Time for your teen to get organized

A peek inside the book bag of many teenagers is really not so different than taking a look inside your kitchen trash can. Who knows what is shoved in there, however long ago, with little regard to what happens next. The difference is that the things in the book bag probably will be used again. The fact is, many teens and tweens struggle with organization but there is a lot that parents can do to help.

    You have to start by thinking about how personal organization evolves in a young person. Little children are not expected to be well organized. Often their teacher and parents maintain their book bag and mom or dad are completely in charge of what time practice and dentist appointments are. As a child gets older though, such responsibilities increase. By the time a child is a teenager, they have assumed the responsibility of maintaining their book bag, keeping things in their room in their place, and much of their own scheduling. What used to be keeping track of a couple of things has bloomed into a life full of responsibility. What’s more, just as adults face the harsh reality that their memory isn’t what it used to be, teens have to accept the fact that life grows too complicated to keep track of it with just their heads and without some level of organization.

    All effective adults have some way of keeping their acts together. Those methods can vary greatly from one person to the next, but they all have some format or procedure they’ve developed to keep themselves organized. Those methods probably came about over time, but they usually are effective in their own way. The unorganized and forgetful teen though has not yet figured out that he needs to be organized and has not developed his personal system to become so.

    Therefore, there comes a time in your parenting when you need to step in and say, “we have to change some habits.” It might be easiest to do this at the start of a school year and especially high school or whenever you see your student slipping sheerly due to unorganization.

    It is important to let your teen have some autonomy in the process. Don’t make them do the exact same thing you do. If you write everything down on a desk calendar and they want to use their phone’s note pad, that’s okay. The critical thing is that they are developing a way to keep track of all that they have going on. If you disagree with their methodology you can politely point out their method’s flaws and try to redirect them. This is a process that will have to have some trial and error and that can’t really be forced.

    The bottom line here is that at some point the shove-everything-loosely-into-your- book-bag-and-do-everything-else-by-memory-alone strategy is going to fall apart. When that happens, parents need to help flick the switch making teens aware that some habits needs to change in order to become effective adults. Teens will then need some assistance in developing those new habits, but they ultimately need to develop an organizational system that works for them in their life.

Your Teen's Coworkers

            It's summer time and that means many teens will be getting summer jobs. Summer jobs are great opportunities. Teens gain work experience and are able to add income that can pay for many of their own expenses. They also gain life experience in those jobs. Here, they learn the way the world works which is often quite different than the way school works. Don't show up for school, for example, and you just have to get your mom to write you a note. Don't show up to work, and you're fired.

            A great deal of that life experience comes from the interactions with other adults. Now, I'm a huge believer in the fact that young people, especially teens, need positive influence in their lives from adults that are not their parents or caretakers. Many of the issues they deal with stem from their parents in the first place and at the very least the perspective that others can provide on life outside of their family circle is invaluable and can make for a more well-rounded person.

            Whether they realize it or not, many parents have already vetted the adults in their children's lives. Grandparents, aunt, uncles, and other relatives as well as family friends and neighbors are typically known well enough by parents before they spend significant time with children and teens to know if there are any red flags. Teachers, coaches, and church staff either have extensive background checks or at least are screened before working with children as well.

            Few parents, though, typically know much about their teen's adult  supervisors or coworkers. Often, these end up being the adults that teens spend the most time with outside of their parents. However, there is no mechanism for a parent to have any sort of  background check on the other workers at, say a random restaurant or shop, that the parent has no ties to.

            I believe that 99.9% of people are more or less good natured and unless you keep your kid in a bubble you can't shelter them forever. But, you do need to be aware that these are going to be influential people in your malleable young person's life. Thus, take the time to ask your child about work and the people there the same way you do about their school day. Make some visits here and there to their work, if that is reasonable, and casually meet some of those people.

            I'm not advocating spying or witch hunting, I'm just advocating awareness of the people your child is around. Teens enjoy the company of adults and will gravitate towards them if and when they have a chance to form a bond. Be sure you're at least a little bit in the loop on who those people are.

