Should You Help Your Kid with Their College Application?

So your teenager refuses to allow you to help him with his college applications. So should you
help him anyway? Well, we're going to talk about that today on Tips on Teens. My name is Kent Toussaint.
I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I specialize in helping kids, teens, and
families to live happier lives. By the way, if you or someone you love could really benefit from
talking to a family therapist, please reach out to us at Teen Therapy Center. Our contact info
is down below. Now let's jump into today's parent -submitted question on Tips on Teens. Hey
Kent. Hello. My son is applying for college this fall. He told me he can do all the work on his own.
I asked him if we could talk through it first and I offered to help. Even though I can tell he's
already stressed out about it, he kind of blew me off. I want to give him the space to do it on his
own. But I also want to help so that he doesn't have a nervous breakdown or not get into any colleges
because he messed up his applications.

What's your advice? Well, thank you for asking. Here's what I would do. I would sit him down at
least one more time, not while he's playing video games, not while he's in the middle of his English
essay, not while he's doing scrolling on TikTok, whether it's in the car, whether it's over
dinner, from a place of compassion and no expectation. Just say, hey, I know you want to do this
college application thing on your own and I'm fine with that. If that's what you want to do, I
will support you. My concern is that there may be questions that you don't know how to ask. And
if you don't want my help, do you want a college counselor, someone who knows this process better
than either of us, to help you with this so you can get in the colleges you want to. If you don't
want to do that, are you okay taking the risk that if you do it on your own without help, there may
be questions you don't know how to ask, which may prevent you from getting the colleges you want
to get to? And if he says, I'm

not worried about that. I can do it all on my own. I would say, okay. I would allow him to do it on
his own. He's 17 or 18. He's stepping into responsibility. He's stepping into independence,
whether he's in way too over his head or not. he will figure that out. It's a great learning experience.
The worst case scenario is he doesn't get in the colleges he wants to and maybe he goes to community
college for a couple years, which is not a bad option. It's a lot cheaper. No one cares where you
do English 101 at. It's all the same and maybe that's the wake -up call for him to go, wait a minute,
maybe I need to reach out for help on bigger things that are outside of my scope. This may be that
learning lesson, that life learning lesson. I know it's kind of a redundant thing to say. That
life lesson where he can learn and recognize that maybe he doesn't know everything and reaching
out to help to his parents, other advisors, other consultants is a really good idea. But don't
let this be an obstacle

to your relationship. Be there to support, be there ready to help if he wants help, but allow
him to make these decisions for himself. I don't think this is a high risk situation. Maybe he
really wants to get into like MIT or some really affluent in Prestige College, again, if he doesn't
get there, it's not the end of the world. It's not going to destroy his career. If anything, it
may light the fire under him to go, wow, I need to do more. I can't just rely on my smarts all the
time. I actually have to do work and put in effort. Thing is, as parents, it's tough to watch our
kids fail, but failure is where the learning happens. That's where we all learn. All of us have
learned through failure. We don't learn from successes. We want to see our kids kind of stroll
through life having success after success, but that's not reality. That's not real life. So
allowing your kid to have this safe space to fall on his face and be supported and loved as he picks
himself back up so he can learn the

resilience of how to rebound as he grows into an adult. That's our question today on Tips on Teens.
Again, my name is Kent Toussaint with Teen Therapy Center and the nonprofit 501c3 organization,
child and teen counseling, both here in Woodland Hills, California. If you'd like me to answer
your question here on Tips on Teens, email us at tipsonteens at teentherapycenter .com or you
can direct message us right here on Facebook. We love your questions. Keep them coming. Thank
you so much. And I'll see you guys next Wednesday at noon. Bye -bye.