Highschool to college Journey

I did a presentation in November 2024 for middle and highschool parents. My topic was "Highschool to college journey." Though I am not a college counselor, with my experience through the support group I run, I went ahead with the topic to present from a lifecoach/parent coach perspective. There is a ton of information online to talk about colleges, majors and ways to get into college. While highlighting basic structure of to-do things in 4years, I emphasized on parents' support during for a better college journey.

Slide from the presentation

• Parent Support 

  • Listening

  • Respect their views

  • Letting them fail/make mistakes

  • Teaching them to value their hard work

  • Asking open ended questions

  • Encouraging them to explore colleges/majors/careers

  • Don’t dismiss any stress/struggles 

  • Equal importance to all the subjects

  • Don’t brush off any thing as “teenage phase” 

  • Appreciate your parenting efforts

Couple of topics I want to talk here are :

1. Letting them fail - It doesn't mean we let them fail in school or tests. When they make mistakes do not talk about them as a failure. When they make a mistake, children are aware of it and chances are there they feel low/sad anticipating a lecture from parents. At this time, ask questions on how they are feeling. Validate the feelings and ask more questions on what happened. With our willingness to listen and not treating them as a failure, they learn to bounce back easily. By letting them fail at early age, we are helping them to move forward in their adult life.

2. Teenage phase: It is a tricky situation to handle when your teen stops communicating and prefer to stay alone. Do not try to fix the situation by forcing them to talk. May be your teen is afraid of sharing or not comfortable to share or worried about your reaction. With patience and with right questions your teen might open-up. If that does not work, do not hesitate to get help from a professional for you to use the right language and for your teen to talk in a safe environment. Getting help from a therapist mean, you and your teen are willing to find the right words for better communication.

3. Appreciate your parenting efforts: In my experience as a life coach, I notice how parents easily dismiss all the hard work they are putting in the moment and only focus on future."Showing up" for your children is the most important thing you are doing everyday. From the time you wake up till you sleep, all mundane yet highly important acts, like waking them up, reminding them about various activities, cooking, pickup/drop-offs and so on are performed without missing. For that reason, I named my parent coaching as "proud parenting." Be proud of yourself that you are showing up for your children and start recognizing your efforts that in turn helps your children to recognize their own efforts. Having trouble understanding the "proud parenting" concept or feel you need guidance, send me a message at suryakala@tlcs.life or here is my "proud parenting" whatsapp group to get support https://chat.whatsapp.com/Jn97b4LIHda8IQg6aLtVCY