It is natural for parents to be involved in their teen’s college decision-making process. Parents must, in most cases, pay for college, so they should have some say in where their teen ends up going. However, the Prudent Parent knows that the teen must be the primary mover in this process. They should do research into the various colleges in which they are interested, and they should present their list of desirable schools to the parent. Once the parent has approved a list of schools and has taken the teen on his college visits, the teen should make the final decision about where to apply. As far as the interview goes, parents usually drive their teen to the interview, but other than that, they should stay in the background. Parents who do more are involved rob the teen of the independence of the experience.
Furthermore, once the teen has been admitted and it is time to be dropped off at college for the first time in the fall of the teen’s freshman year, parents should not linger more than a few hours. Unfortunately, there are parents who spend the first week with their teen doing everything from decorating his room to helping him choose courses to attending class with him. This is both unnecessary and overly involved. In still other cases, parents actually move to the teen’s college town so that the teen may continue to live at home or, at least, have the parent nearby during his college tenure. It almost goes without saying that by this time, teens should be sufficiently independent that they should be able to make decisions for themselves about what courses they will take, what extra-curricular activities they will pursue, and all other aspects of their initial college experience. Doing this without undue interference from parents is part of the benefit of going to college.
Making a Career Choice
In addition to helping their teen make a good college choice, parents can help their young adult child think through his career choice. In fact, young adults rank parents above peers in the value of their opinions in this area.
In addition to helping their young adult child to consider his career choice, Prudent Parents can, in the years prior to their child moving away from home, promote the development of specific skills relevant to success in the 21st century workplace. These skills include the following (Alvy, 2008):
• being a self-motivated self-starter;
• solving problems creatively;
• thinking in original ways;
• communicating effectively both orally and in writing;
• working cooperatively;
• organizing, prioritizing, and analyzing;
• reading well and critically;
• drawing conclusions; and,
• developing new ways of learning.
Parents are also involved in helping children to learn personal responsibility, and they transmit values such as a strong work ethic to their children.
It is important to note here, however, that young adult children whose parents are over-involved in their career development choices have more difficulty with career development tasks. (Hoghughi, 2004) An example of over-involvement would be going on a job interview with the young adult or calling the young adult’s employer to discuss a problem that he is experiencing on the job. While most people would consider these sorts of things out of the range of possibility, some parents have been known to do such things. Needless to say, interfering to this degree undermines the young adult in countless ways.
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References
Alvy, K. (2008). The Positive Parent: Raising Happy, Healthy, and Successful Children, Birth to Adolescence. NY: Teachers College Press.
Hoghughi, M. and Long, N. (2004). Handbook of Parenting: Theory and Research for Practice. London: Sage Publications.
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