Parenting, A bigger responsability then you thought

What is the main goal when you think of becoming a parent? To me and many that I have talked too it is trying to make your children as prepared as possible for the adventure we call life. The process is one that takes time and patience. Preparing your children to grow up and be respectable adults is something that doesn’t occur overnight. If you think about it, the beginning is when you first start teaching rules and obedience in order for them to be liked by others and go to school and be respectable to teachers and you as a parent. This task continues usually up to the last day until your kids are moving out. Then for most kids you send them off to college. Do you think you prepared them well enough to make it through the hardships of being a college student?  Did you teach them the little life skills that are commonly over looked? Hopefully you are not second guessing your parenting decisions right now. Well if you taught them the fundamentals of cooking, cleaning and shopping, that’s a start. If you taught them how to take care of their money, they will be better off than if you hadn’t. Were they allowed them to make some of their own decisions and become a little independent? Were they taught proper study habits? Well when you think about it most kids are not prepared enough in one way or another, when they are not prepared the consequences can be devastating. Not only to staying in school but also to their health. Many new college students encounter health issues that can occur that would scare you as a parent. This papers purpose it to inform you and help you make the right decisions to help your kids. If you are reading this and thinking “oh no” I have completely screwed up, don’t worry you can fix it.

Read about how to clean!!

Learning to do household things

As a parent you want your kids to be better off then you were when you left your nest right? Well now days many parents are forgetting the little things in preparing their youth to leave home. When many kids move out they do not know how to do the little things in order survive on their own. In an interview I did with Eva Johnson, the head director of the Health and Wellness center here at Dixie State College, she said, “One of the things I see is students coming to me not knowing how to cook, clean, do their laundry”(Johnson). All of these things are over looked when planning on sending your kid away to college. Eva says, “You should start teaching your kids the little things in life from an early age. When I was a dorm mother years ago many of the kids in the dorms would ask my younger kids for help because I had taught them so well. They knew how to do laundry and clean when they were all young” (Johnson). My parents did a very good job at teaching me how to do everything. Now wouldn’t it have been nice for every student to have parents like mine? Unfortunately many do not have that luxury of that and are forced to learn all of these things on their own. Now if parents would take the time to think and teach their kids, the problems they encounter would be immensely smaller. Maybe the reason that parents don’t take the time is because they don’t know how to. Their parents didn’t do it for them and so now they don’t know how to do it for their own children. That doesn’t work with my generation now. We are people that have to be told what to do, want everything now and just need to see immediate results but don’t know how to work for those results. To me that sounds like a hard job for a parent to teach someone like that. If a parent hasn’t done this is doesn’t mean that they have done a poor job of raising their kids but some do a bad job at preparing them to move out and start their own life and that’s a fact. My parents mind set was that if you raise them and show them the basics that they will be capable of doing it on their own. My mom made me do my own laundry, gave me money once a week and taught me how to save and budget my money in order to afford what I wanted. Those things helped me as I prepared to move out and was on my own. Now that doesn’t always happen, many parents decide to let their kids figure it out for themselves and that isn’t the best case for some kids they need more guidance then that. I have a friend that his parents didn’t guide him in life. They were there and made rules but never followed them. Now this friend is not going to college, works in fast food, hasn’t moved out of his parents house and will probably be stuck going pay check to pay check for the rest of his life, all because his parents never gave him a little more guidance. As a parent I would feel like that isn’t good enough for my kid and see the affects of what no guidance will do to a kid.

Read about money right here!!

Money is a Factor

One major problem many students often have before entering college is the money that they will need in order to pay for school, support them and pay their bills. Not every parent is capable of supporting their kids all the way through school providing everything that their child will need in order to succeed in a college life. I had a number of friends that said after high school they were just going to work because they didn’t have any means of paying for school. Personally I think that is a dumb reason for not attending school. There are loans out there and programs that are more than willing to help out students in need of assistance. Yes some will say but I didn’t qualify for loans and grants because my parents make too much money but they are not going to help me out with school. For those students they need to either not get claimed by their parents so that they can apply for the grants and programs without being under their parents support. There is always a way for kids to go to school it just depends on how much time and effort you put into it. Even if these students get enough to pay for school how do they plan on paying for their expenses and bills? Many of them get jobs and try to support themselves as young students and workers. Now here is where parent come in handy and the teaching that they can instill in their children from an early age. Eva says that “If you teach them to shop, manage a budget, and control a credit card they will be that much better off” (Johnson). I know as I moved away I didn’t know how to manage a budget very well and that’s something that I had to ask my mom to help me with it, in order to succeed at school. Even though I didn’t have a credit card until I had left for school, my parents taught me the value of money and that you need to be careful with what you are spending your money on. Did you teach your kids the meaning of credit? Did you explain the consequences that occur when you don’t pay your credit card bill?  Maybe as adults you don’t even understand the answers to those questions. It would be my advice and the advice of Eva to figure that out for yourself in order to help your children succeed in life. Well these things that all involve money are important concept for parents to understand because if they wanted their kids to be better off and have fewer things to worry about they would teach them these skills and concepts to succeed. If the skills are not acquired by students with less funds then desired the consequences could be substantial. Not including obtaining debt and pour credit for the rest of their lives they could have health issues that could cause them some damage. As parents you can make sure these things don’t happen but in order to do that you need to plan ahead and prepare your kids for the future before it is too late.

