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Danielle Bean

Danielle Bean
Danielle Bean, a mother of eight, is Editorial Director of Faith & Family. She is author of My Cup of Tea, Mom to Mom, Day to Day, and most recently Small Steps for Catholic Moms. Though she once struggled to separate her life and her work, the two …
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Rachel Balducci

Rachel Balducci
Rachel Balducci is married to Paul and they are the parents of five lively boys and one precious baby girl. She is the author of How Do You Tuck In A Superhero?, and is a newspaper columnist for the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia. For the past four years, she has …
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Lisa Hendey

Lisa Hendey
Lisa Hendey is the founder and editor of CatholicMom.com, a Catholic web site focusing on the Catholic faith, Catholic parenting and family life, and Catholic cultural topics. Most recently she has authored The Handbook for Catholic Moms. Lisa is also employed as webmaster for her parish web sites. …
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Arwen Mosher

Arwen Mosher
Arwen Mosher lives in southeastern Michigan with her husband Bryan and their young children Camilla and Blaise. She has a bachelor's degree in theology. She dreads laundry, craves sleep, loves to read novels and do logic puzzles, and can't live without tea. Her personal blog site is ABC Family. …
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Rebecca Teti

Rebecca Teti
Rebecca Teti is married to Dennis and has four children (3 boys, 1 girl) who -- like yours no doubt -- are pious and kind, gorgeous, and can spin flax into gold. A Washington, DC, native, she converted to Catholicism while an undergrad at the U. Dallas, where she double-majored in …
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Robyn Lee

Robyn Lee
Robyn Lee is the managing editor of Faith & Family magazine. She is (yikes!) an almost 30 year-old, single lady, living in Connecticut with her two cousins in a small bungalow-style kit house built by her great uncle in the 1950s. She also conveniently lives next door to her sister, brother-in-law …
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Hallie Lord

Hallie Lord
Hallie Lord married her dashing husband, Dan, in the fall of 2001 (the same year, coincidentally, that she joyfully converted to the Catholic faith). They now happily reside in the deep South with their two energetic boys and two very sassy girls. In her *ample* spare time, Hallie enjoys cheap wine, …
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Fr. John Bartunek, LC

Fr. John Bartunek, LC

Fr John Bartunek, LC, STL, received his BA in History from Stanford University in 1990, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He comes from an evangelical Christian background and became a member of the Catholic Church in 1991. After college he worked as a high school history teacher, drama director, and …
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Guest Bloggers

Kate Lloyd

Kate Lloyd
Kate Lloyd is a rising senior, and a political science major at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire. While not in school, she lives in Whitehall PA, with her mom, dad, five sisters and little brother. She needs someone to write a piece about how it's possible to …
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Elizabeth Foss

Elizabeth Foss
Elizabeth Foss, an award winning columnist for the Arlington Catholic Herald, published her first book, Real Learning: Education in the Heart of My Home in 2003. The book is now in its third printing. Her popular blog, In the Heart of My Home is a source of inspiration and support for Catholic women …
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Growing Kids Still Need Your Wisdom

Second in a 3-part Parenting Series

(Read the first part in this series)

Marybeth Hicks is the author of Bringing Up Geeks: How to Protect Your Kid’s Childhood in a Grow-Up-Too-Fast World. I had an opportunity recently to talk with her recently about how to be a good parent to college-aged young adults. (“GEEK” is Marybeth’s acronym for Genuine, Enthusiastic, Empowered, Kids.)

By the time your child goes to college, if you’ve done your job well, GEEKs are the kids adults like. They are polite and engaging and they can converse easily and intelligently with adults.

“Now,” Hicks says, “you get to reap the benefits. You get to watch it blossom and it’s a blast.” These are the kids who reap opportunity after opportunity because the adults in their lives know they can handle themselves well. Parents can still coach about appropriateness in certain social situations. It seems almost all college students seem to need to be reminded about what the dress code is, particularly when they leave campus for the workplace.

Raise a Late Bloomer

Mostly, by the time your GEEK leaves home for college, she has bloomed. But there is one area where we don’t want her blooming. Now, more than ever, it’s important for parents to be compassionate and open about sexuality. On a college campus, opportunity is always there and there is overwhelming peer pressure. Hicks encourages parents to tell a child who is trying to live a chaste life that “your own life is your own business. Stand on your principles, but you don’t have to announce them to the world. As people know about your innocence, they will try to change you. Choose the chaste path, but live quietly in the grace that comes with making good choices.”

However, there is a fine line between living quietly and speaking up to defend your dignity in the face of the poor behavior of dormmates. In the area of dorm living and sexual freedom, Hicks is adamant that a child be told: “You have a right to your room. The very first time your roommate violates that right, assert yourself. If you don’t, you’ve just acquiesced and now the rules are her rules.”

When they meet someone with whom they might just spend forever, we have to talk to them about strategies for remaining chaste in a Godly relationship. Encourage them to have a good friendship with the campus minister and to seek spiritual direction and confession frequently. If the relationship is serious,” Hicks reminds young adults, “be serious about it. Treat it with respect and don’t degrade it with culture of the day.” Parents cannot shrink from frank and honest conversation about sexuality. More than ever before, young adults need the anchor of home and a family’s value structure to withstand the battering of the common culture.

Raise a Team Player

A GEEK in college is already a team player. All those years of soccer practices and early morning swim teams pay off when teamsmanship comes into play in college. These are the young adults who know how to work cooperatively in study groups as well as in group living situations. Sports are a metaphor for life, and those lessons from early years are played out in college years. College students engage in healthy competition and they work by the rules of fair play. They will no doubt learn a thing or two about what happens when other people on the team are not team players and how that affects them. The chances to be a leader on a college campus are many and varied. Encourage your young adult to take advantage of those opportunities to hone leadership skills.

Raise a True Friend

More so than ever, help your GEEK use skills of discernment to choose the right friends. “They have to do it for themselves,” says Hicks. “We can’t manipulate friendship choices with playdates and arranged opportunities any more. We need to be good listeners and hear some clues about choices they are making.” Like nothing else, Facebook pages hold clues into the social circle of college students. If you see something that raises a red flag for you (or even a yellow flag), follow up. Ask questions. Friends who encourage bad choices aren’t good friends. Remind your GEEK that for a season, they might be better off alone than in a bad group. Help them to recognize behaviors in friends that aren’t beneficial as well as those that are. When you visit, invite friends to go out to eat with you. Engage in conversation. Take the time to get to know the people in your college student’s life.

—Elizabeth Foss is author of Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home and she blogs at Ebeth.typepad.com. Look for more wisdom and inspiration from her interview with Marybeth Hicks in coming weeks.


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