A few weeks ago, I read a post from someone who recommended a senior do a college visit on her own since her parents were unable to take her. My first thought was there was NO WAY my S23 or S24 could do that. And my second thought was, that does not bode well for going to college.
I have given it some thought and I think, for my kids, part of what has happened is they have not had the opportunities for away-from-parent high school experiences that they would have normally had because of Covid. We tend to be a homebody family anyway, but with the additional Covid restrictions and cancellations many of the events and camps that they would have gone to over the past 2.5 years either have not happened or did not work for our family.
Now I am thinking about how to, over the next six months (for S23) or 18 months (S24), help them develop some “being away from home” skills that they’re going to need to be successful. I’m not talking about things like doing laundry, or grocery shopping, or finances. They have all those skills down well. I am thinking about outside-the-house things like managing a new public transportation system, dealing with unexpected/challenging circumstances (eg missed flight), and even just being away from family (neither has spent more than one night away from home without a parent).
I feel like we are probably a significant outlier here, but I’m wondering if anyone else feels this way, and if so, what are you doing to help prepare your kids?
Or, even if you haven’t experienced this, what would you do in my situation to prepare your kids? What kinds of situations do you think are most important for kids who are heading to college to have experience dealing with? Would you make it a priority to send them to some kind of weeklong away camp even if they weren’t really interested in anything, just to get them experience being away from home?
I feel like it’s especially important for S23 because he is (mildly) on the autism spectrum, and he does not deal with unexpected situations well. He does best with lots of practice in unfamiliar situations to make them more familiar, and help him not shut down with anxiety when things don’t go the way he thought they would. S24 isn’t as inflexible and also has more time before college, but I want to make sure he is on the right track. As the only one of my 4 kids without special needs sometimes his regular needs get overlooked.
When my kids were 13 and 14, we moved to another state. They always wanted to go back and visit friends and family, but I couldn’t always go with them. So they learned how to do air travel on their own.
The first few times, I stood in the airport and said “What do we do?” Where to we go, what gate, what documents do you need to show? They learned to read monitors, that there were multiple flights to the same airport, to make sure they checked the flight number and times.
The most important thing they learned was to ASK if they didn’t know or couldn’t figure it out.
When they had to change planes, I tried to book through a city where we knew people so they could be rescued if necessary. I was available online if something needed to be changed. Once a daughter was flying and I got a text that her second plane was delayed 3 hours, and that would have had her miss her boyfriend’s hs graduation, and inconvenienced her bf’s father. I got on with the airline, switched her to a different flight (and different airport!), texted her to get off the plane, go to gate XX, talk to Barb the gate agent and get her new boarding pass. She was a little confused, but followed directions.
If your children are doing any trips before graduation (or for graduation), have them plan the whole thing. Have them tell you how they will pay for things (venmo, using an ATM, having an app for Uber, etc). One of my kids went to Paris on a hs trip and some in her group were robbed at an ATM because they used one on the street, at night. My daughter learned from their mistake and knows NOT to use an ATM on the street (even in the USA).
Have your kids handle their own doctor’s appts. Do they know the difference between an ER and an urgent care? (and the cost difference - we learned that the hard way).
Thanks for making this thread – it’s a great topic.
Whether or not COVID affected the acquisition of “real life” skills in our teens, I do worry that my kids will have what they need to be independent. We highly value independence in our kids and have raised them accordingly but I’m still amazed at the number of “adulting” things that they suck at LOL.
This is great, and your kids are already ahead of many of their peers if they know how to do these things. Mine mostly do as well, but it’s taken years of intentional effort for us to impart this stuff to them.
I did make my eldest start taking my credit card into places by himself to do transactions a few years ago. We added him to our credit card this year so he has his own and that has been wonderful. Having a job has also taught him SO much invaluable stuff. He grew like an entire year in maturity after having a job for a couple of months.
I guess one of the ways they can develop some of the other skills you talk about is to just let them find their own way through challenging situations as they naturally crop up? And to also give them some challenges intentionally. I think I should probably drop my kids off at the train station and make them do a day in the nearby giant city with their friends. That could be good for all of them. They do that with their friends in our smaller city now and I think that helps a lot.
We have sent them away for several nights at a time with family and they have travelled on a plane together as unaccompanied minors a few times. That was helpful.
My S23 is the same! But he is such a great problem solver and is organized and plans ahead. You hit the nail on the head with the practicing in unfamiliar situations. I’d just start small and give him escalating challenges that you can help him plan out and navigate. Then as you back off, he’ll eventually be able to do it himself.
Even with what your son already knows, his classmates will be asking him how to do laundry and marveling that he hasn’t run out of spending money 1 month into the semester, haha. Pat yourself on the back for that.
