Advice! What do you wish you had known/done differently during the HS years?

Parent Cafe
21

Remember that paid work counts as an EC. And it can be a uniquely valuable experience. It doesn’t fit into all high school kids’ lives, but I think that those who do have the opportunity to work benefit from it.

However, as with other ECs, it’s easy to overcommit to jobs. Parents may have to set limits.

Also, I agree with @ClassicRockerDad about the importance of sleep. When my daughter, as a college freshman, said that the best thing about college was that you could sleep as much as you wanted, I knew we had not paid enough attention to this aspect of life during high school.

@ucbalumnus pointed out that your auto insurance premiums will go up when your kid gets a driver’s license. The increase is much higher for boys than girls. If the cost is prohibitive, consider having your child get a learner’s permit (which typically does not increase your premium) at 16 and renewing it (which probably means taking the written test again) a year later. Having a learner’s permit means that the kid can drive as long as someone over 21 is in the right-hand seat. If you insist that the kid drive every time he/she goes out with a parent, the kid will get lots of behind-the-wheel experience for two years without increasing your insurance costs.

Also, per our insurance agent, when your kid does get a license, do not allow the kid to drive home after the license is issued. The moment the kid gets the license, he/she is no longer covered by your policy the way he/she was with a learner’s permit. You have to call the insurance agent and get the kid added to the policy, which can take a day or two. And during that day or two, the kid can’t drive. It’s a good idea to mention this in advance because teenagers often have dreams about the first place they’re going to drive to when they get their licenses, and they need to know that they may have to postpone that dream for two days.

22

@Marian - I don’t believe that’s true re: new driver not being covered. Auto insurance typically follows the car - not the driver - if said person is an authorized user of the car the auto insurance will cover.

23

@CIEE83 - I did push S1 to get his license. He went to HS out of district and we were responsible for his transportation. I had a company car at the time and a vehicle was available to him. He resisted at first but when summer football practice started and he saw that others in his class were driving, he couldn’t get it fast enough. S2 went to our district HS so transportation wasn’t an issue. He was a lot busier with sports though, and didn’t have a chance to get his license until spring of his senior year.

24

@leftrightleft:
@marian is right, while insurance companies are scummy, I don’t think it would be a problem for the kid to drive home from the test, if the kid was already noted on the policy having a learners permit, given that said parent likely will be with them when they go to the driving test, they would be covered. However, it would be important right then and there to call the insurance agent and get him/her on the policy as a full time driver, once they are driving on their own and get into an accident they could deny coverage if the kid was driving and you hadn’t informed them. Insurance policies are a combination of cars and driver, and when you put a kid on the policy they also want to know which cars they likely will be driving, and believe me, if dad or mom have a high powered muscle car or the like, they will charge much higher premiums then if the family cars are a prius and a camry or the like. Even if you say “Junior will not be driving the Corvette”, it won’t matter, because the risk is there.

25

Keep track of everything. every club, every volunteer opportunity, every award, every honor.

you may think you’ll always remember that Little Johnny won the 4th Place Best In Show award in Sept of freshman year or spent two hours volunteering at the arbor day festival, but i promise that by senior year, you’ll forget.

have a folder handy to keep everything notable throughout those four years so that when it comes time for resumes and apps you have all information at your fingertips.

and dont stress. at the end of the day, it will all work out the way it should. just enjoy it.

26

At age 61, the thing I really wish I’d known in high school was that the girl who bullied me was being bullied herself. That the cliques that formed and were full of mean girls were all about insecurities, that those girls weren’t nearly as important as they thought they were. That I would find people who understood my essential gnerdish-ness when I went to college. That high school really wasn’t all that important.

27

The challenge as a parent is to find that sweet spot between helicoptering and neglect and recognizing that were that sweet spot is is changing all the time and also is different for each kid.

Remember at all times that you are not trying to make sure your kid gets into a good college. Instead you are trying to best set your kid up for a successful, productive, happy life and there are a lot of different ways to be successful.

28

Hmm, good question.

In terms of what I learned from my HS days, one of the things I learned was the necessity of the kid being as independent as possible. My dad, with all the good intentions in the world, forbid me to work when I was in high school, and I think that was the wrong thing to do. Having the job experience is huge, I don’t care what the job was, and it also teaches time management. Some point out my son didn’t work, which is true, but he also in high school was already a serious music student and he had committments all over the place, juggling that with school, he probably spent more time with that then I ever would working. Plus it gives kids confidence, in my case not having that independence financially meant a lot of things, including not having to figure out how to allocate my own resources, also crippled me (I sometimes wonder, being the only kid at home at that point, and the state of my folk’s marriage, if some of it was deliberate).

