Dear Parents of High-School Juniors and Seniors

I know you want to help. I know you can’t stand to see your child stressed and anxious, can’t stand to see them wasting time, ruining their chances, and risking their futures!

Take a deep breath. Let’s start with, Nothing they do (or don’t do!)  is going to ruin their futures, OK? If they take two years off and then go back to school, they’ll graduate two years later than they would have. If they miss all of their deadlines and don’t get into their first-choice college … they’ll have learned important lessons about procrastination, before it costs you a semester of tuition. Everything is going to be just fine.

With that out of the way, I know you still want to make their lives (and let’s face it, your life) more pleasant for the next year or two. So let’s talk specifically about the ways you can and cannot help.

You can help them think through what choosing a college means. It’s easy to fall in love with a pretty campus, or want to go where your best friend/significant other is already, or get swept into the quest for bragging rights. So a little adult perspective here is really valuable. Use my blog posts (here and here) and “College Personal Ad” worksheet to guide them through the important questions they need to be asking.

You can’t decide for them what their perfect fit school will be. You can’t ask them to relive your college years by following in your footsteps. You can’t discourage them from a school because it doesn’t feel right for you. This is their college experience, and to the extent that it’s practical, it should be their choice.

You can help them understand the many steps of the college application process. They’ve never done this before, and will never do it again in exactly the same way. This is not something that you need to teach them how to do for themselves (like laundry). This is a multistep, potentially confusing process, and it’s OK to ask if they need help breaking it down and understanding what is required.

You can’t take over the process. Even though they will not need to repeat this exact process again in the future, you are modeling for them the process of problem-solving and “project management.” So be their project manager, model project management for them—and then let them do the work. Remember, this is supposed to be hard. It’s a preview of the hard things to come.

You can remind them of when all of their deadlines are and you can be a little scary in enforcing them. Some people just work better with a scary deadline, and you can be that limit for them. Make sure that deadlines are posted in public locations like kitchen calendars, and consider setting up shared Google calendars or a shared Trello board with To Dos, so you can see them as they get done without even having to ask.

You can’t make them work. You just can’t. You can’t nag them into completion, so don’t try. They will despise you, you will despise you and them.… Don’t do it.

You can choose to outsource your nagging to a professional coach. All of my students learn a lot about the writing process, which is a skill I prioritize teaching in my programs … but many parents have admitted to me that their main goal in hiring a coach was just to put another adult into the accountability team—to have someone else to nag their kid. That’s legitimate—especially because it usually works. Kids are more likely to keep up with their deadlines for a stranger than their parents, and either way, the fights along the way will disappear.

You can contribute to their essay brainstorming, in a limited way. You can remind them of why they’re so great, what pieces of their story or their personality you hope the reader gets out of their essay, and you can help them remember the many events that have happened over their lifetime, especially through high school.

You can’t lean on them to choose one of the events you remember or think is best. You can’t tell them how they felt at the time, or afterward. And most importantly, unless you’re a professional editor, you can’t help them sound more like themselves. It doesn’t matter how many As you got in school or how many legal briefs you’ve written—if you’re not a teacher or an editor, please don’t try to edit your child’s work.

Just this week I overheard a great conversation between two middle-school artists. One admitted to the other, “It’s hard for me when I look at an artist with a very different style from mine—I can’t tell if they’re drawing it wrong, or what I don’t like is just their style.” That was remarkably insightful. It’s a really common response for many people when it comes to subjective things like art, fashion or writing, but most people don’t notice they’re doing it. Most people have a hard time editing someone else’s work without making it sound more like themselves. In other words, they are incapable of separating correctness or strong writing from their personal voice or preferences.

When well-meaning parents start editing, they edit out crucial personality. Whether because they are trying to make the piece sound “smart” by creating a more academic or work-appropriate tone (not at all what we’re looking for!), or because they simply cannot separate correct from “how I usually sound,” parents can make fundamental changes to a piece that are not in the piece’s (or the student’s) best interest. Parents also (in my experience) tend to edit from a place of fear, anxiously trying to squeeze in more side notes and stories than are necessary. (“You didn’t tell them about your volunteer work at the Y! Don’t you think you should mention your volunteer work?!”)

So what are you going to do to help your child at this crucial juncture? Let’s review.

Step 1: Remember to breathe.

Step 2: Be hands-on early in the process, but be clear that you’re transitioning to hands-off as the process continues.

Help kick off the college list, then leave your child to choose their final contenders. Be hands-on in the scheduling, then hands-off to see them follow through. Be encouraging at the start of essay brainstorming and remind them the qualities you find most impressive about them. Then let them tell their story, and don’t pry. Sometimes students are really private and shy about their essays. Sometimes they write things they’ve never talked about with other people, and even if they like and trust you, they maybe feel just a little embarrassed being open and vulnerable like that in front of people they know. (It’s really strange and beautiful how the anonymity of a good writing coach creates a confessional atmosphere where kids feel safe being themselves.)

Then be ready to celebrate with them, at every step along the way. You might check this post for ideas of checkpoints during the application process that deserve a reward or celebration. Or just plan on a big dinner out the day after apps are submitted, and maybe a party the day the first acceptance arrives. And certainly another celebration when they’ve committed to a school. Their life is charging forward. I know, you’re not crying. It’s just allergies. In August.

(Photo by Lawrence Crayton on Unsplash)