Bullying, Hazing, and Sexual Harrassment

I’m not sure that bullying, hazing, and/or sexual harassment are any more prevalent today among young people than they were in years past. In fact, I suspect those threats may be less common than they once were. I do know, however, that the stigma attached to them particularly at the high school and middle school levels has increased significantly in recent years.

        Obviously, there are many problems associated with these three treats, but one of my biggest concerns is how I see children educated, or not educated, about the threats. Far too many children only learn these things are wrong after they have committed them or been a victim of them.

        Students and their families are doing a better job with bullying. It is really a buzzword throughout schools and education. Schools, media, and parents have done pretty well recently, I think, in making students aware of what bullying is and how to curb it. Hazing and sexual harassment are different though.

        In the latter’s case, few talk to little kids about sexual harassment. Sure, we talk about good touch and bad touch, but how many parents talk about acceptable comments and inappropriate comments? Also as children develop their sexuality, what might have been “keep your hands to yourself” in elementary school may well escalate into “okay, you just pretty much groped that person” once some sexuality has developed. It can be hard for a tween or young teenager to see the line that should not be crossed as well as an adult can, particularly when that line might not have existed as little children. Thus, adults have a responsibility to talk about that line before a young person crosses it.

        The same is true for hazing. I’ve heard hazing juxtaposed to bullying as bullying is what you do to someone you don’t like, you haze people you like. Thus, teens may fail to see that imposing their will on a consenting friend is wrong in anyway. Hazing is, in fact, wrong and increased legislation is being passed to deal with hazing in the wake of recent cases in the national news. Here again, teens may fail to realize that what they are doing is wrong if an adult never defined hazing for them or had a discussion about it.

        There are a number places where parents can find resources to feed their discussions about these threats with their children. Stophazing.org, equalrights.org, and stopbullying.gov are great places to start. As young people reach puberty, conversations about bullying, hazing, and sexual harassment need to happen at home and a lot of schools could probably do a better job of shedding light on these subjects as well. The repercussions of not having these discussions can easily lead to criminal acts committed by the child for something they never fully grasped was wrong. That can have a devastating impact on a child’s future and it can all be easily prevented with a good old fashioned talk.

The EFC

    As a family prepares to send a graduating high school senior off to college there is an important number that will weigh heavily on parents’ minds. That number is what is known as the Expected Family Contribution or EFC.

    The EFC is calculated from your FAFSA. That is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and the mechanism through which all federal student aid is funneled. The FAFSA evaluates a family’s make up, income, and assets. The number it produces is the EFC which is used to determine how much federal aid a family is eligible for.

    Here is how it works. Let’s say the net price of a given college is $30,000. That net price should include all tuition, fees, and books as well as room, board, transportation and any other living expenses needed to attend that school. In theory, that should be the “all-inclusive” cost to attend the school for a year. The EFC that FAFSA produces is the amount the federal government feels the family should be able to contribute to go to a school and to the net price. What is left over is the amount of federal aid a student is eligible for. So, if the net price of a school is $30,000 and your EFC is $10,000, you’ll be eligible for $20,000 in aid at that school. That aid will be award by the school in the form of grants, scholarships, loans, or work study.

It is important to note that whatever your EFC is you won’t necessarily being paying that much out of pocket. The amount of the EFC could come from scholarships awarded by private groups, disbursements from college savings plans, contributions from other family members, private student loans, or other means. You also may be able to find ways to reduce that $30,000 net price but looking at cheaper housing, meal plans, etc than what the college has estimated as a norm. Doing so won’t change the amount of aid you are eligible for.

Anyone’s goal should be to have an EFC as low as possible and an EFC of zero is possible. In fact, there are many families who achieve that goal. The measures you take in financial planning as a child approaches college and the way in which you fill out the FAFSA is how you can dramatically lower your EFC. There are many FAFSA “tricks” you can employ to reduce your EFC and a good financial planner or accountant who is well versed in the FAFSA process can help you strategize. Essentially, all of those “tricks” work to demonstrate a reduced income and assets for parents and their college bound child.

