the future

My kids are absolutely terrified by the idea of life after high school. I know a lot of it is because that is how high schools function. They constantly make the kids take classes or have meetings all about the future. Whether your future is a traditional college, a technical program or just community college until you figure it all out; high schools want to get you ready to go.

My kids are not ready to be adults and they are not going to magically become ready just because they get handed a diploma. Trying to convince my children that they will not be homeless after high school has been a real challenge. They think we will just stop thinking of them as our children when they hit eighteen. At first, they thought we would throw them out when that happens and we at first had to convince them that they will be with us until they graduate. I did not think at the time that would then lead to being scared about after graduation.

It is a never ending obsession they have with wanting to know every last detail of what will happen after high school. They do not like our answers because we are unsure. We mostly present possibilities and they want to nail it all down as if things will not change in the next couple years.

Our oldest is going to be moving out to a transitioning program where she will hopefully learn to become independent and actually want to care for herself on a consistent basis. She is mostly freaked out about living with strangers and we had to explain if she did the traditional college route she would also be living with strangers. She still is not sold on the idea and demands to pick one out now, so she can mentally prepare. However, we cannot even apply to these programs until she is physically older. We have been patiently waiting while she has just been brooding and building up all these feelings into a great big explosion of “it’s all your fault”.

Our youngest is so afraid of the unknown. She wants to go to the local community college, at least most of the time. They have a couple programs that she wants to do that should lead her into a job in her field in just two years of full time enrollment. She is mostly concerned about money and where she will live. I have floated the option of her living in an apartment over our garage. She likes the idea, but still thinks there will be too many rules. I told her that no matter where she lives there will be rules to keep the property intact. She seems to like this plan most of the time. I told her she could go to school part time and work part time if she wants to start saving for a place of her own. When she is in a really good mood, we fantasize about buying a little hobby farm so she can run it and take care of the animals. She really wants to do this, but those doubts from her trauma tend to overwhelm her at times.

In middle school and even elementary school, kids are constantly being pushed into planning their futures. The way they grade the kids is on “career readiness”. I feel like this is just way too much pressure for young children to need to concern themselves with. This should really be a metric that is soon and utilized for adults in the children’s lives and not actually their report card on whether or not they can pass a class or grade. This all creates so much anxiety for the children. I remember my young ones being beside themselves with fear and crying during testing weeks because they thought the tests determined whether they would move up in school or if they would have a good future. I had to explain to them that the standardized tests are mostly for the government to evaluate how well the school is doing and has actually nothing to do with them on a personal level.

It is absolutely maddening to explain to kids that in the end these things that people tell them are so important, end up just being useless ranking information. A single score on a test is not the determining factor on whether you will get into a college or if you will have an enjoyable life. It is just a number that will eventually mean nothing to anyone. We really need to go back to grading young children on their ability to communicate and their interpersonal skills, like working together, sharing and good citizenship. No matter what scores my kids get, you will not convince me that a 10 year old is ready for a career.