Teens After School

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Helping Your Teen Decide What to Do After High School
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Helping to prepare your teen for life after high school is one of the most important tasks you'll have as a parent. It can be hard to imagine your baby as an adult. But with the right approach, helping your teen move into adulthood can be rewarding.
Going to college, getting a job, or taking time off are common choices teens face. Here's how you can help your adult-to-be make the best decision.
Although you may remember starting your own college search in the fall of your senior year, many teens these days need to get started earlier because of the extensive research involved and the deadlines for early admissions programs to competitive programs. In fact, many students begin as early as the fall of their junior year.
A good preparation for your teen is to sit down and start writing — this is great practice for the application process. Teens should list their goals as well as their accomplishments, even if they haven't yet decided on a field of study. Ask your teen to write down a list of:
Next, teens should think about and list the qualities they're looking for in a college: do they want to go away to school, stay close to home, or take online courses, for example?
Armed with this preliminary information, it's time to begin the research. Guidebooks, the Internet, and counselors at school are particularly helpful resources. As your teen chooses potential schools, start visiting campuses and talking with students who go there.
Experts suggest narrowing the choices to a diverse mix of about six to 10 schools where the odds range from low to high for gaining admission. Applications should be filled out completely and neatly, including the essay, which your teen should revise until confident that it's his or her best work. Many schools offer help in these areas.
And don't cross college off the list because you're afraid the tuition will be too steep. Many kids can receive financial help. For info about scholarships and other programs that may help, ask:
Federal aid programs are also available and can be researched online.
If college isn't an option or your teen needs extra time to earn money for tuition, going directly into the work force offers many choices and benefits, such as health insurance and tuition reimbursement programs.
Entering the military can be an excellent choice for a teen who feels uncertain about the future. Discipline, earning money, saving for college, learning a trade — all of this is often possible in the armed forces. Veterans are also entitled to many benefits both while in the service and after.
However, your teen should carefully explore all the pros and cons of a military career. After all, if teens don't like the service or if the thought of going to war seems too scary, they can't easily drop out. If your teen wants specific training through the military, make sure the contract he or she signs includes that.
Getting a job immediately after high school remains a good choice. Teens who go this route need to learn how to search for employment, write a resume, and develop interviewing skills.
Many companies reimburse their employees for continuing education in areas related to their employment. Your teen should ask about this benefit through the human resources departments of potential employers.
Another option is an internship. Over the course of a year, your teen could potentially participate in two or three internships to explore career choices. But most internships are unpaid, so planning ahead is crucial if your teen needs to save money for living expenses.
Internships provide participants with the opportunity to learn about many facets of a particular career. They're also a great way to make contacts and develop mentoring relationships.
For some teens, taking a year off between high school and the "real world" can be beneficial. This can be a good time to travel, do community service, or even live in a foreign country before the responsibilities of life make it harder to do so.
Community service organizations offer a wide variety of choices that teens can match with their skills and interests. Americorps, for example, offers hundreds of programs across the United States with a small stipend, plus a chance to obtain money for college or vocational training. Many religious organizations provide community service programs as well.
However, teens should keep in mind that a brochure may look different from reality, such as with work and service camps in developing countries. They should expect difficulties but know that the rewards of community service often outweigh the hardships — and can actually change the direction of a person's life. Speaking with previous participants should give a more realistic view than promotional material.
And taking time off doesn't necessarily put a teen at a disadvantage for college admission. For many teens — especially those who choose an internship or international service — it can actually be an advantage.
While researching colleges, find out if they have delayed admissions programs. If not, ask the colleges what their position is on students who take time off and a teen's chances of getting in if he or she reapplies.
When the subject concerns the future, some teens may try to shrug it off. Here's how to get the ball rolling and keep communication flowing:
The Internet is a good starting point for researching information on your teen's interests. Also enlist the help of school counselors, who can help steer kids in the right direction or refer them to other good sources of information.
And don't overlook your local library. In addition to books and magazine articles on subjects of interest, the librarian can be a wealth of information.
There are many associations, both local and national, for thousands of occupations. Find out where they're located and get information how to pursue particular career paths.
Your teen may also be able to attend meetings or arrange to interview people at their workplaces to find out more about what they do. Make use of friends, relatives, or others you know in different industries. After all, there's often nothing more flattering than having someone ask about what you do.
Finally, resist the temptation to lecture and try to remain supportive and enthusiastic, even if your teen keeps changing his or her mind. Your teen needs your positive influence during this transitional time.
Note: All information on KidsHealth® is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor.
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Images provided by The Nemours Foundation, iStock, Getty Images, Veer, Shutterstock, and Clipart.com.

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How Teens Spend Their After-School Hours
Research Releases in Culture & Media • August 29, 2017
You are reading a free sample of The Tech-Wise Family
This article is part of Barna’s back-to-school series exploring brand new research on education, from parents’ expectations and college trends to students’ schedules and school violence. This article explores how young people spend their after-school hours, illustrating the impact of technology on their lives.
Smartphones are changing the way an entire generation spends their time. Teens (or iGen, as some have named them) have come of age in a world dominated by devices and unfettered access to the web—and it’s dramatically altering their behavior. According to a recent article in The Atlantic, author Jean Twenge shows that although teens are partying and drinking less, they are feeling more depressed and isolated than ever as they spend increasing amounts of time glued to their smartphones.
