. Um, one of the things that I did do was I would go into my son's room at all hours whenever he was, he was, you know, the few weeks before he went. And I'd go in there and be like, okay, I forgot to tell you this really important parenting thing that I forgot about. And he'd be like, none. Okay, great. You don't want me to get grass stains and where, and you'll see other kids cheat and do bad things. But you should never do that because you want to look at yourself in the mirror. And I had all this parenting that I thought I had missed doing. So try not to do that too much. Um, just try to enjoy, enjoy the time before they leave and for the, for the future meds, definitely take your course because I'm going to guess that there's a lot of really cool stuff in their condition yourself for that heat and humidity because that will drop you passed over the summer. Um, and for not only for the parents were for the, for the, for the plebes, we remember that this is just, it's a summer. You can do anything for nine or 12 weeks or however long it is. It's not the hardest thing you've ever done in your life. Okay. There's going to be harder stuff, but it's also kind of a game. The people that are your, that are your detailers. We're kids two years ago still are. They still are. There's somebody's kid and so they're doing a job that they're picked to do. And if you can figure out what makes them tick early and play the game, you're going to do a lot better than if you take everything so to heart and so seriously that acts you. So just, just, I would, I would give that kind of advice two sleeps and parents. Um, and for parents also just be supportive, get them through it. But if they tell you in the end, I can't, this isn't for me. Still be supportive. Yep. Okay. Don't, don't ever make them feel like this is the only alternative for them. Yeah, because they might not be, one little thing that happened on our group has happened pretty much every pleat summer is some of the plea parents will start getting very critical of the co of the detailers uncovered because coastguard and they'll start saying things about the upperclassmen on the page and we do 10 we do have to cut them off and remind them that those, those midshipmen are somebody's kid and more than likely they're also on the, those parents are on the group. So they need to really be cautious of how they are reacting to what they think might be going on. Absolutely. But their kids. So that's, I would be sorry, long winded, but

Speaker 1 44:31

no, I know and I love that and I'm just going to kind of make a comment here for everyone. If you haven't listened to all of the academy insider podcast episodes in the first episode I talked with command and her name and we talk about the detailers and it's just important to note that now obviously they are, um, they're hand selected, like they're high performing individuals. They go through a lot of training prior to plebe summer, but this is meant to be a defining leadership experience for them and they're going to mess up sometimes. And like at the end of the day, most of them are still 20 or 21 year old kids who are learning how they want to lead and they're going to, you know, sometimes things happen and you should never be critical of them personally. I mean, there's people who are trying to develop their own leadership styles and build themselves personally and professionally as well. It's an entire learning experience for everyone. Um, so I mean, I'm always just a big person with kindness and understanding in, in general. Um, but it's, it, but it's important to know that, that the details are learning too and they're going to do some great things and sometimes they're going to do some less than great things, but constantly just being supportive and not being overtly and vocally critical of individuals. Definitely. And that's the same for academy insider. Like if you were to ever post something on academy insiders page that is critical or negative, um, towards the individuals or the academy, it's not going to be tolerated. That's not the purpose of the, of these pages. That purpose is to inform and to support. Um, and that'll always maintain.

Speaker 4 46:01

Exactly. And that's, that's it. That is exactly the same as what we will do. Um, and we are, again, not perfect. We'll make mistakes too. And there are times things will get through the little sieve for us. But, uh, just, just as you stated, we would take that stuff down. Um, and people do private messages and let us know sometimes when we've missed something. So.

Speaker 1 46:23

Awesome. All right, final question. And this is, it's kind of putting a thousand dollar thousand dollar question, um, as a parent, was there any specific thing or anything in general that you wish you knew prior to your son attending the Naval Academy that you didn't know?

Speaker 4 46:42

Oh, I wish.

Speaker 5 46:47

Okay.

Speaker 4 46:47

I wish I knew more about some of the support systems at the academy. I wish I knew more how to help my son advocate for himself and my daughter advocate for herself at coastguard. Yeah. Um, I think some of that stuff sort of gets glossed over during the, the very quick orientations and, and lectures or things that they might not quite listen to. Um, I don't, I, I wish I had known how to help them with some of that. Absolutely. But not, but you know, consider myself fairly knowledgeable. My children tease me, you know, when, yeah. Mom, when you went to the academy back in 80s, you know, well, I did do a lot of studying at Nimitz Library, but I did not attend any classes. But, um, yeah, I, I wish I had known a little bit more about some of the resources that they could have used while there. Yeah. Um, and um, yeah, and I think that's something they can be does a good job, but I think maybe a little better.

