TALLAHASSEE, FL -- High school seniors going into college have a lot on their plate and will often need guidance moving to their next level in life.
Family Therapist Jane Marks offers these tips for parents:
1. Basic skills towards the end of high school that are extremely important are money and budgeting skills, cooking skills, personal care and first aid skills, organizational skills, domestic skills and managing a home, driving and auto maintenance skills, communication skills, safety skills, coping with emotions, certainly basic educational skills and decision making skills. Each of these skills are all college courses.
2. High school and college bring so much awareness outside of subjects and themes. For example, maintaining balance. Balance begins in high school so how you balance your time, your schoolwork, your family obligations, fun, spiritual demands is critical in your teens' development. The most balanced people are those who understand this concept and are fully aware of what that means in their world.
3. As teenagers navigate their way through college and onto life, it is important to understand the need for personal responsibility, both for actions and for school and for the things that are ahead of you. At the end of high school as well as the beginning of college there is a tremendous amount of freedom. At that point not many people are monitoring teens progress. Nobody is checking, so it is important for your teen as they go off to college and while they are there to understand the nature of personal responsibility and how it affects their lives in every way.
4. One of the things that we've talked about for years on the Teen Talk segment is the idea of critical thinking. What that means is thinking for yourself, coming to your own conclusions and this is a major skill that you learn both toward the end of high school as well as college and this is something as parent we have been viewing.