In his new book, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place, Andy Crouch explores the important role of the family in helping young people to navigate the demands of current technology. Recent research conducted by Barna for Andy’s book provides some insight into how young people spend their time when they aren’t at school (as reported by their parents), further illustrating the impact of technology on their lives.
Between the school dismissal bell and the call for dinner, how do kids fill their time? If you picture an idyllic afternoon of bike rides, playgrounds and ice cream trucks, think again. These days, it’s almost impossible to imagine an off-the-grid, device-free existence, and this is especially true of children who have come of age in a tech-saturated world. In fact, most of the after-school activities of children involve technology. A significant majority of children (64%) watch television or movies after school, regardless of their age group. More than four in 10 (42%) play video games, but this is much more common among children ages 9–12 (48%) and 13–17 (49%). More than one-quarter (27%) spend their free time on social media or texting with friends, though this is primarily an activity among the 13–17 age group (48%). Half as many 9–12 year olds (25%) do the same, as well as only 13 percent of those eight or younger. One in four (25%) spend time browsing online, another activity dominated by teens.
Screen time is not the only activity that consumes the afternoon and evening hours for children. In fact, the most common activity for any child is still doing homework (65%) (though certainly this now sometimes requires engagement with technology) and watching television or movies (64%). The third most common activity is interacting with family members, an after-school reality for over half (56%) of American children. But unsurprisingly, teenagers (54%) and 9–12 year olds (57%), having formed more non-familial relationships, are less likely to spend time with their family than the two younger age groups (60% of 5–8 year olds and 69% of those under the age of five). Around four in 10 kids (39%) engage in some kind of informal play or activity, an activity those under 5 do twice as much as teenagers (56% compared to 28%). Reading books beyond schoolwork is still fairly popular (32%)—but mostly among those without schoolwork (42% under age 5). Activities outside the house like extracurricular activities or classes (25%), playing organized sports (23%) or hanging out with friends (22%) are much less common. The least common of all after-school activities is reading the Bible/devotions/prayer (8%), but this is much more commonly reported among parents who identify as Christians (9%) than non-Christians (3%). Unsurprisingly, it’s also a popular after-school activity for families with practicing Christian parents (12%).
The life-stage of parents has an understandably acute effect on the after-school activities of their children. For example, younger parents—those in their 20s—are less likely than middle-aged parents to report their children doing more traditional activities like homework (40% compared to 77% among parents in their 40s), playing organized sports (11% compared to 27% among parents in their 40s) or doing extracurricular activities or classes (13% compared to 35% among parents in their 40s). They are also less likely to report activity directly involving technology like playing video games (30% compared to 48% among parents in their 40s), being online other than for homework (17% compared to 29% among parents in their 40s) or spending time on social media or texting with friends (8% compared to 33% among parents in their 40s). The only activity younger parents are more likely to report is informal play or activity (48% compared to 35% among parents in their 40s). This makes sense for one obvious reason: Children of parents in their 20 are almost guaranteed to be pre-teen, and most would be either toddlers or preschoolers. Therefore activities like doing homework and playing organized sports or interacting with devices and technology are much less common (or in some cases non-existent) at these ages, when informal play or activity is more frequent. It will be interesting, however, to see how these families of Millennial parents incorporate other activities—or digital devices—as the children begin school or become teens.
Read The Tech-Wise Family for more insight into “the proper place for technology” as well as a series of practical nudges, disciplines and choices that can help you and your family keep technology in its proper place.
What the Research Means
“The best and richest experiences of learning, it turns out, are embodied ones,” notes Andy Crouch in The Tech-Wise Family. “They require and build on physical experience and activity. This begins with the most basic things typical children learn in their first years of life. They learn, beautifully, awkwardly, and sometimes hilariously, all the aspects of living in a body.”
“As we go on to learn more complex and abstract things,” says Crouch, “the body continues to play an important role. At the most basic level, everything we learn is encoded in chemical and electrical connections between neurons in our brains. Cognitive scientists observe that the physical act of reading a book, with its bound pages, helps strengthen the learning of the concepts inside. Likewise, physically taking notes with a pen or pencil on paper—the act of forming physical letters by hand, with the twists and turns of the letter forms and the accumulating fatigue and need for rest—turns out to aid memorization and learning, even if we never consult the notes again.”
“The truth is that our children,” continues Crouch, “just like us, will spend far too much of their lives tethered to glowing rectangles. We owe them, at the very minimum, early years of real, embodied, difficult, rewarding learning, the kind that screens cannot provide. And that is why a family that cares about developing wisdom and courage will exert every effort to avoid the thin simplicity of screens in the first years of life.”
Comment on this research and follow our work:
Twitter: @davidkinnaman | @roxyleestone | @barnagroup
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About the Research
In partnership with Andy Crouch, Barna Group conducted a public opinion survey among 1,021 U.S. parents, nationally representative of parents with children ages 4–17 who live in their home at least 50 percent of the time. The survey was conducted in January and February of 2016. The sampling error for this study is plus or minus 3 percentage points, at the 95% confidence level. Minimal statistical weighting was used to calibrate the sample to known population percentages in relation to demographic variables.
About Barna
Barna research is a private, non-partisan, for-profit organization under the umbrella of the Issachar Companies. Located in Ventura, California, Barna Group has been conducting and analyzing primary research to understand cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984.
You are reading a free sample of The Tech-Wise Family
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What are the school-choice priorities for parents, and what role does faith play in those decisions? In partnership with the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), Barna asked parents of current and prospective Christian school students about their schooling decisions.
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