HELPING your teen succeed


From High School to College: Loriann Oberlin, MS, LCPC F


or some, the preparation begins long before the SAT or ACT exams. College seems to be instilled in stu-


dents from ninth grade or even middle school. “I started to see my kids up late at night doing homework when they were 11 and 12 years old, and then one of my daughters developed a physical condition related to the stress,” says Vicki Abeles, producer of Race to Nowhere, a documentary on how far, how fast we push today’s kids. Abeles reminds parents that kids have their whole lives ahead of them and not to feel that they have to be in any sense “finished” ending high school. “Defer college conversations until their junior year,” she says. “In that way you allow your child to be present with what they’re learning.”


When is it time to prepare for the send- off to independent living and studying, and what measures might parents take to ease the way? Try following these five steps.


Step #1 Consider other


pathways for your child If the primary reason for a 4-year


22 C2 Chheessapeake Family | September 2011 | ChesapeakeFamily.com apeake Family September 2011  ChesapeakeFamily.com


degree is success, jump to the biogra- phies of Bill Gates, Mary Kay Ash, Michael Dell, Rachel Ray and Steven Spielberg. These individuals became wealthy in their respective industries because they parlayed passion, talent, and work ethic into profitable ventures — reportedly without a college degree.


Though a degree often equates to one’s ticket to the upper middle class, be sure to separate fantasy from reality. Newsweek reported that for students graduating in a recession, it may take 17 years to reach the salary of slightly older colleagues.


At the same time, average student loan debt is 47% higher than it was a decade ago. According to O*NET Online, the projected outlook for plumbers is bright (and eco-friendly), with a faster than average growth rate, vocational and on- the-job education. An associate’s degree can provide that but it’s not mandatory. Teacher assistants, fitness & wellness coordinators, industrial ecologists, and medical equipment repairers have projected growth rates “much faster than average.”


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