This is good, for stuff we don’t really need to be there for (orthodontist, dentist), we have the kids do the appts on their own. Sometimes even walking there and back from home (we live close). I was recently horrified to realize that they can’t tell me which way is north or south in our town. I’ll have to fix that soon!
I think that might have been my post about having a student visit a school on her own. And I had the same thought, that if they couldn’t handle a school visit, how were they going to handle college. But then I re-thought about it, and realized that there is a lot more structure in college – there is a class schedule to follow, and RAs to advise, and a dining hall to eat in and a dorm to sleep in and libraries within walking distance to study in. And likely parents to transport them to the college, at least for starting first semester. And none of that is true for a high schooler visiting a college, which requires providing for their own transportation to that city and then to the college, finding their own food, navigating to a hotel, etc. So I’ve had second thoughts on this topic myself!
That said, I think that being comfortable with both Uber and public transportation systems is invaluable. Know how to use Uber’s “share my ride” feature with friends or family for late night ubers/big city trips. Know how to look up and use a bus schedule (Google maps has bus schedules which is a lot easier than learning each metro system’s idiosyncratic interface). Have them take the lead in both planning and the day-of navigating the next time your family flies somewhere, if you do fly somewhere. I agree with ColdWombat re: use of a credit card. And also yes – know who to ask for help and don’t be afraid to ask.
And know that there is always another plane and that the airlines will work with them to get them where they need to go and they won’t be stranded forever. And that whatever happens to them, they won’t be the first or last person that it has happened to.
I don’t think it is a COVID issue. My oldest graduated high school before COVID and I wouldn’t have sent him to tour a college on his own. He had been to plenty of sleep-away camps and experiences but those were pretty structured and I was passing him off to another adult rather than leaving him to figure things out on his own.
I taught my oldest how to handle medical appointments the year before he left. I started earlier with the younger kids. Most routine appointments (physical, dentist, etc.) are over the summer when they are home. They got credit cards after they graduated HS. Learning how to pay bills, pay off credit card, what savings and checking accounts are, etc. takes some time. When they rented an apartment, I had to coach them through what rent covered and helped them set up gas, electric, cable, wifi etc. accounts. Each of them was shocked when the first utility bill arrived. They stopped running the A/C and turned off the lights.
I think kids need to be very independent by the time they start college. I was not an overprotective parent and let my kid do a lot on her own from an early age.
Before college, my DD had traveled by plane to college visits and scholarship weekends, to visit a friend out of state, and for camps in other states. She knew how to take cabs and Ubers and generally get around. She’d stayed in a hotel by herself. But freshman year fall break is when I really knew she was ready to navigate unfamiliar territory. We went on an international trip and I got sick. I just gave her the itinerary and she traveled all over in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language, mostly using public transportation and had a great time without me.
A 16-17 year old should be able to go on a solo college visit without any trouble.
I would not be surprised if many high school students in many suburban and rural areas have never or rarely used public transportation even in their home areas.
You handle it through coaching. Come up with a scenario and talk them through it.
For example, my HS junior applied over the summer for a hospital volunteer position (once a week for a 4 hr shift). She had no idea how to handle things in terms of what to say on the phone when calling the volunteer coordinator, how to communicate in a business-style email, etc.
There was a LOT of email back and forth for it. I had her write a draft email and then have me proof read it. And then I’d make suggestions on how to reword it so it sounded better, suggested additional detail to include to have it make more sense to the reader, etc. Also suggested formatting changes so her emails wouldn’t look like gigantic paragraphs that had no end (bullet points are your friend sometimes).
There are several situations/scenarios that I think D26 will need to know how to navigate (but she doesn’t know yet). Stuff like:
how to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B on public transportation
how to figure out how much public transportation will cost you, where to buy a bus pass, do you need cash on hand when you board the bus or do you have to buy a ticket elsewhere before you get on
how to buy a plane ticket, how to find affordable airfares in your target price range, & how to decide which airline to fly on
how to figure out how early to get to the airport ahead of time
how to figure out how you’re getting to/from the airport if you’re not parking a car in long term parking
how to shop around for airport transfers, how to get a good price w/a reliable company
common sense & street smarts when going out at night w/your friends
how to handle banking, paying your bills online, logistics of stuff like transferring funds between accounts, how to figure out if that new credit card promo is a good idea or not
I made my kids make their own appointments in high school and fill out medical forms. My son realized the difference between Amtrak and NJ transit freshman year in college when he purchased a $50 train ticket home instead of the commuter train. Fortunately he also bought the insurance .
