Joie’s Newsletter #7
When High School Parenting Gets Complicated
A few years ago, I sat in a meeting with a student and her parents that I will not forget.
The student had fallen in love with a college that her parents did not respect. They had a very different vision for her future. What started as a calm conversation quickly turned into frustration on all sides. The student felt unheard. The parents felt scared. Everyone was talking, and no one was really listening.
At one point, the student said quietly, “I feel like you care more about the name of the school than about me.”
Her parents did not respond right away. You could see the surprise on their faces. They love her deeply, and they genuinely had no idea that was how their concern was landing. They had been speaking from a place of fear and protection. She was hearing it as pressure and disappointment.
In that silence, it became clear that no one in the room was trying to hurt anyone. They were simply misunderstanding each other.
As a college counselor, I have been in versions of this moment many times. As a parent of a high schooler, I understand it in a completely different way now.
High school is when kids start forming opinions that are separate from ours. They begin making choices that do not always line up with what we imagined for them. They push back. They assert themselves. They test where our support ends and their independence begins.
And in that moment, the conversation was no longer about a college. It was about identity, fear, love, and the very real challenge of learning how to hear one another when emotions are high.
I see versions of this tension all the time with the families we work with at CP360. Parents want to do the right thing. They want their children to have every opportunity, and at the same time, they worry about being the ones creating pressure that takes away the joy of being a teenager. Some students are intensely driven and anxious about getting every decision right, while others are still figuring out what actually matters to them and need more time and space to discover that. These conversations can feel layered, emotional, and challenging for everyone involved.
Which is exactly why we decided to bring someone new into the CP360 community.
We recently partnered with Megan Saxelby of Wild Feelings, a parenting coach who works with families navigating the emotional side of adolescence. Megan’s work focuses on helping parents understand what their kids are feeling and how to support them without taking over. At CP360, we often talk about the family as an ecosystem, where each person’s emotions, expectations, and reactions affect the others. Her approach is a natural complement to the college counseling we do because healthy emotional development across that ecosystem is what allows students to make thoughtful, authentic decisions in the first place.
Over the coming weeks, Megan will be sharing content and offering coaching specifically for parents of high school students. I am genuinely excited for our families to learn from her, and I know I will be learning from her, too.
If you have ever walked away from a conversation with your teenager feeling unsure how to help without making things worse, you are not alone. This partnership grew directly out of those very real conversations.
Education expert, founder, author of “B+ Grades, A+ College Application.”
