Leaving The Nest: Are Your Graduates Prepared?

It’s June, and the fledgling birds cheeping up in my porch eaves are starting to leave the nest.  Many of our children are doing the same, whether it be college, a new job, or even marriage.  Three of my own grandchildren graduated this Spring.  Do our children have the skills they need to soar in their new environment, or will they crash right out the door?

Many of our children enter adulthood with little knowledge on being grown up.  They have been concentrating on their academics, but are woefully lacking in real-life skills and knowledge.  There are certain practical skills that will make life easier for our children stepping into adulthood.  If they’ve never been taught, they may have a slow learning curve and a lot of turbulence.  Unraveled hems either hang ragged or get fixed with staplers or scotch tape, toilets build up a thick layer of gunk inside, credit cards get maxed out, germs flourish and nutrition fades when our kids aren’t taught basic life skills. 

“We parents, we’re doing too much,” says Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University.  “We have the very best of intentions, but when we over-help, we deprive them of the chance to learn these really important things that it turns out they need to learn to be prepared to be out in the world of work, to get an apartment, to make their way through an unfamiliar town, to interact with adults who aren’t motivated by love.”¹

What do they need to learn before they strike out on their own?

Money

One of the most critical life skills you can teach your child is how to manage money.  Being money savvy is will prevent a lot of grief down the road to adulthood.  Understanding money management includes knowing the difference between wants and needs, being able to delay gratification, the difference between a debit card and a credit card, and knowing how compounding interest will hurt you if you owe money (credit cards, student loans) and help you if you have savings and investments. 

It means knowing how to budget, how to pay bills, how to write, endorse, and deposit checks and how to balance your checkbook and read your credit card statement.  It means understanding the true cost of things when you add fees, taxes, extra charges for add-ons, etc.  They need to realize that daily small expenditures, like that cup of gourmet coffee daily, add up quickly.  They should learn that it’s OK to sacrifice some of life’s luxuries for an education—they don’t need HD cable TV, or a condo, or even a car while a student.

I remember my first check book when I left for college.  I was frugal, I stayed within my budget, but one day I got confused on my balance and wrote a check for $5 more than I had in my account.  When my check bounced back to me, I immediately put $5 more in the account and told the store they could re-submit the check.  It bounced again.  This time it said I was short $20.  I put the $20 in my account, told the patient store manager to submit the check once more.  It bounced again.  Only then I realized that when a check bounces, the bank charges a fee.  I was only covering the debt, not the added fee.  That little lack of knowledge cost me $40, my lunch money for the month.  Kids don't use checks much anymore, but debit cards have the same problems.

If their money comes in lump sums, such as a loan or scholarship, they need to learn how to budget it out to last the semester.  With a loan, they should understand how much they are borrowing and how long it will realistically take to pay it back.  Sometimes they look at the top salary for their chosen profession and think it will be easy.  They don’t realize that most people don’t make the top salary, and even if they eventually do, it won’t be for a long time.  Not being careful with their money now will mean they have to be careful with their money for years.

Young adults often expect to live the life-style of their parents as students, and rack up those student debts on their wants rather than just on their education.  One young woman I know spent lots of her student loan money on fancy furniture, name-brand clothes, and lots of meals in restaurants.  Her life didn’t go as planned and now, fifteen years later, those un-needed loans are a burden around her neck.

There are many ways students can cut back on costs while in school if they think strategically.  Text books can be bought used, or rented through Amazon, or even downloaded.  Thrift stores can provide dorm or apartment necessities.  Dates can be creative and cheap.  Seldom used items can be shared with others.  Utilities can be kept under control if they pick a reasonable temperature for winter and summer, and don’t leave all the lights on or the refrigerator door open for long periods of time.