           The EFC is not the amount a family will directly pay out of pocket for college, though it is often perceived as such. It is, however, a good jumping off point for that number. There are many ways to reduce the amount you have to pay out of pocket and there are many people who can help figure out how to do that including financial planners, accountants, and guidance counselors. Sending a child to college is sure to not come without some sacrifice on the family’s part and the amount of that sacrifice lies largely in the EFC.

Meet Your Admissions Counselor

I’m often asked questions by parents and students trying to find a general philosophy towards things like financial aid or admission for all colleges. There are some basic tenets that all colleges cling to, but there are many other pieces of philosophy that can vary dramatically from one school to the next. While I like to think of myself as a good and knowledgeable school counselor, I (or any other high school counselor) am really not the best person to answer many of the school-specific questions asked. That being said, It’s time to get to know your college admissions counselor.

I should that say that most high school counselors should be fairly knowledgeable about schools in their own state and geographically close by. Even then, the high school counselor is always still only a middleman, and it’s really not wise to expect them to know details about the admission processes at schools halfway across the country. That’s why those admissions counselors are on the colleges’ payroll.

One of the immediate differences you’ll find from one college to the next is what they call the admissions counselor. Some call them recruiters, admissions representatives, admissions specialists, or other similar names. The organizational structure within the admissions department can vary somewhat as well at each school, but all colleges have admissions counselors in some form.

Those individuals have two main functions. One of those is to answer questions about their school including financial aid, student life, academics, and admissions. They also read applications and have a very heavy hand in deciding who is accepted into their school. Thus, this is a person who is accessible to interested students’ families, whose job it is to communicate with you, and who is someone you want to have a relationship with. However, the vast the majority of families fail to make this connection.

My point to all this is as follows: when you want to know if “My Favorite State University” prefers an extra year of a foreign language or an extra science, when you want to know whether consideration will be given for a student who didn’t have a great sophomore year because they broke their back in a jet ski accident and missed a lot of school, when you want to know if taking the December SAT will allow scores to be back in time to be considered for admission, pick up the phone and call the admission counselors at the college.

That phone call does two things. One of those is giving you a straight answer from the horse’s mouth. The high school counselor can give you answers to questions like those above, but that answer is only a projection based on all the information they know about that college. Making that phone call also helps establish you with the admission counselor. That same counselor may well end up reading your application and if you are able to make a positive personal connection, that can only help you.

             Generally, you can find the names and contact information for admission counselors on a college’s admissions website. Counselors are often assigned based on geography so a particular counselor might cover a given state or county. If you can’t identify your assigned counselor on a website, call the college and tell the person who answers the phone (often a student and not an admissions counselor) where you live and that you’d like to speak with your assigned counselor. Admissions counselors do spend a lot of time on the road recruiting, so if you can’t get through by phone, track down their email and contact them that way.

Haggling the Price of College

    As a young person approaches the age at which they can obtain a driver’s license, many families start to plot out how to buy another car for the family. In doing so they’ll consider the features of the car, gas mileage, etc and might ultimately end up haggling with a dealer over price. However, many families fail to take the same sort of approach a couple of years later when it is time to shop for college, especially the haggling part.

    In fact, very few people realize that the price of college is something that can be negotiated and here is how. Let’s start by quickly summarizing the financial aid process. In the winter or spring of a child’s senior year, the family will file taxes for the previous calendar year. Once that is completed, the family will need to file the FAFSA which is the federal clearinghouse for all student aid. Following that, the student will begin receiving financial aid packages from all of the colleges to which they were accepted. These financial aid packages will include grants, scholarships, work study opportunities, and federal loans. These, combined with the amount FAFSA  calculates a family should be able to afford to pay out of pocket, should meet the sticker price for the school. In negotiating, your goal is going to be to up the amounts of the most ideal aid components like scholarships and lower the amounts of less desirable components like loans.

