The First Time Adult

Graduation season is filled with celebration. Families are proud…Teens are excited…Everything feels like a milestone moment. But once the ceremony is over and the routine disappears, a different reality begins to set in. Because while graduation marks the end of school, it also marks the beginning of real life, and many teens are stepping into it without the skills they actually need. The Real Rea...

Caps…Gowns…Pictures…Announcements… Most of the focus during this time of the school year is on one question.”So what’s next?” And for a lot of families, that question starts and ends with college. While college is a plan, it’s not preparation for real life. But that question skips something bigger. What happens after the senior activities, prom, graduation, the summer and now it’s August… when rea...

Let's be honest: the question, "So, what's your plan after graduation?" can feel like a loaded one. Both for our kids and for us as parents. I know, because I've been on both sides of it. I left home at 17, with no real plan except to figure things out as I went. Now, at 44, I sometimes catch myself wondering: what if I’d had a map, or even just a compass, back then? Would it have saved me some of...

Let’s talk about it. First off, raising teens is not for the weak. I swear it’s like watching a baby giraffe try to walk. Wobbly, chaotic, and sometimes straight-up painful to witness. One minute, they swear they got life figured out. The next, they’re oversleeping for work because they “forgot” to set an alarm. Or, they can’t even remember to take the damn chicken out the freezer (can you tell th...

Earlier this week, my 18-year-old daughter and I were having one of those deep life talks. Which have increased since she’s starting to do more things independent of me. This time we talked about budgeting, financial security, and what it really means to build stability in life. Her question was, “So mom, when do I get to stop worrying about money?” My initial thought was to tell her, “honey, neve...

Hello and welcome to The First Time Adult — a place where we bridge the gap between educators, youth based nonprofits, and parents of teens / young adults, navigating the winding roads of this transition into adulthood together. As a once young adult, a current parent to both adult and soon-to-be adult children, and an author sharing my experiences, advice, and tips on the subject I've walked the...