The transition from high school to university can be a difficult one. Students set out on their own for the first time, suddenly without the support of parents to help them take care of their own living space, prepare their own meals, manage their schedule, or help them keep on top of their studies. Without a parent looking over their shoulder to ensure they’re keeping on track, many university students feel lost and unmotivated when they first arrive at university. Help prevent your teenager from losing their drive at university by instilling them with these critical habits before they leave the nest. They’ll be thanking you for it in a few months when the rest of their peers are struggling and they’re thriving at university!
- Time Management
Between work, doctor’s appointments, working out, and spending enough time with family, this is a skill that even many adults struggle with on a regular basis! However, time management is very much a learned skill, especially for teens and young adults whose impulsivity and hormonal influences are still running quite high. Talk through various time management strategies with your teen and figure out what works best for their particular learning style and work ethic.
Don’t just apply these strategies to completing their classwork, either – encourage them to manage their time when it comes to extracurricular activities, household responsibilities, and their social life. Help them maintain a calendar or planner, and then help them stick to it. For large school projects, help them map out the pace at which they need to work and find smaller mini-goals within their larger project that they can manage more easily. Of course, with the goal in mind that by university they’ll be able to manage their time independently, try not to micromanage their schedule and let them take the reins bit by bit.
- Being Self Sufficient
All too many first-year university students arrive at their dorm and find themselves completely overwhelmed when, on top of their hectic lecture and study schedules, they find out they have to manage their own laundry and cook their own meals. This can lead to a lot of dysfunction as they struggle to figure it out, and may cause them to adopt a lot of unhealthy eating and personal care habits that can follow them into adulthood. Fortunately, preventing this is simple: teach them before they get there!
As soon as your child is old enough for it to be developmentally appropriate, they should be contributing to the household. Children as young as 3 or 4 can contribute to the household by helping wipe surfaces, putting away toys, and helping set the table for dinner. Older kids can learn how to cook simple dinners, help with yard work, and vacuum the floors. Having them contribute meaningfully throughout their life and manage their own chore schedule will have them more prepared for university (not to mention adult life).
If you’re realizing that your teenager has gone their whole life without contributing to the household in this way, don’t panic! It’s not too late to get them involved as a contributing member of the household. Start small, and make sure to emphasize their own personal responsibility for ensuring their chores and tasks get done, rather than relying upon you to remind them of their jobs. Having the practice of monitoring their own responsibilities is perhaps the most important element in ensuring these habits will continue when they get out on their own!
- Money Management
University students aren’t always the best when it comes to making financial decisions, especially if budgeting and saving are new to them. It’s all too easy to spend your financial aid money by going to McDonald’s every day for lunch rather than using the dining hall credits, only to discover that you don’t have enough to cover school essentials. Young adults can even cause major issues for themselves down the line if they run into significant debt with credit cards or fail to keep track of important financial needs like insurance.
Teach your teen about budgeting, and help them create a budget for themselves. Set up a time to go over their budget each week or month and input their expenses, income, and savings. For larger purchases, encourage them to save money themselves over time rather than asking for help from parents.
Make sure your teen is exposed to important financial concepts like credit, credit scores, savings accounts, investments, financial aid, and interest. It’s pretty typical for this kind of critical personal finance education to be left out of the high school curriculum, and as your teenager becomes an adult, the decisions they make will impact them for the rest of their life. Start them off right with some learning about financial literacy!
- Interpersonal Skills
Even a teenager who can pick up after themselves, cook their own food, and manage their own money can wind up being the world’s worst freshman year dorm roommate, with a limited ability to network or form a critical social support system.
For a teenager who has spent their life in a house with their parents and sleeping in their own room, learning how to share space with another adult can be a real challenge. Make sure your child understands how to be a respectful roommate, like keeping their mess to a minimum, respecting their roommate’s space and belongings, and keeping quiet during hours when their roommate is sleeping or studying.
When it comes to social interaction, discuss potential clubs or groups they might be interested in joining, strategies about how they might start a conversation with new people, and how to reach out to peers or professors about opportunities to network or gain valuable experience in their field of interest.
- Handling University Classes
Hopefully, your child’s high school will have done a great job at preparing them for the academic world of higher education. However, high school students often get to university and are woefully unprepared for the appropriate way to manage in a higher learning classroom. Managing group projects, communicating with their professor, keeping track of deadlines, and understanding their syllabus can be a challenge for young adults.
Much like time management, the key is to prepare them by offering tools, assistance, and reminders, while challenging them to cultivate as much independence as possible. Their university coursework will, after all, be entirely their responsibility to manage. Show them how to write professional-sounding emails to their professors, and review with them appropriate ways to manage group project work cooperatively with others. Have them regularly check their grades and keep track of deadlines on a digital calendar or in a planner.
- Avoid Burnout Through Self-Care
First-year burnout is a very real struggle that so many students face, resulting in poor physical and mental health. Even students who are fully prepared with the skills they need to thrive in university can find themselves struggling with motivation and their mood. In the business of classwork, new friends, and an entirely new atmosphere, often finding time to do some self-care gets lost in the shuffle.
Teens who are used to being cared for by parents may struggle with feeling abandoned or lonely, and be unsure of how to make themselves feel better. The common adolescent coping strategies of partying and binge drinking really aren’t great coping skills for them to be learning and taking into adulthood.
Teach your child appropriate self-care by helping them learn how to check in with their own emotions, and find healthy coping mechanisms that can be good, sustainable means by which they can soothe themselves in a healthy way. Physical exercise, reading, relaxing, or treating themselves to a nice meal occasionally are all great ways to destress. Offering to help your child find counselling services may also be great for young adults who are struggling with the transition.
The major life change from high school to university is one of the biggest events in a young person’s life. In a time when it’s often sink-or-swim for young adults, you have the power as a parent to prepare your child to not just survive at university, but thrive and grow into the best version of their adult self. They’ll be prepared not just for the world of higher learning, but for adulthood and the professional realm.