Speaker 1 47:50

Absolutely. And obviously this isn't the episode where we'll go into all of the resources, but if you have questions about any of the academy has so many resources for academics, for physical development, um, for even emotional or just kinda mental. Um, there are a ton of resources to get help if you need it and they're very willing to help. Um, but a lot of times you have to be proactive so you have to one know about them and the dean to be willing to go use them. Yeah,

Speaker 4 48:18

right. Don't be afraid to use them. Don't think that, you know, if you do use them, you're showing some sort of weakness or, exactly. And that's what's hard. I mean, most of you, a 100% of you who go to the academies were top dog in your high school. And most of the time, high school wasn't that hard. So it, it's hard to admit that, you know, maybe something isn't quite perfect for you and you have to go get help. So that's, I think that's what I wish I'd been more able to know more about that. But then again, you know, then you're a helicopter parent too, you know, you guys. Yeah. It's uh, it's maybe I should've done a better job of teaching my kids to self advocate. I mean, sometimes I took care of too much stuff for them. Yeah. Really admit that. So. Absolutely. Um, children just don't come with instructions. They don't give you an instruction. Oh yeah. No, no regulations, no standard operating procedures. Okay. Raise your kid. No owner's manual. Nothing. Then they're called the kid rags.

Speaker 1 49:20

Oh Man. Um, all right, well thank you so much. And it again, if anyone listening has questions about those resources, please feel free to either ask the parent's page or ask Academy Insider. I'd be glad to go into in depth about all of the different resources that we have. Um, but patty, thank you so much. I'm so appreciative of your willingness to share your story and your experiences, um, in so being the naval academy parents community and just in general support community. Um, so thank you so very much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. All right. Uh, thank you guys so much. If you have any questions, uh, please again, email me@grantatacademyandsaturday.com or just shoot me a message on academy insider and I have a direct line to Patty. So if you have any questions directly for her, you can either go through me or patty if you feel like I'm either giving a, your email or the name of the page. Again, just one more time for people to reach out if they have any questions for you. Um, and you're willing, uh, sure. Yeah. The pages

Speaker 4 50:23

USN a mid Moms, parentheses and dad's parenthesis, exclamation point on Facebook. It is a, it is a closed group, but if you ask for membership, we will reply fairly quickly and get you signed on. Um, my name is patty Latin on Facebook, p a t t. Y. L. U. T. T. O. N. There's about three of us. Um, mine usually has a uh, um, profile, page profile picture with my picture and some dogs in it. So feel free to, to try to, to a friend me personally too, or send me a private message. That'd be fine. Perfect. That's probably the best way to get me email. I have three of them. I teach school and do some of the things. I'm not great with email these days. I totally understand, but yes, please feel free to reach out to me or any of the admins on the, on the mid moms and dads page and um, we'd love to have you.

Speaker 3 51:16

Perfect. All right, well thank you guys so much and I hope everyone listening has a great day. Thanks. I mean, wow, how about that? I'm so impressed by Patty's dedication, uh, to help in Midshipman, in their community of people who support them. Uh, she's going to be one of my goto people if I ever have a question based on all of her experience helping others on their naval academy journey. And I hope you guys use her as a resource as well. If you enjoyed this show and you want to learn more about Patty's Facebook page, I'll put a link to it in the show notes of this podcast. Please make sure to go to my Facebook page, academy insider, where I'll also leave a link, I'm on page, you'll find some information and links to blogs, videos, and podcasts that you can use to learn more about the United States Naval Academy. I routinely go live on that page and we'll answer your questions during that live session on Facebook. So make sure to tune into those and constantly ask my questions so that way I can help you better understand the midshipman experience. And then always you can find more information about me. Um, my Facebook page or podcast@www.academy on saturday.com. Thank you all so much. Go like my Facebook page, subscribe, review, and like this podcast, and I'll see you on the next episode.