The other thing I learned (again through the negative) was to encourage my S to try things, to do different things, and to find his passion in doing so. My parents in some ways had the mentality that if we wanted to do something, we would ask, but kids don’t always do that, for fear of being told no. My parents weren’t as bad as some parents, telling me I had to do X, Y and Z (and this was long before the current college craziness, different world), but there was still a lot of pressure if indirectly.

One of the biggest ones I learned, both through that experience and through therapy later on, was to do everything in my power to let my S know that whatever he chose to do, I would love him, and that I had no expectations on him other than he end up happy and a well balanced person. Both my wife and I, for example, were very careful to tell him that with music, even with all we invested and would invest, if it ended up he didn’t want to do that, we would’t consider it wasted, and that if he made mistakes, flopped at times, that we would be there to help pick up the pieces and help him learn from them, rather than treating mistakes as something that always ruins your future.

Also from my past, we both made it a goal to make any kind of punishment or negative feedback fit the crime rather than the craziness I endured at times that caused some damage, too. Likewise we went out of our way to avoid things we know make kids self conscious, I compare my upbringing where when I was playing an instrument, I didn’t practice at home because in my family making fun of others was considered good sport, and anyone who has ever picked up an instrument knows how hard it is to practice, knowing you can sound like crap, and there is a lot of self consciousness there (not even going to mention how it was with other things, some of it was downright cruel), and it meant we tried to understand the consequences of our words, something we thought was an inside joke could boomerang. High school is an especially difficult time, and reacting badly to what the kids are doing/saying/wearing, whatever, is magnified.

Not a perfect parent by all means, there is stuff involving my wife and my relationship I would have tried to keep from him, I also wish we had followed our gut instincts and found another teacher for him in his high school years, she caused damage that is still a problem now almost 4 years later.

29

@musicprnt, sorry your child has suffered lasting harm from a teacher. We tried to turn challenging teachers into life lessons for our kids and said they would have all kinds of coworkers and bosses in their lives and would have to learn how to get things done anyway. It helped us all get through some pretty awful teachers and situations. Happily, S has not had any complaints he’s voiced to us about his work environment.

30

@himom:
I am sure he learned lessons from it, but music teachers are also a bit different than other teachers, because it is a one on one thing, and you do it for a lot of years.Without getting into the specifics, the person had emotional issues and also had the attitude that their job was to tear down the kid without building them up, as a result while it is important to be self critical as a musician, it is to the point that my S often can’t see how strong a player he is (and that is not just a parent saying this, he got a reaming out from a famous teacher he did some lessons with who told him that it is okay to acknowledge issues,it is important to acknowledge the good things you are doing), when he got into the studio with his current teacher he couldn’t believe it was on merit (talking a teacher who accepts maybe a handful of kids each year and generally doesn’t take UG) and has been accepted as a grad student into some of the most sought out teachers/ programs around…but still thinks he is lacking. It is more like having a bad boss, learning to deal with a bad boss, for example, generally only lasts a short period of time, most people with a bad boss will find another job pretty quickly because working for a bad boss drains you, stresses you out and otherwise is a big negative.

31

@musicprnt, as I mentioned, I am very sorry your S still bears scars. Our S did bear scars for many years from a gifted and talented (GT) teacher who on day 1 (of the 2 years she was to teach S) decided S was a “wise guy” because he asked her questions that she couldn’t answer (not to be “wise,” but because he was genuinely curious). She felt personally attacked and from then on she considered him invisible for two years. That made him VERY shy of speaking to teachers, which puzzled the interviewer when he was applying to private HS. It was fortunate that the interviewer asked me why he was so reticent and I explained and when S went to that HS, the interviewer became S’s favorite mentor.

Sadly, there are teachers who have emotional issues and are really harmful to kids. It is hard to know how to protect them and support them. Both of our kids have had more than their share of these as well. D had to beg out of a different GT class because as she told the principal, she couldn’t bear to have the teacher make all the kids cry every day, which appalled the principal, who was able to get the teacher transferred to another school.

Yes, kids are vulnerable and already have self-doubt but to have a teacher tear them down is so cruel and can really create lasting scars. Hope your S gets some therapy and it sounds like he is finally getting the support he deserves!

32

You know, I don’t think it would be anything about grades/SAT/schoolwork, along those lines. They got to where they were going, regardless. Maybe take them to more exciting historical places (Europe), instead of sunny beach vacations. Coerce them to eat a little better and exercise more, until it was habit as opposed to necessity. Force them to learn how to cook!!

And more sex…oh wait, were you talking about their high school experience, or mine? :smiley:
I guess you don’t want to advise your 8th grader that…

33

I can’t even. Give me a decade and I might be able to answer.