How to get your kid into college through self medication and reverse psychology

Teen girl is in 11th grade which means in less than two years, well, you know. It's all over. And it all begins.

We have entered the spin zone of college searches. Teen Girl is really interested. She actively researches possible universities without me even nagging her about it.

Her searching is based on her top three interests, in order of priority:

1.) Cheerleading -- All girl cheer program that doesn't include bare middrift uniforms. (Oh wait, that second half is my interest.)

2.) Sororities -- And not just academic clubs or service organizations but real ones with impressive mansions where all the sisters live together.

3.) Academics -- This third point is evolving and I'm so happy it exists. It has included communications, international relations, public relations, actuary science, special education and/or anything having to do with science and math that might involve helping people and hopefully involve making a lot of money, or at least enough money to pay the bills. (Again, last point is my interest.)

Since Teen Girl is a natural born college researcher she is on many mailing lists. Our kitchen counters are covered with postcards, letters, and booklets with splashy headlines like how to make your life count or  how to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes to make positive change. We must push aside such clutter to make toast or cut pizza.

While I am easy prey for believing in bleeding heart marketing ploys, the expense of it all positively scares the crap out of me. Me, one who has drank the kool-aid of pricey-changy-world university dreams not once, but twice. Me, who has now incurred a second substantial student loan debt for the sake of learnin'. Me, who now looks to her child to bear the responsibility of being responsible. Me, who expects said child to impress the admissions officers du jour with an amazing grade point average, a transcript of accelerated courses, high highfalutin letters of reference, and a long list of volunteer and leadership roles.

To me, all that equals dollar signs heading our direction. And possibly hope for the future. Just yesterday I got all googly-eyed about the idea of Teen Girl building her own online portfolio (which would already be waaay better than my pitiful one.) "You could post all the T-shirt graphics you've designed," I offered, trying not to sound too excited, "And a picture of you helping a troubled kid with art." More scholarship dollar signs bounce around my head.

So when Teen Girl says stuff like, "I decided to drop the high level English" or "I don't like French anymore" or "I'm getting a C in history but it's no big deal," I pretty much flip. No, it isn't pretty. When that happens I move back and forth between raising my voice, "Are you crazy!" to the silent treatment spiced with a whatever. My passive aggressive guilt-producing motherling responses make both of us feel awful. To top it off, they don't work. So I tell myself, who cares about college? Plenty of people who never went to college do way better than me. Drop it, just drop it.

But I've found a better response to the mediocre moments of college prep and parenting. It goes something like this:

"Shouldn't you be studying for the ACT test?" I say to Teen Girl on a late Saturday afternoon, who might be on her sixth hour straight of watching a high school soap opera drama found on Netflix.

"I did," Teen Girl will respond, wearing short shorts and Uggs while flopped in Bob's recliner, perhaps with a bag of chips and a ginormous glass of sugary orange juice squished on the tiny end table along with other assorted plastic wrappers and dirty dishes. She's looking down to text while following the teledrama of teen angst, and hoping, I'm sure, that I will exit the room as soon as possible. Two syllable answers usually mean the conversation is over. But I often ignore the cues, being the perceptive mother I am.

"Well you know," I say, "Community college is a perfectly honorable alternative to university."

It's a zinger. I'm being snarky, but I really mean it. I love my community college students, who I think have far more complicated lives than your average university student. Community college students are studying while juggling multiple jobs, children, and tuition payments. While university students are often cloistered in a utopia party funded by scholarships, credit cards, parents, donors, and whatnot. (I'm over simplifying, I realize, but you get my drift. And don't get me wrong, I'd die to get a job at any university in pretty much any capacity. As my latest favorite author, Mary Karr, would say, I'd tatoo the university on my forehead if it'd have me.)

The point is, whenever I bring up community college with Teen Girl, it pushes both of our buttons. I calm down and she amps up. It's the classic reverse psychology of both parenting and self-medication. I realize I don't care about my kid enrolling in a fancy liberal arts school. Teen Girl realizes she does care.

"I'm not going to no community college," she says.

"But there's nothing wrong with it," I say.

And we both mean it.

And such is the journey of my stellar parenting style in getting my kid to college, after having willfully plunged my whole family into yet another ocean of student loan debt, incurred all on my own.

The grace of this whole situation is this. Girl Child is simply amazing. I could be the worst parent ever, and she will respond with a bouncy optimism that reminds me she is a natural born idealist, one who google searches "inspirational cheer quotes" for her customized sweatshirt design; one who works with her principal to recruit the cheer coach; one who hangs out in her English teacher's classroom over lunch hour because, in part, she was a college cheerleader. Cheerleading is just the start. Is life easier for optimists? I hope so. Because if it is, this girl is destined to succeed wherever she goes, whatever she does. She may be leaving our immediate household in less than two years, but my direct influence has already changed and waned. If only I had understood it more when I had it. Still, I realize that this child will succeed, and not for anything I did, do, or will do. It's simply by the inherent beauty of who she is.

Plus, I predict that her student loans, if she gets any, will be paid back faster than mine. Because I'm slow at everything. And I'm the master of making things far more complicated than necessary.

Yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart