What next for your senior?
It’s not uncommon for seniors to decide to take their life after high school in a direction that may not meet your expectations.

Regardless of the reason or the issues between you and your senior, experts and fellow parents recommend that you love them and support them unconditionally. Your support should not be dependent on them doing what you want.

Keep talking
Encourage your senior to talk to their career counselors, take tests or classes that will help determine what they want to do. In the end, you need to respect their choices. Think of the big picture and recognize that they may be completely different in five years. It is their life and they need to make this decision for themselves. There are many good books available from a high school counselor about careers that outline the lifetime earning potential and working conditions for various degrees of education. Ask your student to review them.

“I had saved an article from the paper concerning lifetime earning potential. According to the 2000 Census, someone with a high school education who works full time can expect to earn about $1.2 million in their work-life span, compared to $2.1 million for college graduates and $2.5 million for those with a master’s degree. It helped me convince my son to go to college after he was out of high school a year.”
Kathy in Madison, Wisconsin