Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers - Ep 123: Colleges, Universities, and What You're Really Paying For

Ep 123: Colleges, Universities, and What You're Really Paying For

01/31/21 • 27 min

Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Ron Lieber, author of The Price You Pay For College and NYT Your Money columnist, clues us in on what marketing tricks your teen’s favorite colleges might be using and how to get the best deal.

Sponsored by Equip: Eating disorder treatment that works—delivered at home. Visit equip.health/talking for more information, and a free consultation.

Full show notes

With prices skyrocketing and competition for admission growing more intense every year, applying to college can be a major source of stress for both parents and teens! It’s enormously difficult to decide which school offers the right dorms, classes, and clubs. On top of all that, you and your student have to figure out how you’re going to foot the bill.

Although families have access to resources like the FAFSA and other financial aid, it can be incredibly difficult to figure out how it all works. Every school offers something different, and half the time it seems like they tack on costs out of nowhere! It can feel like you’re being hoodwinked when you're just trying to give your teen a brighter future.

To get to the bottom of all the college cost craziness, we’re talking to Ron Lieber, author of The Price You Pay For College: An Entirely New Road Map for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make. Ron is a business expert, and writes the wildly popular “Your Money” column in New York Times. His expertise about money and parenting have made a twice best-selling author!

Today, he and I are discussing some questionable methods colleges use to entice students into attending. We’re also breaking down the questions teens should be asking themselves when shopping for schools, and a few key things they should be wary about when embarking on their university journey.

Why You Should Question How Colleges Market Themselves

College is expensive....like, really expensive. Luckily, there are few ways parents can pay, though they’re not always easy to navigate. Some students get scholarships based on merit, because they have exhibited academic skill or another impressive quality. While this may seem like a life saver, most colleges have some tricks up their sleeve when it comes to scholarships.

Ron breaks down the deceptive nature of many of these merit based aid programs. While they started as a way for schools to bring smarter students to campus at a lower cost, they’ve lost their original, intended purpose, says Ron. It’s become more and more common for schools to offer them to the majority of students, often even hiking up the sticker price of tuition to make it seem as though they’re handing families a discount.

In fact, there’s a billion dollar industry behind these discounts, with colleges finding the exact amount of financial aid to offer students to ensure that they attend the institution–but not a penny more. Ron and I talk about how colleges sometimes even measure how often applicants visit their websites or how quickly teens open their emails, to see how badly students want to attend. If teens seem eager to go to a particular place, schools can use this information to extract more money out of these hopeful students.

In the episode, Ron gets into why all these tricky marketing schemes came into being, and ways you can get around them. When it comes to picking a school, there’s more than just the price to think about, however. In addition to talking about financial aid, Ron shares the questions he thinks every student should be asking themselves before they choose a college.

Finding the College that Fits

Selecting a scholarly institution is no easy task. Ron suggests that teens ask themselves what they really want out of college. He sorts students into three different categories depending on what kind of experience they prioritize. Some want to get practical knowledge, acquiring a degree or license with the main purpose of gainful employment. Others want to find their pack, the people who truly get them. Some go away to school to have a unique learning experience and expand their mind.

What kids really need to do is understand what it is exactly they’re going to college for. If they have a notion locked down, they’ll know what questions to ask their tour guides. Ron puts this idea in terms of examining a college’s dorm design, something students often don’t consider. If your kid wants to meet as many people as possible, dorms with more closed off quarters are likely not the right choice. If they want to engage in a lot of quiet studying, it might be in their best interest to look into a school where dorms are more spread out.

For students who are looking to learn as much as possible, Ron suggests seeking out a college with small class sizes. Rese...

Ron Lieber, author of The Price You Pay For College and NYT Your Money columnist, clues us in on what marketing tricks your teen’s favorite colleges might be using and how to get the best deal.

Sponsored by Equip: Eating disorder treatment that works—delivered at home. Visit equip.health/talking for more information, and a free consultation.