Read about the importance of being independent here!!

Becoming Independent!!

The time in your life that you are changing the most is the time when you graduate from high school and slowly start moving away and out of the house. Since I moved out I realized how dependent of my parents I have been all my life. I know that for me I am consistently calling my parents about questions on things that I am not sure about. I know I am not as bad as some people. My roommates often have hard times getting themselves up for class in the morning or going to class period. One of my roommates has a hard time with picking his things up and I think it is because he was so dependent on his parents to take care of him and do everything for him.  It is evident that in high school one of his parents would be in charge of getting him up in the morning and making sure that he went to class. Now that he is moving on and lives away from home he is having a hard time with getting up for class and cleaning up after himself. I never had these problems; I was in charge of getting myself up and taking care of myself. That’s why now I am better off than him in that aspect. I was more responsible and it is now showing when it matters most. Parents could do such a better job at making their kids accountable for them by giving them some responsibility, making them work; learn some self confidence and a good work ethic. Many students that are put on their own and are not taught to be independent of their parents will become stressed because they frequently miss class and don’t know what is going on in their class. That is why it is important for them to become independent and learn to take care of themselves.

Read about studying here!

Studing Helps

Another thing that students really struggle with is study habits and homework. In high school many students never studied for tests because most teachers offered some form of retakes or make up. Also if you missed an assignment in high school there is late work. So to students it doesn’t seem like such a big deal if you miss an assignment or two because you can still get an A in the class if you do well on everything else. This isn’t a problem that only deals with parents but they could certainly help with it. They could first make sure that their students learn the correct study habits that are needed in order for them to be successful. I know that where I am from the public schools could do such a better job at preparing student to move on and get a better education. An experience I had in high school was my junior year I decided to take an AP statistics class. For me this was a class that I could have done well at but I had no idea how to sit down and study or do the homework. As the year went on I lost interest in the class because I was so clueless and was so lost from not knowing any information from before so I almost stopped trying. I ended getting a C in the class my 4^th term but for me that was the worst grade I had gotten all through high school. I didn’t take the AP test because I didn’t know how to study and do the homework for more than twenty minutes. I feel like I wasted my time taking that class now. I wish someone had taught me better study habits and I would have done better in it. But even though I didn’t do well in the class it did teach me how to not study. Sometimes failing is the best way to learn. Hopefully you learn from the fail before it really affects you though. Now my own story is just one of many out there.  I am sure that hundreds of students that have now entered college are saying that they wish someone had taught them the correct study habits, and how to sit down and do homework. My roommate has basically quit on school. He plans on trying to pass his finals in order to pass his classes. He stopped attending class and has even decided to move home and come back for the week of finals. I know that someone who doesn’t attend class will defiantly have a hard time studying for  classes because he doesn’t know what is going to be on the test. This is another example of why going to class is important. Not only does it affect if you know what’s going on, it will affect your studying as well.  Now for student that take college serious and are focused on their future won’t have this problem. They will actually acquire another problem. They will stress about studying and doing homework causing them to become sick. So as parents if you are looking for ways to help your students be better off when they leave for school, teach them how to do homework and study without interruptions and how to do it period. One thing that is a big distraction in students is Cell phones. At a younger age teach them how to keep it away while doing homework and just focus on doing the work and your phone will be there when you’re done. I wish that my parents had done this because even as I am writing this I have stopped to look at my phone and text someone back. So as a parent teach your kid to not have to deal with that problem, they will be better off.

