Do your kids think not going to college is an option?

If dd hadn't wanted to go to college, I certainly wouldn't have made her, because I figured if she didn't want to go, she wouldn't have put in the time or effort that college takes. And that was a lot of money for me to spend if she wasn't going to make an effort.

 

But I would have encourage her as much as possible.

My kids are still young enough too and we do push college. But, realistically, I have boys that college will be a waste of time for them if they attend. I have a kid right now, bright kid, but he is 100% a Kinesthetic learner, I have testing that shows this, he HATES school and he is miserable at it. College is going to be a waste of time and money for him but he is positive he needs the college experience. Instead he should focus his attention on his other amazing abilities.

So really, it depends on the kid.

DD has discussed it with us. She has dyslexia and realizes that a traditional education might not be for her. However, we've pointed out that with some of her career goals, a college education might be a necessity. We've also pointed out that there are serves available to help her through.

 

With the first round children, only two went to college out of 4 of them. The oldest dropped out in her senior year of high school so she had to get her GED through the college first, then she took regular classes for a short while. She decided to have children instead of sticking with it, though. The second child went directly to college and went for one year before hitting some rough patches in her life. She is still struggling to complete college. She's been going off and on her entire adult life. The last two never attended. Child #4 dropped out of high school, basically, in her sophmore year. She's also dyslexic and her bio-mom (hubby's ex) never got her the services she needed. Child #3 probably could have gone to college and done well but she wanted to party instead.

 

I think mid-high school they start deciding whether or not they're going to go to college.
 

I don't know if my kids ever thought not going to college was an option. They just always assumed that was the next step.  I think by high school, they pretty much understood that they didn't have to go, but by then it was already in their mindset that they were going.

In our house it has lays been assumed that you will go to college. However once they get mid high school, they get ideas of their wn and so fa, neither of my children who graduated, went directly to college.

They know that not everyone goes to college, but we have always emphasized the importance of it. Our oldest has talked about joining the Army first and letting them pay for his education. What they do know, is that doing nothing after high school is not an option. 

Ds is only four so we have not brough up college yet. Dh and I believe that education is important but college is not for everyone. We will emphaise he goes on to trade school or goes to the community college to learn a skill. The ones here teach auto repair,cooking, nursing, dental hygenist, and even welding. If he would rather work with this hands I am for that, but I want him to have some kind of education to go with it.
 

College has always been an expectation in our family as well. One niece, was never very good in school - she excelled at social skills, but not schoolwork. We all thought she would go into hairdressing. Because she knew college was expected, she went to community college. Got her associates in hospitality services, another associates in culinary arts. She's a fabulous cook. Worked as a pastry chef for a year & enjoyed it, but developed a skin condition & couldn't work w/ her hands w/ the pastry anymore. So, she went to school for hair - turned out that is what she always WANTED to do, but didn't ask her parents to go to beauty school because she knew they wanted college. They consider beauty school the equivalent of college, and would have saved a lot of $ and time if they knew that was what she wanted to do all along.