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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Definitely wait until school's out to start to focus.  How is your DS's college counselor.  Is he in public or private?  A counselor can make a huge difference and alleviate the battles between parent and child.

My DS is a senior in private school.  Last year, he wouldn't consider talking to us about schools.  Like the wine analogy, it is a big scary thing out there and without context it is pretty  impossible for a 17 year old to come up with a list of schools.  DS's counselors at school were great and he could talk to them without us.  Of course, we had meetings with all of us there.  Another thing I did was to hire a college consultant to try to find schools that would be a good fit for him.  He clicked with her and they quickly developed a working list.  We were glad to help but we were clearly just adding stress for him.  She guided him through the Common App and the rest of the application process.  Yes, he did submit the common app on the last possible day for some of his early action schools.  She was a neutral third party he respected and listened to.  DS's school counselors were seriously great, but the added consultant made us not the "bad guys." [b] We didn't have to nag him.  She reminded him.[/b]  Obviously, DH and I worked with her too about types of colleges, sizes of schools, geographic locations.  Ultimately, we all agreed on 11 schools schools (easy to do so many with the common app) and he got into 10 of the 11 he applied at.

It is really hard to be zen, but do whatever you can to make the process as zen-like as possible.  [b]DH and I are tremendous Type A people, so it was hard to let go.[/b]  I know he is very happy with his choice and he really "owns" the choice.

[b]If you can't find zen, red wine is a quick substitute[/b].

Good luck.[/quote]

Hiring a private counselor to "nag" your kid is "letting go"?  Hope you order your wine by the case.

[/quote]

I certainly did not hire a consultant to nag my son.  I said she reminded him, not nagged him.  She urged him to look at college information based on what he said was interested in based on her lengthy discussions with him.  He was a very typical 16-17 year old his junior year when his parents said and did absolutely everything [b]wrong[/b].  Rather than to destroy the emotional relationship we had with him, we called in a professional to make the college process separate from our day to day interactions with him.  Obviously, we all met together to come up with parameters on schools.  As an example, she texted him to see if he'd finished his extra essay for "XYZ" college, not us.  He developed a good working relationship with her.  It worked for us.  Perhaps you don't have a teenager at the stage where he or she wants nothing to do with you or your spouse.  He wasn't interested in colleges or practically anything we said and it was time to start looking at college stuff.  My son certainly went through this. We could have had screaming matches every time the subject of college came up or we could call in a third party. Having her work with him was a much more neutral process that worked better for us.  The additional advantage was this is what she does -- helps kids transition to college -- this is not our area of expertise.

I'm truly sorry if you can't see why I'd want to try to preserve my relationship with my son and let a professional help all of us with a process that is temporary and new and emotional for everyone.  Yes, I had to let go.  I would have been there everyday telling him to revise his essay for the common app.  I would have wanted to check and recheck everything involved in the process.  That didn't work for us.  Maybe it works in your perfect family.

As a side note, he wrote an essay I hated for the common app.  He did not share drafts of it with us frequently, but I thought it was a terrible topic.  But I let it go. He worked with the consultant and polished it up and sent it in and I didn't say a word.  In two of his acceptance letters, the admissions officers wrote about how moved they were by his essay.  See?  I don't know what I'm doing here and I had to turn it over and let it go.

Maybe this isn't the path for your family, but it worked for us.

What worked for us will not work for every family.  I attempted to recount what happened we did and how well it turned out for my son.  [/quote]

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