Full show notes

Why You Should Question How Colleges Market Themselves

Finding the College that Fits

For students who are looking to learn as much as possible, Ron suggests seeking out a college with small class sizes. Rese...

Previous Episode

Ep 122: Why Teens Rage and What To Do About It

R. Doug Fields, author of Why We Snap and Electric Brain, shares insight from the field of neuroscience on why as evolved as we are, parents and teens still snap at each other. Plus, what new research in the field of brain waves could mean for our kids in the future.

Sponsored by Equip: Eating disorder treatment that works—delivered at home. Visit equip.health/talking for more information, and a free consultation.

Full show notes

You’ve been asking your teenager to unload the dishwasher for days, only to be brushed off everytime. One day, you decide that enough is enough–your teen has lost the privilege of having their phone until they unload it. You announce this to your teen, explaining with a perfect sense of calm why this has to happen....but suddenly, your teen flies off the handle! Furious, they hurl insults, exclaim protestations, and then refuse to come out of their room. Why are they getting so worked up over such a small event?

It turns out that this response is a part of a complicated evolutionary brain mechanism, one intended to keep us safe...but can sometimes misfire. It comes down to how we’re wired to face threats, whether we’re being followed down a dark alley or getting into an intense facebook fight! Understanding how this mental system works can help teens from making some impulsive mistakes–and help parents stay cool when arguments with teens heat up.

This week we’re sitting down with neuroscientist Dr. R. Douglas Fields, author of Why We Snap: Understanding the Rage Circuit in Your Brain and Electric Brain: How the New Science of Brainwaves Reads Minds, Tells Us How We Learn, and Helps Us Change for the Better. Dr. Fields is a leading researcher in the field of brain science, studying everything from experimental usage of brain waves to developmental psychology. Today, we’re talking about aggression: why it comes so suddenly, how it affects our body, and what we can do about it.

Why Aggression Appears

Dr. Fields became fascinated by the brain’s aggressive response when he found himself being attacked by a gang on the Barcelona subway. While he and his daughter were in the station, he felt someone grasp for his wallet. Instantly, he was able to grab the perpetrator and tackle him to the ground, putting him in a chokehold. With no martial arts training, and no exceptional athleticism....how in the world was Dr. Fields able to accomplish such an astounding physical feat??!

Asking himself that same question, Dr. Fields embarked on a research journey to understand how the body is able to perceive threats and react accordingly. It turns out, this response is deeply unconscious, monitored by the same mechanisms that our brain uses to regulate hunger and thirst.

Since this response is hard-wired in our brains, intended to keep us alive, Dr Fields says it’s pointless to tell an upset teen to just “calm down”. In fact, that will likely make the situation worse. Instead, Dr. Fields suggests educating your teen on why a situation is firing them up, and prompt them to consider if it’s worth acting on their angry impulses. If someone flips your teen off in traffic,of course they’re going to get upset. But is it worth yelling back and cutting this person off, risking their own safety? Likely not! Having these discussions with teens can keep them from making decisions they regret.

While adults struggle with aggressive responses just like teens do, teens are not as capable of regulating their response, says Dr. Fields. In the episode, he discusses how teens’ have brains that aren’t quite developed enough to control their angry impulses. He shares how you can help a teen learn the importance of self control.

When it comes to handling danger, there are certain factors that affect the nature of our reaction. Dr. Fields dives into what these factors are, and why they’re so important to understanding aggressive impulses.

The Significance of Sex

There are four main influences that affect the body’s response to a perceived threat: our genetic makeup, our childhood experiences, brain damage (from sources like injury or drugs), and, most importantly, our gender. While it’s important to consider our level of impairment (we all know alcohol can make us a little more inclined to impulsivity) and the nature of our upbringing, Dr. Fields says the number one force that indicates our level of rage is our sex.