Money guru Dave Ramsey said it’s important to teach a work ethic in money management.  “Number one,” he says, “you must teach your children to work.  Eating two bags of Doritos and spending all day in the chair playing Nintendo is not work.  There is no future for you if your only skill set is gaming. …You can win World of Warcraft 46 times and nobody cares if that’s on your resume when you grow up… Teach your kids to work.  Work, get paid.  Don’t work, don’t get paid.  I’ve met 54-year-olds who don’t get that.”²  Employers value workers who know how to work.

Time Management

Another skill that will make their lives easier now and throughout their lives is time management.  Being eighteen and having no one to watch over you can be trouble when it comes to balancing college social life with classwork, or enjoying your first wages while taking care of your job or assigning priority to work projects, or managing a house for the first time.  Many of us could still learn a thing or two about managing our time, but the more kids learn before leaving home, the more successful they’ll be.

Have you taught your child to break down assignments into smaller bites and work on a little each week, instead of leaving it all to the last minute?  Have you taught them how to prioritize when they have several different things to do?  “College has the ability to put a lot on your plate at one time, so [students need to] stay organized and one step ahead of [their] work,” says Billy Hartman, 22, a graduate from Temple University.  Procrastination can lead to high stress, pulling all-nighters, and low grades.³

Cleaning, housework

No one wants to live with a slob, not roommates, not a spouse.  Our young adults need to know how to clean and take care of where they live.

              https://www.flickr.com/photos/ryochijiiwa/417062984 Ryo Chijiiwa 

They need to know how to pick up, sweep, mop, and vacuum.  They should be able to clean the bathroom, including the toilet, inside and out.  It should be their responsibility to do the dishes, clean the kitchen counters, the stove, the inside of the refrigerator.  They should automatically wipe up spills.  They should know how to clean non-stick pans.  I know a woman who mixed bleach and ammonia in trying to clean a stubborn toilet.  The poison gas knocked her out and she had to be pulled to safety.

As a freshman in college, I lived in an apartment where we took turns cooking, and washing dishes.  I was a good cook, but when it was my turn to cook, I left out everything I used, spills and splashes adorned the counters and stoves, and dirty pots and pans were left to harden on the stove.  Finally, an older girl in our apartment talked to me and explained that I needed to clean up as I went.  It wasn’t the dishwasher’s duty to clean up my cooking mess.  I had no idea.

Health and hygiene, handling illness

Illness shouldn’t panic your new adult if he’s learned to care for himself when he’s sick.  They should know the basics of over the counter medication, how to follow the dosage directions, to take the smallest dose that helps, and that none should be mixed with alcohol.  They should be familiar with the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, apple, toast) and that onion rings and pizza won’t help an upset stomach or stomach flu.  They should know about washing hands when ill or around people who are ill, what to do for a sore throat, when to see a doctor and when to tough it out.  They should know how to fill a prescription.

Comparison shopping

“To be good at shopping, [your child] needs to understand the importance of delayed gratification, saving towards a goal, determining what a good price is for an item, and why it may not make sense to purchase something just because it’s on sale.”⁴  They need to only buy as much as they need so they don’t have 30 cans of potted meat that were on sale like I did as a newly married (we’ve never eaten it again), or 30 sweaters in Southern California, like a friend I knew.  They need to compare quality.  Sometimes the more expensive one is cheaper in the long run if it lasts longer.  They need to compare prices, which can vary widely for the same item in different stores or on-line.  They need to know they should pass up on lesser things to save for something bigger that they really want more. 

If you have given them a chance to manage some money on their own, they have begun to understand these shopping variables.

