Life Skills Kids Need to Learn Before They Go to College

The magic number 18 - when your precious little bundle of joy reaches this milestone be ready. For most parents, their child's 18th birthday arrives in the blink of an eye. And like most parents, you're probably wondering, "Did I teach my kid the life skills they need to succeed?"

When your kid turns 18, they can vote and due to privacy laws, society deems your child fully prepared to face life alone. Although your kid's college accepts your checks for tuition, they won't talk to you on the phone. The same goes for talking to your child's doctor about health issues of any kind. As with most parenting issues, the best time to begin preparing your child for the real world is as soon as you realize this fact. Hopefully, it won't be the week before they travel 3,000 miles away from you to begin college. However, better late than never.

Let's face it, few of us are experts when it comes to time management, budgeting or the myriad of other skills a person needs to not only survive, but succeed in the world today. If you were lucky, your parents prepared you well for life in the real world. High school and college didn't prepare me for too many real world experiences. With today's cash-starved schools, kids are in the same boat. However, here are a few ways to begin making sure your child will be able to take on real life and succeed.

When your child turns 18, you will no longer be permitted to make appointments for your child or have discussions with health care providers unless your child either provides permission for you to do so or invites you to be a part of the conversation. This can be something of a rude awakening for parents and kids. After all, who says the day you turn 18 you're magically ready to take on these responsibilities alone, or that you even want to? Unfortunately, the law says your child is ready. As parents, we need to prepare our children to live in the real world.

Start sharing information with your kids about how to prepare for a doctor's appointment. Let them hold discussions with the doctor and try to only interject when necessary. Help them prepare for appointments by compiling their own list of questions ahead of time, whenever possible. Provide your child with your availability and have them call and schedule an appointment with the cranky nurse in the appointment department. Allow them to file a complaint with the health plan office if they feel the service they received was not up to par.

WooHoo!!! Once your kid gets to college they can stay up to all hours, party until dawn, get up for class and turn in their assignments - uh right! The best way to ensure your child will be responsible in college is to help them learn how to be responsible before they arrive. Kids don't magically learn responsiblity once they are on their own. They need tools and training and sometimes they need to fail and suffer the consequences to really learn this lesson.

One way to ensure responsibility, make them work while in college. Unfortunately, many parents mistakenly finance college as an all-expense paid educational tour. These same parents seem puzzled when they receive a call from the university that their darling child has been kicked out of the dorm for being a party animal. No matter what work we do during the day, we all struggle to find a balance between life and work. High school and college students can successfully balance a reasonable part-time job, maintain good grades and still have plenty of time left over for fun. (Students who also play sports, may have to limit their work experience to summers and the off-season for their sport.)

On college campuses, identity theft can be a serious problem. Living in a college dorm may be safer in some ways, but with so much going on and having a roommate you might not always know who's coming or going from your child's room. Have discussions about online safety and protecting passwords. Help your child develop systems for keeping track of their important documents and let them know what papers are important to keep and which can be shredded or thrown away.

College is the first time many students are dealing with a checking account, paying bills and handling lots of personal mail. It's critical you help your child learn how to deal with student loan papers, bank statements and ATM receipts. Send your student off to college with a small personal shredder they can use to dispose of documents with any personal information. This can be useful for shredding bills, anything with an address on it or even personal notes no one else needs to see. A small locking safe is another way to protect important personal items. While it's still possible to walk off with the entire safe, it will be a deterrent and offer some protection.

I became popular on campus early on, and it wasn't for the reasons you might think. I was shocked to find out just how many of my classmates didn't know how to do their own laundry. My mom taught me how to wash their own clothes at an early age out of necessity. Still, I couldn't imagine sending my child off to school without teaching them how to wash clothes. Maybe the parents of my friends at college thought they'd learn simply by watching mom do it - which clearly didn't work. It doesn't matter what age you teach your child to wash their own laundry, but they need to learn before they leave for college.

Same goes for cooking. If you cook every meal for your child until the day they move out, how will they feed themselves? Yes, they can always heat up a frozen meal or eat fast food, but it's not the best way to stay healthy and it can get expensive. I realized after freshman year, it would be cheaper for me to live off campus with a roommate. The meal plans on campus added extra costs too. By creating a reasonable budget for food, I saved a huge amount of money. Cooking simple meals and bringing my lunch to work or school also added to the savings.

Learning to comparison shop help me stick to my food budget and keep costs down for other things I needed and wanted to buy. My mom showed me how to compared costs on groceries with newspaper ads and clip coupons to save even more. Once at the store, she showed me how to check the shelf tags to make sure the sale items were really saving money. For other items, she showed me how to use the Sunday ads and compare prices on the Internet. Although I'm probably better than her at finding the best prices on the Internet now.

Making the transition to college can be tough. As a parent, you can help make the adjustment a little easier by preparing your student for success. While their teachers will handle the academic side, it's really up to you to help provide an education in the more practical aspects of life. With all the expectations schools place on students to do well, it might seem like you're doing your kid a favor by doing their laundry and making their meals. Unfortunately, unless they live at home for the rest of their lives, your kid is going to need to learn these skills and discover how to balance their life and work. Help them learn it early and by the time they get to college they'll be on the path toward success.