What Happens After High School: Planning for Your Child's Future with Karen Lerner

One of the biggest questions a parent might have is, “What happens after high school?”

While many families are preparing and planning for a successful school year, other families have the additional task of helping their high school students transition to life outside of school.

Karen Lerner from the College Blueprint will be joining Amanda and Vickie on today’s podcast, walking us through transition planning, tips, and tricks on planning for the future of your child, and managing parental expectations. Join us to hear the whole episode!

Karen’s background was as a dance teacher at UCI and Chapman University but came into this industry for personal reasons after her daughter was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Karen worked to create a community - with the assistance of her husband, who was a developmental pediatrician at UC-Irvine - that was not yet set up for her daughter some 30 years ago. Her daughter went from being a special needs student for dyslexia at The Prentice School to being a librarian in a county library. Karen ended up teaching special ed at Prentice for 9 years and spent 12 years there as principal. Upon leaving Prentice, she decided to become an educational therapist.

 

UPCOMING EVENT!!

Building the Bridge Between Literacy and the Consequences of Falling Behind

Huntington Bay Club, Huntington Beach, CA

Thursday, October 24th 2019 @ 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm

~ 2nd Annual Panel Discussion ~

~ 5th Annual Fundraising Event ~

All proceeds from ticket sales go to helping provide legal aid and awareness to all the families in Orange County.

Early bird admission tickets on sale now for $25!

For More Info: https://www.inclusiveeducationproject.org

 

Show Highlights:

 

• Educational therapy (“ed therapy”) is like fusing psychology and social work with education.
• There are more academic options for students these days: college, jobs, professional schools, technical education, gap years. 
• Managing parental expectations is the number one issue for anyone who works with parents (principal, teacher, lawyer, psychologists, tutors, etc.) - each child is an individual.
• In ed therapy, “description” is preferred over “prescription”. You don’t necessarily have to categorize a student, but find the things that they can’t do “yet”, then find remedies or solutions to those things. This goes counter to education, but is effective when you don’t futurize so much.
• Information overload! Beware of too much information from too many sources, because this can cause unnecessary anxiety. Information needs to be put in the context of your child, and the context of the environment. 
• Children with ASD, ADHD, other learning issues, or anxiety have cognitive energy that gets expended, and often come home and feel like they’ve been hit by a Mack truck.
• Children describe this feeling of exhaustion as going to Best Buy where 14 TV’s are on and playing 14 different channels, and they need a chance to decompress.
• Sometimes what’s best for the student is not going to be acknowledged by the parent, which is why managing parental expectations can be so difficult.
• Talking about how you handle things when there’s difficulties is a helpful exercise. Learning resiliency, perseverance, and goals takes practice and sets up your child for success. 
• Problem solving and flexibility are also very important things to teach kids.
• Things finish when there’s closure to them. If you don’t give kids a chance to see what worked out well to replicate it, or what did not work out well to not replicate it, then you will keep hitting your head on the door. 
• You feel like you have to be the protector of your child, but you have to learn to parent differently for different stages.