New Beginnings

This month promises to be a very exciting one.

My daughter has completed her first week of her junior year in college and likes all her classes.

My older son begins college in a couple of weeks, where he will try out for the baseball team. His goal is to combine the intense five-year architecture program with baseball, so it will be quite a challenge. In some ways though, he does his best work when he is pressed for time - not unlike his mother.

My youngest is at a high school orientation for freshmen today, led by a "link crew" of experienced seniors who have volunteered their time to help the new kids adjust to life in H.S. They will keep in touch with the kids throughout their freshman year, helping them make the adjustment to their new school.

My husband is switching to a new group at work and will have new responsibilities there.

I will be writing full time come next week, and I can't wait. So here's to new challenges and new beginnings!

Give Your Teen the Chance to Prove Himself

I volunteered to help at High School registration this year. I had worked the Senior Registration last year, and it had gone pretty smoothly. So this year I decided to be brave and work two days, registering first Seniors and then Juniors.

To my utter amazement, almost half of the kids showed up with their parents. One would expect to see a lot of parents with the Freshman class, maybe even the Sophomores, but sixteen and seventeen year olds?

A lot of these kids can drive themselves, and most live within walking distance. The registration process is simple. The parents and children complete the forms at home, so all they have to do when they come to school is hand in the correct forms at the correct station. There are plenty of parent volunteers to steer them in the right direction, and the student should be able to handle any problems that arise.

It's great to see parents involved in their children's education, but what will these kids do when they have to choose classes and complete registration for college without help from mom and dad? Parents are not included in that process, so going through high school registration is good practice for their kids and helps them build confidence in their ability to take care of themselves. What do you think?

Conflicting Signals

Today I attended the Parent Orientation at my son's college. While it was very informative and very well-organized, it was also very - well - scary!

After hearing the general presentations on how to help our child transition into adulthood and to watch out for the two most common causes of academic problems - stress and lack of sleep - the representative for the architecture program dropped a bombshell.

During the five year program, students are expected to work seven days a week (in order to complete group projects on the weekends) and they will frequently need to pull all-nighters to keep up with their work. When I asked her if these students had procrastinated, she said no. The workload is simply that difficult and demanding. They also have a dropout rate of 30-40% after the first year and 10-20% after the second.

Having always urged our children to find a balance in their lives, this was a bit hard to swallow. But I'll keep an open mind. We'll see how things go. Maybe she was exaggerating; maybe he'll rise to the challenge and thrive on the work. Only time will tell.