Oct 13, 2021
My guests this week are Cindy Muchnick and Jen
Curtis. Here is a little bit about each of their
backgrounds.
Cindy Muchnick is a graduate of Stanford University and has been
working in education for the past 25 plus years as a former
assistant director of college admission, high school teacher,
educational consultant, and author of five other education-related
books. She speaks professionally to parents, students,
teachers, and business groups on topics around study skills, the
adolescent journey, college admission, and now the Parents
Compass Movement.
Jen Curtis earned a BA from UCLA and an MSW
from USC and has been an educational consultant and
professional speaker for the past 12 years. As the owner
of FutureWise Consulting, she has worked with hundreds of students
on every aspect of the college admission process.
She's particularly passionate about empowering teens to approach
life with intention and educating parents about navigating their
parent compass.
In this episode, we are talking about preparing kids for
life beyond high school, particularly if they're thinking
about college or some sort of post-secondary training. But even if
they aren't, you are going to get a lot of great tips and
ideas around how to support kids in this phase of
life.
We’ll also be answering questions like how can we as parents
best prepare our kids for education in life beyond high school? How
can we help them strike the balance of realistic but also
ambitious goals? And how can we manage ourselves and our
feelings so that we're not pushing them into something that
might not be the best path for them? Perhaps the most
important message here is to start empowering your kids at a young
age to speak for themselves, advocate for themselves and express
their own individual interests. Learn more about Cindy and Jen
here.
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Parents should STOP doing this …
- Speak over their kids, answer for their kids,
and not let their kids have their own opinions
- This mostly happens unintentionally
- Going straight to administrators or teachers,
before letting kids advocate for themselves
- Protecting kids from feeling emotions,
disappointments, failures
- Putting your own interests and opinions for what
they “should” be doing first
- Doing all the planning and organizing
Where parents have the opportunity to do
better
- You have the opportunity as the parent of a
younger child to be aware of and think about how you want to
nurture their independence and individuality
- It’s not too late for any parent to start
empowering their children, young adults or even grown adults
- We have a lot of opportunities in the growing up
years to put these things into practice with being aware of how
much we're inserting ourselves, versus allowing our kids to have a
voice, being aware of how much we might be rescuing in a way that
isn't going to lead them well
- When we don't focus on who the child uniquely
is, often we're inserting our own biases into who we want them to
be, and it really kind of can get in the way of us parenting
authentically
Micromanaging your kids
- Two categories of older kids, young adults who
experience micromanaging by their parents or caretaker
- One is the category who don't need that, but the
parents think they do and are doing it anyway, or the parents are
doing it out of their own need to be needed
- Two is the category of young people where
parents are continuing to insert themselves and do that because if
they didn't, their young adult kids truly don't have the skills to
manage and deal with many aspects of their life
- Parents may need to step back and find ways
outside of the higher education environment for their kids to
develop life skills so that they can be successful there
- Basic food skills like cooking, grocery shopping
and nutrition
- Basic financial skills
- Basic laundry skills
- Basic skills around organization and
planning
- Social awareness
- Social skills
Alternatives to a 4yr. College
- Community college
- Workforce
- Gap years
- Military
- Internships
- Research
- Volunteer opportunities all over the world to
find ways to give back.
- Immersive experiences to learn languages or to
learn instruments
- Give time to a religious cause
- Apprenticeships for students who want to learn a
skill like woodworking, hairstyling, or creative arts
Ways to show your child you believe in
them
- Let your kids advocate for their grades and even
go speak to their teachers
- Let your kids pay for things
- Let your kids speak up about how they are
feeling at the doctor
- Let them take charge and make decisions when
planning big life events like college or a trip, etc.
- Let them talk first, let them self advocate
first, and then you can fill in the blanks if need be
- Give your kids the freedom to have their space
- Have freedom to be creative on their own walls
with what inspires them
- Instilling in kids from early on that “You are
capable, of course you can choose what you would want to put on
your walls. I trust that you can have an opinion about that and
figure that out.”
- Show them we like who they are and we're trying
to understand who they are, and to ask those questions that allow
them to share their interests with us
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