Read about homework at a young age

Doing to much homework at a young age

Another experience that I have had is to watch my little brother and sister grow up and go through elementary school. The homework and assignments that were put on me in middle school are now being done in 5^th grade and continue to move down. I watch my little brother do projects and big assignments in 5^th grade. When I was in elementary school those kinds of things were the things that you were scared about moving up in school. They were supposable harder and you didn’t have to worry about them until you had finished elementary school. Studies have shown that, “Elementary school students average 78 minutes of homework per night while middle school students average 99 minutes. That might not sound like much. But it means children are routinely spending 50 percent more time on their homework than the 10 minutes total per grade level per night recommended by the National Education Association”(Clemmit). As a parent you should be concerned with this, because doing more homework at a younger age may teach kids better studying habits but, when they grow up they are more likely to hate school and dislike studying. With more homework parents need to manage the time and talk to schools in order to cut down the amount of homework that children are getting. This should only happen when homework gets to excessive. As parents then you need to be planning for the future long in advance. If you let this stage in life get to out of hand your chances of helping your kids for the future will drop substantially.

Read what can happen because of these things here!!

Health Concerns

Now all these things that I have talked about lead to some health precautions for being an unprepared college student. One thing always leads to another thing. Hopefully you take control of the situation before it gets out of hand and leads to death. Bad stress, Anxiety and depression are the major problems that lead to health problems in college students and if it’s not addressed it can lead to feeling so lonely and hopeless in this world you want to take your own life.  To read about the first big health concern click here!

Good Stress

Stress is something that can be good for you but at the same time if it is not handled and controlled it will consume your life and cause your harm. Stress comes from everything in life. You have good stress that will cause you to worry about your paper or an assignment that helps you do the task. If you didn’t have this good stress you would just be a lazy blob and do nothing. Not saying that people that do nothing are lazy but many have turned off the mechanism in their brain that tells them when to have stress or when they need to get something done. One of my roommates has a problem with this balance of good stress to bad stress. He will wait and procrastinate everything to the point where he is freaking out. If he isn’t freaking out he has so much to do he doesn’t do anything well and does it half assed that’s if he even does it. Now this kid is lazy and has lost all sense of good stress. If he had some good stress he would get off his butt and turn off the Modern Warfare three that we just got and do his homework ahead of time instead of the night before it is due. That’s where good stress comes in hand. Now something that his parents could have done is make him more accountable for his actions. This is the same kid that I talked about earlier with him not getting to class because he has a hard time getting himself up in the morning. If he could have been taught better growing up about being in charge of himself and taking care of him he may have learned better stress management. Not saying that it is too late for him or anyone else to learn how to manage their stress. If this was done before the student left for college they would be better off.

To read more about stress click here!

Having Money is nice, Not is Stressful

Something else that leads to stress is finances. I know that many students do not have the funds to feel freely about their expenses and I am for sure not in that group.  Every time I look into my bank account and check my balance on my checking account I am scared to see how low the balance has gotten too. I know that my parents would never let me go without eating and will more than help for my education because they want me to study and do my homework and work hard at baseball. I am lucky though, many students don’t have amazing parents that would do anything to help with their education. Those students are forced to get jobs while attending school at the same time. Having a job is a great responsibility and also a major time consumer. Having less time for your studies will cause the student stress with assignments and grades. That is why you need to be cautious of your stress and make sure you manage it in a proper way. As a parent you should advise your children to look out for the bad stress in their life. You should also advise them to seek out assistance if the stress gets to overwhelming for them to handle all by themselves. The health and wellness center here at Dixie State College does an excellent job at helping every student in need. When I went there for an interview the people there were more than happy to help me with my assignment. Now knowing that for only an assignment they helped me that much, I would like to see the assistance that they give to someone in real need with a health issue. So as a parent reading that you should feel relieved that Dixie State offers the Health and Wellness center, but know that if your child doesn’t go get help it can lead to more serious problems.

To hear whats worse then stress, click here!

