“My son did not get into his desired college choices. Is there anything I can to do help him consider other options?”

Hello! Welcome to Tips on Teens. My name is Kent Toussaint. I'm a licensed marriage and family
therapist and the founder and clinical director of Teen Therapy Center and also the executive
director of Child and Teen Counseling. Come to you live on Facebook every Wednesday at noon
to join you for lunch to answer your parenting questions. And here is the question of today.
My son just heard back from colleges and none of his schools he was hoping to go accepted him.
He's now telling us that college is stupid, and a waste of time, and that he's glad he didn't get
in. He used to be really excited about the idea of going to college, but now it's the opposite.
To be honest, we're shocked he didn't get accepted to some of his main choices. We forced him
to apply to some backup colleges just in case, and he did get into all those, but he says that he'd
rather die than go to any of those schools. I'm conflicted because I want to support and console
him because it sucks, but I also want to encourage

him to at least consider the other options before throwing out college entirely. Is there anything
I can do to help him see things more clearly? Yes, I think there is. The first thing I think we need
to recognize is there are emotional problems and logical problems. Logical problems require
logical solutions. Emotional problems require emotional solutions. You can't get to the
logical problems until you saw the emotional ones. And right now, I imagine this young man is
going through a lot of grief, and shock, and disappointment. And until he can kind of come to
terms with that, he can't really get to the second part of planning. Okay, how am I going to adapt
to this? So, how do we help him do that? We don't try to solve the problem. We don't try to fix the
problem too fast. Don't start throwing ideas at him. Be there. Put your arm around him. Let him
know you're sad For him to you're disappointed give him that emotional support, you know, like
if you were really disappointed about something

Would you just want someone to sit there and listen and be understanding eventually? I think
this young man is going to calm down find some grounding and be able to look at some more logical
solutions We just need to be patient that may take a day. It may take a week. I take a month I'm not
really sure how long it'll take but eventually he's going to come to terms with I need to do something
You know if he's if he is that driven of an individual You know he's not gonna just give up on everything,
and I think we want to make sure he doesn't we on a guide him And so when he is ready to look at the
logical solutions well, what are those well number one he could go to one of those safety schools
and Explore them and figure out what they have to offer. Maybe they offer a little more than he
realized I think one of the reasons why safety schools get this bad rap is because he probably
was thinking of you know Harvard Stanford you know, big, big -time Ivy League schools. And I've
had clients in

this situation. I had one client who ... his only school he got into, his safety school, was Berkeley.
Berkeley was his safety school. And he got in, and last I heard, he had an amazing time there.
And eventually, he went on to grad school and other things like that. So, I think it's important
to let him know that, you know, school is what you make of it. Where you go to school has very little
impact on your success. It's how you do college. You know, maybe there's a really cool study
abroad program, maybe there's a really cool internship program, there are options at any college
he goes to that he can thrive and survive. And it's not the successes that defines him or any of
us. The successes are the end result. It's the setbacks and how we adapt to those setbacks. This
is his setback. It's probably the biggest setback he's had in his life. Fantastic. Let's help
him adapt to new possibilities because he's going to have more setbacks in his life because
he's human and we all deal with setbacks.

You know, he's going to have a That he thought was his dream job and it doesn't work out for whatever
reason and how does he adapt to that or he's gonna? Have a career change and how does he adapt to
that so he could go to one of these? Colleges he could also Decide to stay home go to a community
college for a year or two and then transfer to one of his desired colleges He could take a year
off. You know he could take what Sherry is saying something here Sherry Robin and Ben Kulich
parents should be grateful their kids are going to college Sherry. You're right You should
be grateful to go to college Where they go to college, again, is less important. Grad school
may have a bigger impact, but undergrad has little impact. So, again, he can go to community
college, or he can say, you know what? I'm just gonna take a year off. I'm gonna go travel. I'm
going to go work at a grocery store or a movie theater. I just want to clear my head and get out of
school for a while. I think that's great.

I've had a lot of kids do that and eventually go, wow, I need to do something. And then they go back
to college because they want to. You never want to force a kid to college, because that's a recipe
for disaster. Anyways, long story short, help him deal with his emotions, and then deal with
finding the solutions. That's the order you want to go into. And eventually, if this kid is driven
and wants to do something, he will. And this will be a defining moment, and he will learn so much
from this setback, more so than if he got into his top school. Anyways, that's our question for
today. Thank you so much for tuning in. We love your questions, keep sending them in. You can
email us at tipsonteens at teen therapiescenter .com or message us right here on Facebook and
we'd love to answer your questions. We'll be right here next Wednesday at 12 o 'clock to answer
your questions and we'll see you then. Bye -bye.