Welcome to part two of our three-part series, where we are covering all the best tips and tricks for not just surviving but thriving in the transition of your loved one joining the services from Basic to AIT to your first duty station.

My name is Lindsey, and I am an Army Wife to my active-duty husband, Matt. If you missed the first part of this series, make sure to check it out HERE! In this post we addressed how to prepare and thrive through Basic Training. 

But what happens when graduation is over and they move to the next phase of their military career?

After Basic Training, your soldier will move on to the next phase of Training, where they learn their specific job, they will be doing for their service.

Simply put, Basic Training focuses on becoming a soldier, and AIT (for Army), but it can be called different names for different branches, such as “A school” in the Navy, which focuses on the job training for the career they are pursuing.

Sometimes the AIT location is the same as where they attended Basic Training; other times, it’s completely different. For my husband, it was in a completely different state.

There are some similarities to Basic Training: you can expect a lot more waiting, several unknowns and restrictions, and your service member not having their complete freedom back yet.

Nevertheless, there is some great news about AIT that makes it different from Basic Training:

1. They have a lot more freedom. Most of the time at AIT, soldiers quickly get access to their phones back and outside of school hours, and studying can have much more communication.
2. Your soldier’s quality of life will improve a lot. Don’t get me wrong, there are still challenges and restrictions that come with being in their job training. But my husband said even still, it was a night and day treatment from Basic Training. This gave me peace of mind that my husband would regain some normalcy.
3. Depending on how long your service member’s advanced Training is, you MAY be able to move to be with them. For the Army at the time my husband was in Training, if the soldier’s training was longer than six months, families were allowed to move on base to the training site, and they treated it as a PCS move.

For me, this meant that I was packed up from our home in California and got on base housing at Fort Gordon, where my husband’s Training was taking place. My husband’s AIT was supposed to be about eight months long.

Granted, this option is not best for everyone, and some families still choose to wait until Training is done because Matt was unable to live with me for the first three months of his Training, so I was completely alone at our house on base.

Additionally, my husband was assigned the overnight schedule for school, so he was in class from 8 pm-6 am. It was rough assimilating to the military spouse life alone, living alone, and moving independently. But, for me, it was worth physically supporting him and starting this new life together.

Your loved one will be focusing on their career, which Matt enjoyed. It is almost like a version of college or a trade school where they are quickly getting trained to do what they signed up for. For many people, this is inspiring and fascinating to them. Seeing my husband thrive and enjoy what he was learning brought me a lot of joy.

One of the most beautiful aspects about transitioning from Basic Training to AIT is getting to debrief and reconnect with your loved one and also hearing about the friendships they made.

My husband still keeps in touch with some of his Basic Training buddies and even more from his AIT experience. I remember that first Christmas after Basic Training, he had received gifts in the mail from some of the friends he made that were jokes from their time in BT. It was so cool to see the genuine connections that were formed right off the bat.

My friendships deepened while he was at Basic Training with the civilian friends as already had as I leaned on them for support. But I made so many new friends within the military community during his AIT. I hosted class BBQs for his classmates and reached out to other spouses in our same shoes for game nights and tea days at my house. Those are some of the sweetest memories I cherish from our entire military experience so far to date.

Even if you can’t join your loved one for AIT, you can still make friendships on Facebook groups or chat threads that some AIT groups create to foster community.

I can’t encourage you enough to be intentional with this time. Your loved one is getting closer to being assigned their first duty station and starting their career. These are monumental moments they only get to experience once and are the foundation of their careers, friendships, and knowledge of the military.

Everybody’s AIT experience will look different. Depending on the branch and MOS, the length of training varies, and how much time your loved one will need to devote to their schooling and studying will depend on their instructor and class environment.

I would check out support groups for your branch and MOS for more specific insight. However, be encouraged! You and your loved one are making your way through the transition process, and hey, CONGRATULATIONS on making it through the Basic Training experience. For me, that was the most intense part. You have so much to look forward to ahead.

Keep your eye out for the final blog of our three-part series, in which I will cover preparing for your first duty station and what you can expect as your loved one prepares to start their career in the service!

Until then, remember, we got your 6! (Military lingo, for we got your back. And yes, friend, one day you will learn most of this crazy military life lingo.)

*For more inspiration from Lindsey, Check out her podcast There Can be Purpose To Your Pain.