What to do if College isn’t the Next Logical Step for Your Teenager?

Transitioning from high school to college is always a distinct challenge. For some teens this new life presents the impetus and opportunities they need to take charge of their future and excel academically. Conversely, a rapid shift to a life filled with new scholastic expectations and skyrocketing uncertainties about everything from managing one’s own budget to navigating social scenes fraught with more risky adult situations can be poor choice for many teens. If you are concerned your child is not academically or socially prepared for college, or particularly if they are simply not very committed to or excited about this traditional path - there are diverse and rewarding options for your family to consider. If you believe your teenager is underachieving, learn how to Motivate the Underachiever >>

Common Pressures Lead to Common Mistakes
If a teen’s parents went to college their kids are almost certain to believe that they must achieve the same success, or be labeled a failure. The truth is that there are so many ways to succeed in life, that parents can show sensitivity and wisdom by not saddling their children with strict and confining expectations. For most young people, attending college is a financial decision that will shape their life for decades to come. Not only will it hopefully enable them to earn more, but also the need to pay back their loans will demand that they continuously earn more to pay down their loans. Going to college without a full ride is, in essence, to step onto a very demanding path - with life-altering consequences for attempts to try anything completely different. Some people relish seeing their life planned out before them. However, many find this lack of freedom appalling. Supporting your teen to make a careful and independent decision about what to do after high school is one of the strongest ways to ensure their happiness in the years to come.

Turning up the social and family pressures that all too often convince teens that it is college or bust is very often not something parents do deliberately. Outside factors account for so much of the pressure that parents need to make conscious efforts not to compound it. Instead parents can help their teens see what they are told about college in context, just like the other pressures teens face. Schools naturally want their students to succeed, yet continually pushing impressionable kids toward college leaves the half that do not end up going feeling like second class citizens. As public schools struggle to teach as much as they test, kids are coming to misunderstand the differences between learning and institutional education.

As a parent it is up to you to help your teen set the mountain of admissions brochures and concerned questions about their future aside. The real question is, how is your teen is already learning about what empowers him or her to make the choices that will lead to their dreams? When you enable your children to shrug off unhealthy amounts of pressure and peruse the ways of learning that are personally meaningful to them, they are less likely to charge off to a college that may not be right for them just because they believe they have to.

College freshmen often make a whirlwind of mistakes after making the common discovery that their college does not support them in learning and growing in their own way. For example, consider the teens who made Cs and Bs in high school and ended up going to an unremarkable state university without considering the decision very much. They just went because they got in, they thought college was what they were supposed to do next, and maybe a couple friends were going to the same school. The first week of class they might realize that they only have one class that they are really interested in, most of their classes are so big that their professor might never learn their name, and two of their classes are actually taught by graduate students.

Such realities are par for the course, even for many more exclusive universities. Not only does this mean that your teen might not be very engaged in learning to pursue their dreams, but also the jolt of such realizations can lead them to seek a hazardous cornucopia of outlets for their frustration. Any combination of alcohol, drug, mental health, and academic issues commonly result from a teen failing to explore, research, and personally consider their own plans after high school.

Preparing for Dreams, Not Conformity
Actively listening to your children will help you prepare them to chart their own path one good decision at a time. Encouraging them to focus on what inspires them, rather than what others tell them they should be thinking and doing, is a powerful foundation to support them in growing and relying on their own self confidence. Discovering that they can figure out life decisions for themselves is vitally important in enabling teens to succeed in the challenges they choose. Plenty of good parents miss the boat by focusing their attention solely on helping their teens to achieving traditional benchmarks, like excellence in sports and activities and getting into a respected college. Without starting first with letting their children explore what is important to them, parents can end up with teens unsure of why the are doing what they are doing - and consequently lacking the resilience and drive to reach their potential.

Practically, you need to listen to what your teens are passionate about early on to help them get more involved in preparing to make this the focus of their learning. Facilitating getting more engaged in the ideas and activities they care about, because they light up their intellect and life, is a vital starting point. Do not let your kids be limited to studying, or hearing about, things that matter to them. Help them get hands on experiences. Getting real world perspectives on dreams that they have not had the opportunity to road test before, often helps young people see what they need to do to make them a realistic goals - and take more responsibility for making it happen.

Experiential education connects young people to causes and careers, empowering them to make choices based on their own personal understanding of the world, not just something they crammed for a test. For example, a young person interested in social service could volunteer at a local hospital after school. What they learn could lead them to variety of positive choices. They could decide to bring up their grades enough to become a doctor eventually. Or come to see that it is the nurses that really get to spend time nurturing patients, and go straight to vocational school to be a nurse. Alternatively, they could decide they would like to take a year off before college to do Americorps, because they realize that volunteering for a few hours a week in a hospital is simply not a broad enough experience for them to discover how they can best serve people with different needs in different places.

Learning Outside of College
Realistically, parents need to help their teens asses how capable they are in making and carrying out their own long-term plans. In doing so, parents can help teens agree to prudent guidelines before they plan what to do next, if college is not something they are determined and able to get started with immediately after high school. The idea is not to cut down your teen’s dearest ideas, but to set them up for success so that what they do choose to do becomes an achievement they can build on. For example, if young people have not been away from home and apart from their parents for a few months before, it might be shortsighted to encourage them to make plans relying on far greater independence.

Taking a year away from classes in between high school and college is an empowering way to allow for teens to grow the depth of familiarity with the logistics of pursuing their dreams necessary to decide if and where they want to go to college. Customarily called a ‘gap-year,’ this is a tradition that is already extremely common, especially for European teens. Taking this time to travel and be exposed to different social groups and societies is critical to helping young people see their circumstances and choices in context. Careful decisions and perseverance often lead young people to finish their gap-year significantly more qualified and prepared for the college or profession of their choice.

A few categories to consider when planning a gap-year or other transitional time in your teen’s life include interesting jobs and apprenticeships, internships and volunteer opportunities, and international travel. After high school it is essential that teens rapidly gain work experience to support themselves and gain an intimate knowledge of their talents and job skills. However, this does not mean the job cannot be doing something they care deeply about. Take time to make sure they have the communication skills to apply for and get the kind of jobs in which they are interested. Diligent internet research and networking can result in jobs they never dreamed were possible, from working in a national park in Alaska to delivering sailboats to the Caribbean.

Chances to be a volunteer or intern can regularly be found with room and board and can offer hard working young people an opening to break into dynamic professions that value on the job training over a college degree, like working on political campaigns or in film production. International travel, especially in developing countries, is often an eye-popping learning adventure that changes the way young people see themselves in the world and inspires them to redouble their efforts and meet their dreams head-on. Combining these approaches is a sensible way to support teens in fusing diverse experiences to forge unique qualifications.

As teens seek success on their own, perhaps the best thing parents can do to be there for them is to keep communication open, regular, and non-judgmental. If teens feel that their parents listen to and respect them they are much more likely to take their advice to heart, and to be better able to avoid unwise choices and unhealthy situations. LEAPNow (leapnow.org) is one-of-a-kind organization that counsels young people on pursuing their dreams and can guide them through every aspect of volunteer and internship placement around the world. They personally design travel-based year-long and semester-long programs for high school completion and college credit, which are eligible for normal financial aid, and keep costs low. In addition, LEAPNow provides backup while students are overseas, including help with arranging insurance and remaining on-call to troubleshoot should any serious difficulty arise. Exploring resources like this one together, you can let teens know that it their future is in their hands, and it is going to be exciting.