I was having a conversation with a concerned parent after a transition seminar that I was leading. Her daughter was in the fall of her senior year in high school and the mom was very concerned. After listening to the women’s worry, I began to agree with her. Even though the daughter was still in high school, she had begun visiting the university campus, which was only 30 minutes away, almost every weekend. The student’s older sister was a junior at the same college and the high school senior felt right at home with her sister’s older friends. One night at a party in one of the fraternity houses, this high school senior got extremely drunk and began dancing for the frat boys in a very provocative manner. Thankfully the mother spared me the details but for the sake of understanding the severity, she added that if this had been a scene in a movie, it would have been given an R rating because of her actions. I listened as this loving mother asked for advice how to help her teenager in the months she had left. I was not surprised at her story, I have heard this situation described a dozen times with other underaged, overzealous teenagers. Then the mom said something else I had heard before. She said, “I wasn’t an angel in college by any means, but I would have never done anything like this.” I had heard that story told many times about many underaged, overzealous teenagers moving fast to keep up with the world. The fact is this current culture is high speed, wirelessly connected, and globally local, and moves much faster than it did when you or I grew up in it. Your kids and mine are growing up in a world that is progressively different than any one before it. Even though this could say that about any generation, this is the one that our kids are growing up in and therefore this is the culture that we must understand how to raise kids in.
Here are a few questions to think about asking your senior this year:
What do you need to tell your child about alcohol and drugs before college?
What do you need to tell your child about sex and dating before college?
What do you need to tell your child about the dangers of social media to college students?