life skills
equipping your senior
BECOMING A FREEDOM GIVER:
Offering Freedom with Responsibility to Begin Equipping Your Senior
By Tommy McGregor
If your child is going away to school, he or
she will have to balance unlimited freedom, and
if a local college is the plan he or she will still
be getting older and will expect to do more and
make more choices than in years past. Either
way, the times, as they say, are a-changing.
As the parent, you can either accept that fact and work to
make it good, or you can deny its existence until your child
goes from zero to sixty in seconds without understanding
how to stop. My suggestion, for whatever that is worth to you,
is to become a Freedom Giver by preparing them with more
freedoms while they are home and still under your care. Give
them a little more freedom senior year to see how they handle
it. Not only will this gesture be appreciated, but it can be
leveraged as a teaching point as the year goes on.
78
%
of students
admitted to
SENIORITIS
According to a survey conducted by
The Omniscient group
L24 |
Spring 2016
Here are three suggestions as you
think this through:
MAKE IT GRADUAL
If a student never gets this gradual gift of freedom, he or she
will go to college and dive head first into the deep, unbounded
waters of freedom. The key is to give them this experience
without the crash and burn. A gradual unveiling of freedom
will help them to learn to handle the responsibility. Maybe you
add a freedom each month throughout senior year, like a little
later curfew or extra privilege that they have never had before.
ALLOW FOR CONSEQUENCES
In life, there are consequences for the misuse of freedom. If
a college student stays up all night and skips class to sleep in,
they have to pay for missing notes or possibly a pop quiz. If a
college freshmen spends all his money on food when some of
it was allocated for gas or bills, then he will have to deal with
that (unless he calls you to ask for more - which is not healthy,
long term). To help with this now, you could give them the
responsibility while they are at home so they can learn how
to use it. For example, you could give your child monthly gas
money and help him/her to manage it. Then, if he/she blows it,
you will be closer in case you have to come and pick them up.
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