Just wondering. For those of you with kids who will probably graduate from high school 2+ years ahead of schedule, do you or your kids have ideas in mind for what they'd do next?
Would you let your child go off to college very early? If so, would you let him/her go if the college was close to home or would a distant college or university be okay?
I know that there's no single right answer to this question and that everything depends completely on each child, but I thought I'd ask as a way to solicit exchange of ideas. Here are a few of ours for our child:
* Do a high-school abroad year or two with a program like AFS.
* Get a p/t job and take random classes at a community college (astronomy, ceramics, etc. etc. etc.).
* Do an exotic internship (e.g. Marine Biology in the Bahamas). There are many experiences like this aimed at high school-aged kids.
* Other.
Oh my.
Well, this is definitely our situation, but as I think I've stated repeatedly, our largest concerns with her at high school graduation (not quite age 15, we anticipate), is that she is also right in the middle of a window of vulnerability w/r/t good management of a life-threatening chronic medical condition.
So the conventional path of 'going away to college' would be
terrifying even if she were fairly mature
18. In light of the chronological age and relative maturity re: executive skills, there's simply no way that it's an option as far as we can see. It might be possible if we opted to move to where she went to school so that she could still live at home, but honestly, we don't see a compelling argument for doing that. She's undoubtedly Ivy
quality, but I don't know that she's necessarily enjoy it any more than many other collegiate environs, which negates the benefit of doing that.
So our plan at the moment is to have her make a smooth
transition from high school into community college courses (a trek that we've already begun with art and other community ed courses with her at 11yo) then into post-high school study at the same community college, then into a four year degree at a local public university with a good reputation. After undergraduate study, SHE plans to either pursue graduate studies in the physical sciences or go to law school. Or maybe library science.
We feel that it may well be in her best interests to do a sort of 'gap year' if she can, though it's complicated since many travel opportunities are not possible for her. She has mentioned the idea of working on turning her small business (a low-profit that currently partners with a community non-profit via a fixed percentage profit-share) into an NPO, and/or doing an unpaid internship with the community non-profit to learn some granstmanship, etc. These are all things that we are really encouraging her to pursue.
Even if she
were to do those things, however, I think we'd still encourage her to take a class or two. Probably math. (Because I also think that math is one of those things that if you don't use it, it
does rapidly atrophy. Recovery is painful.
)
In any event, we think that it's probably too soon to know for sure what she wants to do as an adult. Our job is to coach her to keep options OPEN for as long as she can so that she buys herself plenty of time for those decisions.
We've discouraged her from specializing too early, in other words.
