Every week, some parent somewhere asks me a question that sounds logical.
- Should my daughter quit orchestra?
- Should we let him work instead of taking another AP course?
- Should my teen attend the summer camp that offers college credit?
- Should we apply Early Decision?
- Should my son take calculus?
- Should we choose the cheaper school?
On the surface, these are all yes-or-no questions. So naturally, parents expect a yes-or-no answer. But anyone who has worked with me long enough (or read my Substack) already knows that’s not my style. There are very few questions that, in my mind, are simple enough to answer that succinctly.
More often than not, my answer is: “It depends.” (Usually followed by more questions.)
What Facebook Has to Do with It
Most of these kinds of questions masquerade as opinion questions when they’re really contextual ones. I field a lot of questions on Facebook, and one I saw just recently models this principle well.
The parent’s query involved whether or not she, as a homeschool administrator, should submit course descriptions as part of her student’s college application. There are two schools of thought on this topic. One says that homeschoolers should never submit more information than is explicitly requested (and colleges rarely explicitly ask for course descriptions). The other says that course descriptions are an important way of providing context for your school, and they should always be included as a way of demonstrating your seriousness as an academic institution.
I say: It depends.
- Did the college ask for course descriptions? (Then yes, you should provide them.)
- Did the student complete a lot of outside-the-box coursework?
- Did your coursework follow a non-traditional learning model, like unschooling or project-based learning, or world-schooling?
- Do your course titles clearly and fully convey the material that was covered in your coursework?
- Will the course descriptions actually add something substantive to the application, or will they simply add more words?
- Perhaps most importantly: What type of college is this and how does that particular institution evaluate homeschool applications?
In a public forum like Facebook, there are a lot of people who will answer a question like this one as if it were purely a matter of opinion, like, what color shoes best match my dress? They will (very confidently) state that they think the poster should do X, Y, or Z. But giving a definitive answer to a contextual question without knowing anything at all about the student or the college involved is not only speculative, it does a real and potentially harmful disservice to the parent and her teen.
Good Decision-Making Is Contextual
It’s not that I avoid giving straight answers. If an answer truly is straightforward, that makes my job easier! I don’t answer questions with more questions because I like to toy with parents or frustrate them. The fact is that I can’t give wise counsel without understanding the situation clearly, without knowing all the facts. And your family’s facts aren’t the same as the family across the street or across town.
Most parents desperately want there to be a formula for making high-stakes decisions with their teen. They simply want to know that they are doing the right thing, and that they aren’t failing their teen or closing important doors by choosing the wrong path.
I feel that as a counselor, and as a mom, I really do. I have spent many nights wishing I had a crystal ball.
But confident decisions don’t come from formulaic thinking. They come from context, from examining all angles to the decision and understanding how those angles interact with reality, with your own personal values, and with who your student is and is becoming.
They come from trusting yourself and your teen to make the best decision you can with the information available to you right now and to have the strength to pivot later if and when that becomes necessary.
The goal isn’t to memorize better answers. It’s to ask better questions. That conviction has shaped not only my counseling work, but also my book Authentic Admissions: A Strategic Guide to College for Thoughtful Homeschool Families. More than anything else, I wanted homeschool families to come away with better questions to ask as they navigated the college search:
- What problem are we actually solving?
- What are we assuming?
- What would this look like in ten years?
- Who should own this decision?
- What does this decision make easier—or harder—later?
Better questions almost always lead to better decisions. And here’s the dirty little secret: If you’re asking good questions now, the chances that you will have to pivot later are drastically reduced because every difficult decision is also practice for the next one. Over time, you’re not just building a college list or choosing classes. You’re building the judgment you’ll rely on when the stakes get even higher.
And even better than building your judgment, you’re modeling and building that judgment in your teen.
Wise parents aren’t the ones who always know the right answer. They’re the ones who learn to ask the questions that reveal the right answers for their family.