Maintenance chores (house, car, clothes …)

Graduates should know how to replace the toilet paper, use the dishwasher or wash dishes by hand, take out the trash, replace a toilet flapper, empty the vacuum cleaner bag, paint a room, tighten the screw on a loose hinge, lubricate a squeaky door, plunge a plugged drain.  They should know how to use a wrench, a screw driver, and a hammer.  One of my daughters is a Personal Assistant.  Her client doesn't know how to change a light bulb.  Instead, she pays (a lot) to have someone else do it for her.

        https://comons.org/wiki/File.Droping_faucet.jpg Angelo Gonzalez 

My grandson told me that a lot of his female friends didn’t know how to use any tools whatsoever.  “This meant that I would have to go over and help them put up towel hooks, curtains, fix the doors, sharpen their knives, etc.  Many of them told me they wish that their parents had taught them how to do those sorts of practical and easy things with tools.”  His mother (my daughter) was invited by her dad (my husband) to help him in fixing things around the house.  She can seat a toilet, re-hang a sagging door, replace a faulty electrical outlet.  Another daughter has built a beautiful coffee table, a bathroom washstand, a kitchen table, and with her husband, has built a room addition, from the foundation to the roof. 

On the other hand, a friend told me that her grandson had an overflowing toilet.  “I didn’t know what to do,” he told her, “except close the top.”  It didn’t help.

I was driving a daughter and her two male cousins to Zion’s Park.  In the park, we had a flat tire.  I was so surprised that the two male teenagers didn’t know how to change a tire.  My daughter and I had to instruct them (but we made them do the heavy work).  Even if a teen doesn’t own their own car, they should know the basics of car ownership, such as how to pump gas, how to check the oil and tire pressure and add air, where the manual, the registration, and insurance cards are and what to do if there is an accident.  They should know how to read a map and follow directions without a GPS.  They should also know how to ride a bus or other public or shared transportation.

My eldest daughter knew how to pump gas, but not when.  She always waited until it was almost empty, and ended up stranded on the highway on her way home from college because she ran out.  I read of another girl whose engine burned up because she didn’t know you had to check and add oil.  Two sisters ran out of gas on a lonely road at dusk, and filled up their gas tank with water.  That was an expensive lesson.

It would be helpful to our young adults if they knew how to tack up a loose hem (no, not scotch tape nor staples), sew on a button that falls off, mend a ripped seam.  They should have learned how to thread a needle, knot a thread, and take a stitch.

Laundry

How many college boys end up with pink socks and underwear?  

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ frankieleon

Young people heading out into the world need to know the basics of how to do laundry.  They should know how to separate their clothes, how to read the washing and drying guidelines on labels, where to put the detergent and fabric softener and how much to use, that cotton and sweaters shrink in the dryer and colors bleed in hot water. And certain intimate clothes need to be changed daily.  My brother-in-law used to spray his socks with under-arm deodorant so he wouldn’t have to wash them.

Meal prep

“Unless the idea of your child living off of Top Ramen, Pizza Rolls, and fast food sounds appealing, it is important that they know how to shop and cook.”⁵  “Research shows that people who frequently cook meals at home eat healthier and consume fewer calories than those who cook less.”⁴  And even more so, it could save them thousands of dollars.  According to the Hechinger Report, the average college charges around $4,500 per year for a meal plan.  (Wellesley’s meal plan costs $7,442 per student per year.)⁶  By giving your student some simple cooking skills, they could save that money.

Start by teaching them the essentials, like how to make a shopping list, read the grocery ads, compare prices, follow a recipe, and cook basic fare like a baked chicken, how to cook pasta, scramble an egg, and heat a can of soup.  Tip: they must remove the soup from the can and put it into the pot to heat.  Sometimes you add water and sometimes not.  The label tells when.

They should know metal and foil and living animals do not go into the microwave, and if you don’t poke a potato skin, it can explode in any type of oven.

I had a room-mate who didn’t know how to boil an egg.  More than once, she put the egg in the water, turned on the heat, and then left to do something else until a most terrible yucky odor permeated our apartment.  The water would have boiled dry and the egg shell burnt.

A microwave or crock-pot cookbook will help them eat right even when time is tight.

How to research skills

They may be better than you at this.  We had libraries and encyclopedias and how-to books.  They have Google and Pinterest and YouTube.  If they know how to find out how to do what they don’t know how to do, they are on the road to success.

Maybe the most important thing you can give your graduate as they leave the nest and head off into the world, is your love and your confidence in their abilities to cope.  

