I made the mistake of watching Boyhood last week, which was extremely touch because I just sent my firstborn off to college. If you haven't seen the movie yet, I highly recommend it. While most of the attention so far has been on Linklater's direction showing the characters age each year, I think the best part of the movie is Patricia Arquette's acting. It's amazing. The part that killed me was at the end when she says goodbye to her child and sends him off to school. There was a feeling of uncertainty there. She had been preparing her son for college, sacrificing a lot in the process, and once that moment, she is unsure of what's next.
As a mother, the only you can do is really hope for the best and trust that the preparation you have done will be enough to get them through the next four years and beyond. With that in mind, I just wanted to discuss what I did with my child to help her make that next step:
I taught her the importance of financial responsibility: This was a big one. I have hard too many stories of college kids getting into a ton of debt, maxing out their credit cards and going back to their parents because they can no longer afford to live away. It's for this reason why I showed my daughter the value of a dollar. Now that she is in school, she has a HigherOne.com account, which should help her organize her money better. HigherOne.com fees are generally lower than other checking accounts as well.
I taught her that staying in was okay: Another horror story I've heard was kids going to school and getting lost in the social scene. Some even failed out. This was not happening in my house, so I stressed to my daughter of why she was there in the first place. There would be time for parties, but time had to be made for her studies first.
I taught her how to laundry: There is no way I am going to do a semester's worth of laundry when she comes back on Thanksgiving.
