Growing Kids Still Need Your Wisdom
by Elizabeth Foss in Family on Friday, September 18, 2009 6:00 AM
(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
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
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