Anxiety Isnt Easy

            In my English class we were assigned to do a survey on our topic for this paper. So I thought about it and decided what I thought were the main problems in college student’s health. I decided Stress was the biggest but then had no idea where to go from there. I went to the Health and Wellness center, there I learned that anxiety and depression followed stress in some of the major causes for health problems. So I conducted my survey of fifty college students I found an astonishing amount of twenty people had experienced anxiety while away for school (Survey). These people had experienced it for numerous reasons and many are the same as the people that experienced stress. It is evident that the people that admitted to having problems with anxiety are the people that do not seek out help with their stress and let it evolve to something that will cause their health a much more damage than if they took the time to get help. They are money problems, home sickness, and school related problems. When these are not taken care of they can turn into “Anxiety disorders characterized by panic attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)” (Glazer). Now many students often get panic attacks from an overwhelming amount of homework and responsibility. If these attacks occur on a regular basis is when we have a problem. If you get the occasional panic attack then you are okay. It is not going to kill you, but if you don’t do something about it then it could. If something traumatic occurs in your life and you are having a hard time recovering from the problem it may be wise to seek assistance from a counselor or someone that you can trust to talk to. This is where as a parent you come in. You should be checking on your child at least once a week to see how the week is going and if they are okay. Keep up with their assignments and ask them about them. If they seem like they are having a problem with it or the topic is one they try to avoid then they may be having a problem with it. I know for me even with this paper I had a hard time talking to my parents about it because I knew I should have been doing more for it then I was every time I talked to them so I felt guilty and had a minor panic attack about it every single time the topic got brought up in a conversation. This was only stress thought; I figured a way to release my stress by sitting my butt down and worked on the paper. Using the information I have learned writing this paper to help me become a better student. Learning the problems with other student defiantly made me more aware and informed of the problem that I may encounter.  I think that if parents would read this they could help their children with problems they will see when they move away and go to college by seeing the warning signs of health problems and knowing the best ways to prevent them from even happening.

Keep on reading here!!

Health Issues Keep going

Now stress and anxiety can have a big hold on someone’s life when they have to always worry about what is causing them stress and anxiety, but believe it or not anxiety is not the worst thing out there for you. Imagine being so sad that getting up for the day is a chore. You feel all alone and that you no longer are needed on this earth. These are some symptoms of depression. Depression is defined as “A severely depressed mood that lasts 2 or more weeks and is accompanied by feelings of worthlessness and lack of pleasure, lethargy, and sleep and appetite disturbances” (Schacter). Yes everyone has their days when things just feel like they are not going your way but when this feeling doesn’t go away you are in a severely depressed mood. Having Major depressive disorder is not something that you need to be ashamed of. If you think that you have let your problems lead you to depression then you need to go receive some help from a trained professional. These people will help you to overcome the situations that you are encountering. No matter if you think it is too late to receive help with your depression go get help because it is not worth trying to overcome yourself. For instance if when you are depressed you “Sleep way to much or too little”(Schacter), this can cause more stress on yourself because you are sleeping in for classes and causing you more and more stress as your depression gets worse because you have no clue what is going on in any of your classes, and as a good student that has sadly come into depression they feel like they still need to go to class and do everything that they normally would even thought their body does not allow it. If you don’t get this problem under control then your depression could worsen to the point of trying to commit suicide. In my survey I did ten people admitted to having suicide thoughts and of those ten people every single one of them thought they were depressed and admitted to having depression. Now I see a huge correlation between the two subjects. They are strictly correlated in the fact that depression that is not handled will eventually send you into a deep dark state of mind, causing you to feel like relieving yourself of all the problems that you feel is upon you.  As a parent I would not want my child to become depressed to the point of committing suicide. You should hope that you raised them good enough for them to realize they need to go get help and take care of the situation.

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The End

Now you have read this you are probably thinking so what that’s not going to happen to my kid. Well it actually can happen to anyone so be cautious and keep a good look out for your kids and any signs of problems that they may be having. “If you are there to talk to them that could be half the battle” (Johnson). So please make your kids lives a little bit easier and raise them in a way to succeed in life. Because I know that as a parent all you really want for your kids is to be better off then you were. At least that’s what my parents always say and I feel the same way.

Survey

For my survey I wanted to know what some students have gone through while they have been in College. I used my apartment complex as my surveying area. There is nine apartment building with several apartments in each building. I tried to find a good mix of girls and boys but I got more girls than boys. I got fifty people to listen to me and respond to the survey. This I think was a good enough sample size to get an accurate account of data.

                I got forty eight people to say that they had been homesick while in school. I think that was expected. Most people have a hard time being away from home and will at some point and time get homesick for one reason or another. If it’s not family then its relationships and they are often deal breakers for college student. Anxiety was another thing that I saw. Twenty people said that they had anxiety for a reason or another. From my interview I learned that people often get anxiety from school and being away and being on there own. All fifty people that I talked to said they had problems with money or food in some way, which can cause other problems. Depression was a big problem. Forty people said that they have experienced depression while at school. This can lead to suicide thoughts that ten people said they had experienced.

                From this survey I have decided that all things lead back to homesickness and anxiety. If you don’t take care of those problems you will more than likely experience more difficult problems and in my paper I am going to talk about how parents need to help their kids out and make them more prepared and let them know what they need to do when they need help. With lots of options there is always somewhere to get help and that’s what students need to understand.