Making The Transition To College Less Stressful For Everyone!
At some point, your children are going to leave the comforts of the family home – that’s not a bad thing! It just means they are going to run off in search of their dreams and try to live life on their own terms.
Sometimes, they might have success as a business owner and see their idea outgrowing the bedroom. In other cases, they might move-in with their partner. They may enjoy a successful job after school, but the most common reason why kids would leave the home is to attend college. Heading off to campus and studying the degree which could define their life is going to be stressful, while your new slightly emptier home could bring stresses of its own.
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It’s never too early to start preparing your child for their future, and the key thing you must do is teach your child how to manage their money. Teaching them how to set a budget should be done as early as possible while educating them on fiscal responsibility should also be important. Credit card debt is a more advanced topic, but it must be discussed and acknowledged before your child heads off to college. It’s likely that they will acquire a credit card in college, so it is very important to teach them the critical nature of credit cards, their benefits and why it is so important to pay off the card while not relying on it as a financial crutch.
It’s important to encourage academic and extracurricular success while your child is still in junior high and high school. Keep college in the back of your minds as you focus to achieve as much ‘right now.’ College-level courses and standardized tests can set a good benchmark for your child, so you can see where they are at. Allowing them to volunteer in the local community will also help them build some skills and will look great on their application. It won’t hurt to encourage good reading habits in your children as well as this can prepare them for the tomes they will need to scour for information in college.
Prepare for college as early as possible so that you and your child can start to set some goals and milestones to meet so they can succeed in the future. Let them focus on their interests and choose the college and courses that appeal to them. Narrow down your choices and gather the information that each college needs. Allow your child to fill out the applications themselves before your review it before the form is sent off with the correct documentation – it is crucial that you allow your child some independence in this process as they will be without you when they are on campus. Also, don’t ever be afraid to seek out college application help when you feel you need it. You can never have too much advice.
The transition to college is stressful and the key to defeating that?