Let them know they can figure things out as they go along.  You’ve taught them what you could, now it is their turn to learn by experience.  And that’s what it is all about.  When I left home, my dad gave me a house key.  He said that was to let me know that no matter what happened, I was always welcome at home.  That love sustained and supported me.

1.      https://www.parenting.com/child/child-development/12-basic-life-skills-every-kid-should-know-high-school

               Parenting 12 Basic Life Skills Every Kid Should Learn by High School by Ellen Sturm Niz

2.       https://www.daveramsey.com/askdave/relationships-and-money/teaching-kids-four-money-principles

               Dave Ramsey: Ask Dave Teaching Kids Four Money Principles

3.     https://www.today.com/parents/11-things-i-wish-i-knew-going-college-1D80098788

              Today 11 things I wish I knew before going to college by Sarah Bourassa, Aug. 24, 2014

4.     https://selfsufficientkids.com/life-skills-kids-need/

 Self Sufficient Kids.  Independent Kids 15 Life Skills Kids Need Before They Leave Home  by Kerry

5.       https://thescholarshipsystem.com/blog-for-students-families/8-essential-life-skills-teach-high-schooler-head-college/ 

The Scholarship System 8 Essential Life Skills to Teach Your High Schooler Before They Head to College     

6.       https://hechingerreport.org/tough-swallow-reason-college-keeps-costing-price-meal-plans/

Hechinger Report: Higher Education A tough-to-swallow reason college keeps costing more: the price of meal plans by Tara Garcia Mathewson January 18, 2018                                                 

Mommy Rage

OK.  You did it.  You lost your temper and turned into a Hulk, a witch, fiery-dart breathing dragon, and you crushed your little loved ones’ spirits, you spanked their little bottoms, or maybe you shook, or slapped, or threw things, definitely yelled and said vile things about how awful they are.  The angry words came out faster than you could catch them.  And now you feel horrible.  You are the worst mother ever.  Your poor terrified kids would be better off in an orphanage than living with you.  They cry.  You cry.  And the worst part is, this is a normal day.

Mommy rage.  We know it’s bad.  What we don’t know is how to change ourselves into the patient, loving, long-suffering, unflappable mother we long to be.  All we know to is to try harder.  Next time we won’t let ourselves get angry.  We’ll show more self-control.  We won’t ever let ourselves act like that again.  But we do.  You may have been a calm, serene person BC (before children), but somehow kids help us discover the temper we never knew we had.

Things kids do that push the anger buttons:

Babies: cry non-stop, cry because they are too tired to eat and too hungry to sleep, make a diaper change a wrestling match, won’t nurse, have colic, won’t sleep when you are exhausted.

Toddlers: whine, throw a tantrum because you cut his sandwich in squares instead of triangles, insist on putting on her own socks and melt down because they won’t go on, paint the brown couch in a rental with red oil paint (true story), refuse to eat, refuse to nap, scribble on the walls, 

cut their hair, dig the dirt out of a potted plant, climb to the top shelf, run into the street, destroy something you value, poop in their bedroom and then paint the walls with it, pour the bottle of vegetable oil on the floor and skate in it (another true story).

School aged children: whine, fight with each other because “He’s breathing on me.”, talk back, ignore you when tell them what to do, won’t get ready in time, lie, steal, can’t find their shoes when it’s time for school, don’t do their chores, need constant help with their homework.

Teenagers: wear inappropriate clothing, sass, ignore chores, ignore homework, stay out too late, chose grody friends, live on their phones or tablets, don’t obey, whine, argue about everything, smoke, drink, fight, use drugs or have sex.

Pair these triggers with never-ending dirty dishes, piles of laundry, not enough sleep, not enough money, not enough time for all you have to do, and even the most mild-mannered mom can turn into a screaming maniac.  