    The first thing you have to do in the negotiating process is to make sure you haven’t already accepted admission. That would be like buying a car, signing all the paperwork, and then saying, “Now, let’s work on that price.” Next you need to make sure your child is competitive for what you are trying to do. If your child barely got into a given college in the first place, the college is not going to be very motivated to negotiate. So unless you have a very elite student, you need to make sure that you will be negotiating with schools for which your child is near the top of the freshman profile. You child needs to be someone that college is willing to compete for and that could mean applying at some colleges that are at a lower tier than what your student is capable of gaining acceptance to. Once you can check those two things off, you’re ready to make some phone calls.

    There are really two ways to go about this. The first is to try to pit one college against another. In this case, the caliber of your student is crucial. If indeed you have a student who will be coveted, the conversation is really as simple as calling school B and saying “We really want to attend college with you guys, but school A has offered us X which is significantly more affordable so we are hoping you can give our financial aid package a second look.”

    The other approach is to try and highlight some component of your finances that may not be well reflected in your FAFSA. This could be something like, “We did well last year, but dad was laid off in late December, Mom just got diagnosed with cancer and will be starting chemo, an elderly grandparent is moving in with us so we have another mouth to feed, our house was destroyed by a tornado, etc.”--basically anything that significantly impacts your finances but might not show up on standard financial reporting. Regardless, you will need to be prepared to document whatever you are trying to claim.

    For either strategy there are some basic, common sense rules. Be friendly and business like. Remember that you are asking someone for a favor to give you more money. Always get the name of the person you are talking to and try to speak to someone as high up the ladder within the financial aid office as you can get a hold of. Avoid using words like bargain, negotiate, or haggle. That is what you’re doing but those words bring an unpleasantness to it all. Lastly, it might not be a bad idea to have a target number in mind of what you are hoping the college gives you. You can share that with them at some point in the process, just keep mind that there is a good chance college is not going to be completely free across the board for your family.

Teens and Nutrition

            It seems to me that the halls of the (small) high school I work at are constantly blocked by a handful of slow moving students on crutches. It's as though someone on every one of our sports teams faces a significant injury each season. I don't recall that many injuries when I was in high school and I have a hard time finding anyone else who does either. So, that got me thinking; why do sports related injuries appear to be on the rise? A little bit of research told me the answer might just be nutrition.

            For many years, childhood obesity has been a buzzword. By now, many families are aware of obesity related issues in their children and have taken measures to keep their children from becoming overweight. However, I'm starting to wonder if those measures do not sacrifice the nutrients children need to grow and develop properly. A 2011 federal survey found that only 15% of high school students and only 9% of girls drink milk which means few teenagers get the federally recommended amount of daily calcium.

            Those who do get lots of calcium, might not be getting enough vitamin D which is essential to the body's absorption of calcium. In fact, the body can't do much with calcium without vitamin D and a 2010 federal study found that teenage girls were the least likely of any other age group to get enough vitamin D. The body can synthesize vitamin D with the aid of sunlight, so the fact that teenagers spend less time outdoors than they used to does not help the deficiencies in their diet.

            I'm not a scientist so I can't say definitively that there is a correlation between increased sports related injuries in teens and their own poor nutritional habits, but it sure makes sense to me. I believe that most parents today do an adequate job of providing nutritious foods like milk, fruits, and vegetables to their little children. However, as those children grow older, I'm concerned that the parents (and their teens) are more concerned with the quantity of food eaten rather than the nutritional quality of it. Parents need to remember that their teens are still children. Sure, they are children that often pack their own lunches or drive to restaurants with friends on the weekends, but they are still children with growing bodies that have needs.

            Parents need to remain engaged in their children's diets and demand that they drink milk and eat fruits and vegetables just like they did when the kids were little. If nothing else, parents can at least be aware of daily dietary needs for their children and provide multi-vitamins and other supplements to fill in holes for teens who absolutely refuse to eat this or that. Keeping nutrition in the same discussion as obesity can go a long ways toward creating healthy adults out of healthy children....and maybe it will keep my hallways from becoming blocked too.