Warning: Bury Your Head in the Sand Parenting Will Create Unemployed Children
By Daryl CapuanoGeneral Education Adviceis a subsidiary of The Learning Consultants. I created it years ago because I saw the economic changes post-Great Recession as not just a blip in our economy but a restructuring of jobs that would profoundly affect twentysomethings. The combination of a global work force filled with hard working, highly educated, and inexpensive labor coupled with radical technological changes (artificial intelligence is the latest) is and will continue to contract the number of full time jobs for college graduates.
How does that relate to parents of high school students? Too many are so eager to be friends with their children that they are not confronting them about major issues.
(1) Marijuana use: while I never pot – in part because I knew I wanted to be a criminal prosecutor – I certainly drank with my high school buddies and I’m not someone who is a rigid stickler about experimentation or even occasional use of pot. I understand that pot has become similar to alcohol. I’m not happy about it but intellectually I understand. The challenge is overuse. Unlike alcohol, which most high school students back in the day and now, used (and over-used) on the weekends but rarely on the weekdays, pot is smoked regularly on a DAILY basis by many high school students. So many parents in our Shoreline, CT towns are clueless about the regular use of their high school children and children’s friends about the issue that we are facing a silent epidemic.
(2) Hard drug use: the number of students who have tried acid is alarming. This trend has become far bigger than even the Molly craze of a few years ago (Molly is a type of Ecstacy) Cocaine, while not as prevalent, has also made its way to our our local Connecticut high schools
When Career Counseling Connecticut provides work with 18-25 year olds who never quite launched, there are issues unrelated to drug use (psychological issues, motivational issues, among others) but drug use is definitely high on the list of reasons for their current predicament.
CEO, The Learning Consultants and Connecticut’s top private education consultant
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