Barnhill, who wrote She’s Gonna Blow! Real Help for Moms Dealing with Anger, says it’s often the ‘little’ things in our everyday lives that are the most likely to send us over the edge.¹ 

“Anger is the most powerful of all emotional experiences… The only emotion that activates every muscle group and organ of the body, anger exists to mobilize the instinctual fight-or-flight response meant to protect us from predators.”²  But our children aren’t predators. 

The funny thing about anger, as strong as the emotion is, it is often a secondary emotion, one we experience because we aren’t dealing with the primary emotion.  Most often our anger comes because of fear.  We fear our children will get hurt or will hurt someone else, we fear looking like a failure, we fear they won’t love us, that they’ll bomb out at school and thus life, that they’ll grow up to be liars or thieves, or living on the streets.

Other emotions that can hide under anger are hurt, frustration, disappointment, grief, guilt, loss, or a feeling of inadequacy, or even the unfinished business of your own childhood.  For example, “for some people, a crying baby becomes a signal not of the child’s needs but of the parent’s abject failure. The inability to comfort a distressed baby, or at least to stop the crying, is the leading cause of child abuse, shaken-baby syndrome, and infanticide.”² 

Psychologist Gary J. Oliver explains, “At a very early age, many of us learned that anger can help us divert attention from these more painful emotions.  Anger is safer.”³   It may be that our anger simply stems from feeling overwhelmed, fatigued, or burnt out.

For me, the underlying emotion was fear of loss of control.  I was under the mistaken belief that my job was to make my children be good.  With my compliant children, it was easy.  I told them what to do, they did it, and I was a good mom.  With my non-compliant children, it was different.  I told them what to do, they did something else, and I was a failure as a mom.  

                                                                                                                     maximkabb/iStock/Thinkstock

I couldn’t make them do anything.  So I got angry.

What do we do with our anger?  We can stuff it, which can make us emotionally and even physically sick, and which can slowly build inside us until it explodes, blowing us up along with our children.  Or we can unleash it immediately on our poor scared children, often being cruel, critical and hostile.  Another way anger is often expressed is passive-aggressive behavior.  Procrastination, sarcasm, emotional withdrawal, lack of consideration, and the silent treatment make our point.  Oliver and his co-author H. Norman Wright tell us it rarely helps to “try hard” to stop being angry.  We need more than self-control.³   

Oliver tells us that simply feeling the emotion of anger is not wrong.²  It can be an important message that… our needs or wants are not being fully met. To keep from hurting those we love, and ourselves, we need to look closely to understand what is really underneath our anger—our fear, our frustration, our hurt—and choose to talk about those emotions instead.  It is an opportunity for emotional growth.  When those emotions are healed, there is no need for the anger.  “Talking about these ‘softer’ primary emotions tends to prompt softer language from us that’s less threatening to others.”³

I used to get really angry at my 4-year-old son for riding his Big Wheel in the street.

Yelling at him didn’t seem to make any difference.  When I explained that I was afraid he would be hit by a car and badly hurt, he explained to me that he was faster than any car, so riding in the street was safe.  A short race down the block between me in the car and him on his Big Wheel, demonstrated that the car really was faster, and after that he stayed out of the street.  Expressing my fear worked better than expressing my anger.

Tricia Jalbert in her blog Mommy Rage: Cool Down Before you Melt said, “Children learn from watching how you deal with your own feelings and how you deal with theirs.  While you wouldn’t want to saddle your child with inappropriate exposure to your adult issues and emotions, it is not unhealthy for them to simply see you angry.  It’s what you do when you are angry, and how you manage your intensity, that are important.  Showing healthy responses to strong emotions teaches children that these emotions can be expressed and managed safely.”⁴

What are healthy responses to that dangerous fire of anger inside ourselves?

Give yourself a time out.  

