Your student is graduating! Congratulations!
Whether this graduation is from high school or college, it can be a bittersweet time for you as a parent. You’re proud and excited! But you also see your child growing up and taking an important next step in their life.
It can be an uncertain and nervous time for everyone.
Perhaps there will be a party. Probably there are gifts. Maybe a card or a letter. It feels as though this is one last opportunity to impart some wisdom – some life advice – to your student.
Really, you will continue to have opportunities to share your advice – some of it welcome and some perhaps less welcome – throughout your student’s life. But this is a moment. You want to get this one right.
We’ve suggested that one option might be to write your own commencement speech. What words would you like your student to hear? What would you tell them if you had the opportunity (challenge?) of writing the speech they would hear as they proudly sit in that cap and gown.
The wisdom you share with your student needs to be yours, of course, from your heart directly to the child you know so well. But it’s sometimes nice to have a little help getting started.
