Why Prep

Hello, Sandia Prep Community! 

It’s difficult to believe that we have entered the second quarter of the year. Back to School Night, Spirit Week, and Balloon Fiesta are all behind us. The weather is turning ever so slightly, and fall is in the air. I’ve been speaking with some seniors about how busy they are as they stay on top of their studies and activities while also beginning the college application process. As a former college counselor and parent of two college-aged children, I remember this well. And having just dropped my youngest off at school less than a month ago, I’ve been thinking a lot about how so much of our lives have led up to this moment - sending our kids out into the world and hoping we’ve done enough to prepare them.

When my daughter was born (and my son was not quite two years old), my mother came to stay with us for a few days to help out. Having two kids under two is no joke, and we were grateful for the extra hands. When she left, she said to my husband, “See you in eighteen years, the next time you’ll have any free time!” As we dropped our daughter off at college, my husband remembered this moment, and we were both in disbelief that the moment my mom had mentioned had arrived. How had eighteen years passed? we wondered.

I remember another thing someone told me in those early days. Sometimes each day would stretch on as one child would go down for a nap just as the other was having a fit, or they would both be having a fit. I would look at my watch and wonder how it could only be two in the afternoon. A friend with older kids said to me, “The days are long, but the years are short.” And that has certainly proven to be true as I reflect on the fact that this chapter of our lives is over.

But with all endings come new beginnings, and so far, I am loving this changing relationship with my children. My daughter has filled me in on her new adventures much more than she had in the last couple of years at home. And yet she isn’t calling me about every little thing, asking for advice (yet). When my son headed off two years ago, I noticed a similar trend. While he called home quite a bit (I give him a pass here because this was at the height of COVID, and they were all in single rooms taking classes online), he also was seeking advice from professors, making friends, and engaging with his new environment (as much as he could during that COVID-heavy time).

Of course, as I sit here writing this, I just got a text from my daughter: “I have a bad blister on my toe. What do I do?” Baby steps! In fact, this text illustrates the constant push and pull as we do our best to prepare our kids to lead their own lives. We want so much to help them, to solve their problems for them - partly because we hate to see them in pain and partly because sometimes it’s easier just to get it done ourselves. But we need to keep reminding ourselves to take a step back, to let them fail now and then. This is how they will learn to pick themselves up and move forward.

A few years ago, I had the great pleasure of meeting Julie Lythcott-Haims, the author of How to Raise An Adult (among other books). Lythcott-Haims was a freshman dean at Stanford for years and noticed that while her students were incredibly accomplished on paper, they lacked practical skills and knowledge. One example was a student who couldn’t find her class on the first day, and rather than seeking out a map or asking someone on campus, she called her mother - who lived across the country. At the annual dinner for incoming freshmen and their parents, Lythcott-Haims strove to impart the importance of letting your kids fail. One night after giving this speech, she came home for dinner with her own family and found herself leaning over to cut her 12-year-old son’s steak. She stopped herself and realized that if she wanted her son to gain those practical skills she felt her students lacked, she needed to shift her parenting. And she became interested in larger trends about how parents could imbue their children with the skills and traits they need to succeed in the world outside of academia.

The book is great, and to me, the major takeaway was something she gleaned from the Harvard Grant Study, the longest ongoing longitudinal study in history. In this study, researchers discovered that there were two main things that people need in their lives in order to feel happy and successful: love and work ethic. More specifically, kids who 1) did chores as a kid and 2) were loved unconditionally by their parents were more likely to find professional and personal success. Of course, getting our kids to do chores can be a monumental task at times, but the idea is that if our kids know we believe in their ability to get things done and if they develop a mindset of pitching in to help the larger community, then they will feel valued and fulfilled as they take on new responsibilities when they head to college and beyond.

Even though the book applies to parenting, I believe schools can learn from this general idea. When students can see that teachers truly care for them and believe in them, they are much more willing to take risks and try things. And when teachers set high expectations for them around pitching into the classroom and school community, students rise to the bar. Whether coming together to perform a musical production, collaborating on cooking a meal during an Outdoor Leadership Program (OLP) trip, or creating a business plan for the Pitchfork Café, students are pitching in to make their community better, and teachers are cheering them on. And when our families partner with the school to reiterate this message of unconditional love combined with expectations for pitching in, we create an environment where our students can thrive.

So back to my own kids. It is a strange feeling to move to this new phase - hoping that I did all of the right things to set them up for success and knowing that I am receding even more into the wings. I’m trying to give myself grace and remember that they are their own individual human beings with their own minds, and that’s how it should be. No matter where they go or what they do, I want to make sure they know they still have that unconditional love. And when they come home, I’ll still make them do the dishes.

All the best,
Heather