By Silvia Terzian

With the increasing demands of high school and extracurricular activities, many parents wonder, should my teen get a job? There are many reasons why high school students work. Some work to contribute to their family’s finances. Others work to save up for college or to fund other personal expenses. Many get jobs to gain valuable work experience. However, given all of the activities that vie for a busy high school student’s time, is work the best option?

According to an article in the Atlantic Magazine, “Teenagers Have Stopped Getting Summer Jobs—Why?” teen…

By Virginia Young

The gap year has always been a mystery to me. When I was growing up, the beaten path was to attend college immediately after high school graduation. Over the past few years, I’ve been hearing from more and more friends and acquaintances that their teens are taking gap years before college. As it turns out, American students are just discovering what European students have been doing for ages. Since I have teens at home, I decided to dig deeper to find out what all of the buzz was about. The stories these parents shared with me opened my eyes to the benefits of a…

By Virginia Young

Back when my oldest child was...well...a child, I had a hard time finding good academic and extracurricular activities for him. I’d find resources online, including lists of programs which looked promising at first but did not appear to be curated. When I did find something that might work, I’d search for reviews of the program but most of the time there weren’t very many or there were none at all. I have several memories of throwing caution to the wind and hoping for the best as I entered my credit card information to register for some of those programs. But to…