My kids are adventurous travelers, oldest started flying alone at 11, 2 of my daughters were competitive Irish dancers, ended up spending 2 nights alone in Philadelphia when they were 14/16 (other parents were there but in different rooms). They traveled overseas with their teachers and were ubering with just students in Ireland. My 20 year old decided to take a last minute 3 night trip to Florence by herself last year (friend was studying overseas), had to change planes in Portugal (and almost missed her flight) and took the train from Rome. She’s always squeezing travel in. Since we live 10 miles from NYC and 1 1/2 hours from Philadelphia they’ve been using public transportation since 13/14 without adults. OP can the kids plan some adventures together? It’s funny because I’m the anxious one in my family, the rest of them are nuts (one son loves to hike and kayak and will go alone with his tent, sleeping bag, water filter system, little stove…). I think folks are just wired differently.
I definitely agree that with Covid our 23/24 kids have done less independently. We were glad S23 got to spend a week at a college-based camp last summer. He is comfortable driving around on his own and we are happy to leave him at home alone when we go away for a weekend.
But even before Covid there were dramatic differences in how much kids did on their own. For example we sent S18 on his own (from CA) to his Oxford interview when he’d just turned 17 (a 5 day trip involving flight, bus connection, passports and immigration, etc). In contrast our neighbors took their daughter to the UK for interviews.
Our test case that our twins were ready for college was to let them go on vacation to Europe on their own for 2 weeks (traveling around by train) after HS graduation. S23 has not expressed any interest in doing something similar.
I think it might be a good idea to do a camp if you can find one that works. DD’19 spent a 2 week stint and a 3 week stint working at a camp the summer before junior year. The first week was ROUGH and she was glad to get that experience of knowing she’d get past the homesickness before college starting.
We did one college visit by plane, and had her take the lead. If you have a trip coming up, try that.
My rural kids have no experience with public transportation, but on the other hand started driving themselves 11 miles to school at age 14 so that’s a different kind of independence. Do your kids know how to drive around their town and other nearby locations? Or are they in the backseat looking at their phones? I found that putting them in the front seat to watch helped immensely.
Practice talking to customer service, anyone on the phone, speaking up if a meal order is wrong.
Yes! to customer service. It seems many teens hate phone calls and don’t have the phone skills that are still necessary when interacting with customer service or doctor’s offices or similar.
I just wanted to add that there are definitely families out there where, honestly, they just don’t have the money right now to send their kid off to an “away” camp. So there are plenty of families where they still need their kids to have the ‘real life’ skills but it’s too expensive to send them off somewhere for a few days, a week, a few weeks, whatever.
There’s much cheaper ways of reaching the same goal. So if you just plain can’t afford to send your kiddo out of town, what do you do?
You coach them through it.
What would you have said to your kid if he/she HAD gone on an out of town trip on their own? Well, tell your kid basically that. And then just walk through those different scenarios in your city/town there at home. It doesn’t have to cost expensive $$ for overseas travel for them to get life skills.
I think many parents (people in general) are overly fearful of the chance of being hurt/killed. I think the 24/7, worldwide media has many convinced that we are all in danger all the time. I know women who think every child is going to be kidnapped on the way to the restroom, everyone woman is going to be raped on the way to her car, etc. Because of this irrational fear, many young people have not done simple things that most of us did at the same age and many teenagers/young adult seem immature and unprepared.
One thing that may ease your mind, is that most people really do learn from doing and yes they will make some mistakes, but most aren’t nearly as bad as we fear. I had never been on an airplane before a college trip across the country where I had to catch a cab once arriving - which I had also never ridden in. My plane ticket and accommodations were paid for by the school, but there was no way may parents could afford to accompany me. I had never been to sleep away camp. Those kinds of opportunities just weren’t available.
After my first semester on a trip home, my first flight was diverted because of bad weather and landed in a different state than expected - no real chance of catching that connecting flight. Now this was all in a time where there were no cell phones. In reality, most likely any issue your kid bumps into they can discuss at length as communication is so much easier.
I think anything we can do before hand to let our kids “practice” independence while still at home is great, and I certainly used some of the tips with my kids including having one day when they were in charge of all navigation in Paris including the subway while we trailed behind - I think they were 14 and 15. But I guess I’m just saying, reinforcing that yes there will be things than come up that none of us anticipated and you’ll figure it out may be the best lesson of all.
Yes I have noticed this too. My kids are generally very independent with getting around by themselves on public transportation or air travel, can go to the market and shop for groceries, plan and cook family dinner, and pretty good at handling banking and finances, but they are nervous if they have to call someone. For practice we have had them call to order takeout, set up and confirm their own doctor’s appointments, etc.
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