Why is this so? Dr. Fields explains that the answer comes down to the bilateral nature of our brain! When women are encountered with a threat, the response takes place in the left side of the brain, where we process smaller detai...

Next Episode

Ep 124: The Upside of Rude Teens

Rebecca Reid, journalist and author of Rude, sheds light on the surprising positives to rudeness and how we could all get a bit more rude without offending anyone!

Sponsored by Equip: Eating disorder treatment that works—delivered at home. Visit equip.health/talking for more information, and a free consultation.

Full show notes

It’s easy to get caught up worrying about your kid behaving rudely when you’re not around. You might be picturing them going to the neighbor's house and asking for food they weren’t offered, forgetting to say please and thank you, and causing a huge mess without cleaning it up. No one wants a kid with no manners, so we tend to push politeness onto kids with a fervor. We often try so hard to keep kids from being rude that we force them to swing too far in the other direction, towards being overly courteous, saying “sorry” for everything and letting others walk all over them.

When we teach our kids to be apologetic, we can do more harm than good. Raising an overly submissive teen can mean that they’re not comfortable raising their hand in the classroom, advocating for themselves in a job interview or even saying no to an unwanted sexual encounter. If we want to raise happy and healthy teens, we have to teach them to be firm, honest, comfortable...and maybe even a little rude.

Today we’re sitting down to chat with Rebecca Reid, author of Rude: Stop Being Nice, Start Being Bold. Rebecca is a regular columnist for Marie Clare, the Guardian, the Telegraph, and more. She also makes regular appearances on Good Morning Britain, where she contributes to conversations about political and social issues.

Rebecca has been known to be assertive and firm in her convictions...but has always found herself apologizing a little too much. She started to notice that a lot of her submissiveness was caused by how she was conditioned to act as a woman! That’s why she decided to write her book, to help young people, especially girls, understand when it’s ok to be a little impolite and express their true feelings.

In our discussion, she breaks down the difference between positive and negative rudeness, the ways in which we can teach kids to understand consent, and how rudeness plays into the parent-teen relationship.

The Right Kind of Rude

When we hear the word “rude”, we think about everything we don’t want our kids to be. We might conjure up images of people chewing with their mouths open, or loudly interrupting somebody with no regard for this current conversation. When Rebecca talks about raising kids to be a little rude, this isn’t quite what she means.

Rebecca divides rude behavior into positive and negative. Negative rudeness is what you might think when you think of being rude: using vulgar language, cutting someone in line, or insulting someone’s new haircut. Positive rudeness is all about making things a little uncomfortable when needed. If someone’s exhibiting positive rudeness, they alert the waiter when they’re given the wrong order, or tell someone honestly that they’re not interested in going on a date.

In our interview, I talk with Rebecca about how young people, especially girls, have been conditioned to put other people’s feelings before their own. While it can be good to teach kids the importance of being considerate, Rebecca believes we shouldn’t stop there. She says we should also help them understand when it’s appropriate to speak up and communicate their feelings and desires.

Take, for example, the difference between saying “sorry” and “thank you”. When we’re late, we tend to apologize, when our true intention is to show that we appreciate the other person waiting for us. We’ve grown so used to saying “sorry” for every small mistake, putting ourselves down unnecessarily. Rebecca explains how it’s ok to not apologize, even when our conditioning makes us feel we have to.

A huge part of discussing communication and assertiveness among young people is the idea of helping them stop an unwanted sexual encounter. Rebecca and I delve into this in the episode.

Helping Teens Understand Consent

Talking to kids about sex is pretty much always awkward...how could it not be? However, if we totally neglect to talk to kids about the birds and the bees, they might not go into it with the right mindset. They might feel like they need to cave to pressure, or may not know the signs that their partner is feeling pressured.

Rebecca and I talk about how this relates to rudeness–that is, making things uncomfortable for the sake of one’s own well being. It might not be the most agreeable thing to say “no” when someone asks for sex, but it’s the right thing for teens to do if they’re not ready to consent.

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