How to Best Support Your Child through High School Years and College Application Process
Encourage your child to find their passions. When selecting courses, encourage them to challenge themselves, especially in those subjects that interest them most. Help them navigate extracurricular activities to try new things, allowing them to dabble their first year or two until they find the few things they love doing. Pay attention to where they exude energy or speak most excitedly and encourage them to follow that path. Let them change their minds and explore.
Follow their lead. Trust their knowledge of situations and allow them to navigate issues and setbacks so they can build their problem solving skills. Share your advice when they ask, but let them decide how to manage their time, where to expend their effort and with whom they do both. Constructively work through natural consequences as a learning experience so their next choices become incrementally better.
Ease into the college process. Visit college campuses as you travel throughout high school to spread out the intensity and provide variety early on. Allow your child to initiate discussion on future plans and speak casually about it. People around you will build the hype and give all kinds of opinions. Share only what you know to be true about college and the admissions process and ease your family’s anxiety by being informed and confident about your sources of information.
Manage expectations. When deciding on the college list and doing research, be sure to help your child get to know and be excited about schools in all categories: reach, target and likely. It’s great to have a dream school, but even better to know they’ll be happy at any of the schools where they are applying. In addition, make sure you have a conversation about college finances early in the process so everyone is on the same page about affordability and who is responsible for paying tuition, room and board, travel and spending money.
Pick a day and know the deadlines. College talk can easily take over family life. Enjoy your child’s final high school years without the constant reminder of what’s ahead. Be aware of looming deadlines, break down larger tasks, and make sure you have a solid timeline. Pick one day of the week to sit down with your child and lay out the week’s tasks and then let them work through it without daily reminders.
Be the admin and the cheerleader. Help your student by setting up a framework research process, making the travel arrangements for visits, and putting together a timeline, but let them do the meat of the work. Celebrate completed milestones and help them brainstorm their strengths and assets so they showcase all that’s great about them.
The college application process can be a stressful time, mostly because of the added layer of work on top of a regular high school course load and activities, but it is also a time of great growth and self-discovery for students. Parents can help their students manage the stress and foster their exploration while still allowing them to lead the process. Enjoy your child’s high school years and your last years all at home together!
