College Importance Fades

Q: My nearly 20-year-old daughter has finished one semester and wants to quit college to work in retail. She is dating a nice boy, who lacks focus as well. She ignores our advice to press on with college, wanting to work and spend time with her boyfriend. My husband’s ready to charge her rent and health insurance if she stops attending school. How can we help her realize what she’s throwing away?

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A. In short, you can’t. There are some lessons that adult children—and she is an adult—have to learn the hard way. You can’t continue to manage her life for herself. What you can do is let her make her own decisions, even though you see the path she’s selecting as far from ideal.

However, you can inform her that since she has chosen to leave school, she will need to start paying rent. I think most health insurance plans allow for you to keep adult children on until around age 26, and that would be a nice gesture on your part if you can afford to keep her on your insurance for a few years. The realities of rent/board, car upkeep (payments, insurance, gas), and her other necessities (phone, share of cable TV, etc.) will eat up her paycheck faster than she imagined. That will be a bigger reality check than any lecture you can give her.

I would consider enacting a “lease” agreement with her, in writing, what chores she’s expected to do around the house and what amount she’ll pay each month (and the due date) for room and board. Leave nothing to interpretation--will save both of you much grief in the long run. Then back off, remembering that what she does at 20 isn’t necessarily what she’ll be doing at 25. Let her discover for herself how "fun" working and paying her own bills. She's old enough to fail--or succeed--on her own.

To Believe or Not To Believe—Is That Really the Question?

Q: I spot-check my 15-year-old daughter’s (“Ann”) social media sites—she knows this—and found a posting by her close friend (“Sue”) that contained obscene language. Sue wrote, “I didn’t write that, Ann did.” Thing is, neither one of the talk like that (at least that I’ve ever heard), so it seems really out of character for either one of them. They were together when the post was written. What can I do? It’s very likely they will finger each other as the “real” writer of the post. Oh, and both are honor students and generally stay out of trouble. Also, do I let Sue’s mother know what I found out (we’re fairly close)?

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A: Many parents would commence the hunt for “the truth,” i.e., who really wrote the incriminating post. Thus begins the game of finger pointing, tears, strained relationships between you and Sue’s parents, etc. The whole thing becomes an exercise in futility because no matter who actually wrote the post, both girls were present at the time it was uploaded and both girls probably share some of the blame, either directly writing it or indirectly egging on the one who did.

So save yourself time and hassle by skipping the hunting part and moving toward the solution part, which is quite simple: take away Ann’s access to social media and to her electronic devices for at least a month. If she asks why, you can say that since her name was associated with such language, she needs a break from social media. Make her go cold turkey from electronic devices for 30 days and that should make her think twice in the future to be even near someone who would post something like that under her name.

Lest you think that is too harsh, keep in mind that in a few years, she will be searching for a job after college graduation. With more and more employers trolling the Web to see what’s being said about job candidates, do you really want her name associated with any filth out there? Not that she needs to hear that—she won’t understand your reasons anyway—but that’s something for you to keep in mind as you consider how to handle things like this now and in the future.

Tread with care if you talk to Sue’s mother about the posting. She might not want to hear that her daughter was associated with something tawdry.

In October, Sarah will be giving a series of talks on The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline that Really Works through the City of Fairfax Parks and Recreation Department. Also in October, Sarah and Mary Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership in a four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more information.