Go ahead and tell your kids that you are angry and need time to cool off and you’ll talk to them later.  Exercise, punch a pillow, scrub something to get rid of the toxic chemicals flooding your body from anger.  See if you are tired, or hungry, or lonely, and if so, take care of it.  Consciously relax.  Tense and relax all your muscles.  Try creative projects or meditation.  I used to go into my bedroom and pray that my anger could be replaced with love and I could look for teachings and solutions rather than punishment.

 

Force a smile.  Mom Tara Giroud said, “I used to think [a forced smile] was the stupidest thing, but lately when I’m five-miliseconds from exploding, I turn around and force a smile and within seconds I can feel a shift.  I can breathe.  I can come back into my somewhat more rational self.  I can turn back to my kids and not roar my terrible roar or gnash my terrible teeth.”⁵

Speaking of which, work to avoid scaring your children.  You can honestly express your feelings without being scary.  Really.

You can also express anger without blame or labeling.  “I feel angry when you keep fighting,” rather than “I can’t stand you, you are such a trouble maker.”

Don’t take it personally.  We sometimes see disobedience as a personal insult.  We say do this, and they do that.  Remember, they are just children.  They aren’t out to get us.  They are just seeing things from their undeveloped viewpoints, which is all about them, not us.

Girard warns us about counting to ten.  According to one report, it actually makes people angrier.  We don’t want that.  Taking deep breaths is good if you focus on the breathing out rather than sucking the air in.  Taking a deep breath in may trigger the fight or flight response.  Instead, focus on blowing all the air out of your lungs.  This moves you into a more rational part of your mind.

Think ahead and look for potential anger situations and avoid them if possible, or visualize possible better responses.

“The difference in your reaction to the child’s behavior lies entirely within you and depends completely on how you feel about yourself, says Steven Stosny, Ph.D.  [If your self-value is low], the child’s behavior seems to diminish your sense of self, and in anger you punish him for doing it to you.  [When self-value is high], the child’s behavior does not diminish your sense of personal importance, value, power, or lovability.  So there is no need for anger.  Rather, the problem to be solved is how to teach the child to behave better; you won’t do that by humiliating or scaring him with anger.  His reaction to humiliation and fear will be the same as yours—an inability to see the other person’s perspective, an overwhelming urge to blame, and an impulse for retaliation or punishment.”²

Remember we are a work in progress as parents.  We’re not going to be perfect all at once.  I’ve been a mom for 54 years, and I’m still not perfect (don’t tell my kids.  Oh wait, they already know).  So at some time or another, our toddler is going to scribble on the wall or our teen is going to come home at 4 am, and we’re going to lose it and morph into that fiery dragon again.   

When that happens, we can quickly admit that we have been wrong.  We can and should apologize to our children.  We can talk about the underlying emotion that led us to the anger.  We tell our child how we are feeling now (sorry, embarrassed, guilty, etc.).  We can talk about what we should have done to calm down before we lost it.  We can brainstorm with our child about avoiding future bouts of anger.  Your child can learn an invaluable life skill by this type of interchange.  You model for them how to handle it when they lose their temper.  Win-win.

1.      Focus on the Family When Moms Get Angry by Carol Steffes 

https://www.crosswalk.com/family/parenting/when-moms-get-angry-1201796.html

2.      Psychology Today Why Parents Really Get Angry at Their Kids.by Steven Stosny, Ph.D.,  posted Aug 07, 2015

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/201508/why-parents-really-get-angry-their-kids

3.      2015 Focus on the Family (Canada) Association Why moms who struggle with anger need to be brave by Catherine Wilson

     https://www.focusonthefamily.ca/content/why-moms-who-struggle-with-anger-need-to-be-brave 

4.      The Snap Mom Mommy Rage Cool Down Before you Melt  by Tricia Jalbert

https://thesnapmom.com/mommy-rage-cool-down-before-you-melt/

5.      Walking on travels: Hey you, Angry Mom, you’re not alone  by Tara E. M. Giroud, posted Feb. 20, 2017 in MOM, Parenting

https://walkingontravels.com/mom/hey-you-angry-anger-mom-youre-not-alone/