Lisa Endlich's Blog, page 427

20 Things About Life That My Son Needs to Know Before College

Author and professor Molly Pennington wrote an advice packet of life lessons for her first-born son when she left him at college. On women:

1. Months of charged flirtation are way more pleasurable than one-night stands or random hook-ups. Flirt your heart out. But be wary of kissing. Most especially be wary of drunken kissing (because of where it leads.) Not that you’ll ever be drunk.

2. Girls care about sex and intimacy. I’m not saying that you don’t. I’m saying that girls might obsess over...

College Safety for Women: 10 Smart Steps for New Students

For Kathleen Baty, safety for women is a deeply personal topic. As a college student at UCLA, she received the first threats from a stalker whose criminal behavior escalated to a physical confrontation and arrest nine years later. Since then, she has worked to help bring about anti-stalking laws, in California and at the federal level, and has become a speaker and author. In her book, College Safety 101: Miss Independent’s Guide to Empowerment, Confidence, and Staying Safe[image error], she offers guidanc...

Why Watching Moms with Their Teens Breaks My Heart

This time of year, I run into them often and every time I do, my heart drops.

Today, I watched the two of them smiling and laughing together as they walked through the shopping center parking lot.

After they put their purchases in her trunk, she gave him a hug goodbye since they had arrived in separate cars.

The hug was something I hadn’t seen before.

As I passed them, I couldn’t resist letting them know how I felt.

I rolled down my window and said, “You two have to stop breaking my heart.”

“...

Senior Parking Spots

When our kids were seniors in high school they parked in a dirt lot full of rocks that constantly threatened to puncture their tires. But none of them cared. The privilege of being able to drive to school, even if it meant hauling younger siblings, was the right of every senior and one they treasured.

Seniors all over the county have taken this privilege to new, decorating, heights. In parking lots in high schools everywhereseniors have staked their claim with a flash of color and a ton of pe...

The 25 Things Every Kid Needs to Know Before Leaving Home

Raising two girls, I have found everything imaginable in the laundry. Except, of course, a cell phone, because that would be attached to a hand or an ear.

During one particular laundry load, at the end of the summer before my firstborn daughter’s high school senior year, it struck me that she would be leaving for college soon. I fretted. I had not prepared her. I had forgotten stuff — like how to check pockets before shoving things in the washer.Clearly, she wasn’t ready.

I know now that this...

College Myths: 6 Things Freshmen Need to Know

The reality of college can be so different from the idealized version our teens imagined starting the day they received their acceptance letters. Clinical psychologist Dr.Sharon W. Jacques discusses six common myths of college and suggest ways we can help our students better understand this disconnect.

Six College Myths

1. Everyone is SO thrilled and excited about starting college, right? Wrong.

This is just one of the many myths about the transition to college that warrant discussion.

2. Eve...

Senior Year of High School: Beginning of the End

Summer has faded once again. My family has transitioned haltingly back into the daily rhythms of another school year. But this is not just any school year. We are a couple of weeks into senior year of high school for my youngest child –a boy who is over six feet tall, yet still is six years old in my mind’s eye. With a melodramatic flourish of my hand, in my best Count Olaf voice, I declare, “It is The Beginning of the End,” a year jam-packed full of so many “lasts,” while simultaneously lase...

How to Help Your College Freshman When They’re Homesick

“I hate it here, I want to come home.” These are nine words, uttered by a brand new college freshman, that break a parent’s heart. We watched our kids work hard, we supported them in their journey to college, we dropped off an excited teen only days ago and…now this. They are homesick.

Many of our kids have left everyone and everything they have ever known. Parents, siblings, pets and almost every friend in their young lives are miles away. They now live in a small, often cramped, room with...

First Day of High School: What I Hope My Daughter Never Outgrows

“Cry,” my five-year old daughter whispered in my ear. “It’s okay to cry now.”

She was wedged on my hip as I carried her into her kindergarten classroom for the first day of school.

The expectation was that I would break down in the sameI-am-so-sad-you’re-starting-schooltears I had shed for her older brother at the onset of his formal education.

But my eyes were dry and my calm-mommy reserves on the fritz. It took every ounce of self-control not to dropkick her and flee.

The morning had not go...

This Letter From a College Freshman to Parents Will Make You Cry

There I was, two nights before move in day relaxing in bed and about to fall asleep when the soft and fuzzy feeling previously associated with leaving suddenly disappeared. My mind flooded with all the change I was about to encounter as a college freshman and people whowould be left behind. No one warned me about this strong and overpowering sensation. It hit me like a tidal wave, drowning me in thoughts and memories, I found it easiest to grasp and process them by putting them into this lett...