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Preparing your teen for high school

Looking to give your kid some guidance on what grade nine will be like? Here's what today's teens say the newbies need to know

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Originally published in Today's Parent June 2009

Aren’t you glad you never have to be a “minor niner” again? Those first few months of getting lost in the endless hallways, hating the dorky jeans your mom bought on sale, and trying to sort out which binder goes with which class. Lucky you — you don’t have to go back to high school. But your kids may be making the leap soon.

And seeing as it’s been, well, a few years since acid wash was in style, you might be a tad out of step with what it’s like to be in grade nine in 2009. So if you want to help prepare your teen for the big leagues, why not ask someone who knows what high school’s like in the era of the iPhone? We talked to teens from across Canada about what they wish they’d known before starting high school.

“Go shopping after the first day of school”

Ignore the ads that make it seem like you have to do all your back-to-school shopping by August 31. Instead, let your teen check out what other kids are wearing before you drop serious cash on jeans, sneakers and coats. Otherwise, he might do what Kevin Tait, a Toronto grade 12 student, did: ask his mom for new clothes halfway through the fall, after she’d bought his wardrobe for the year. “Until you get there, you don’t know what people are wearing,” he says. “There’s an image you want to convey. You don’t want to look like a nerd.” Teens like to walk a fine line between fitting in and creating their own identity.

Cheat sheet Set a budget for the year and allow your teen to spend it gradually, as trends dictate.

“It’s bigger — way bigger”

Your teen may feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of the building in the first few weeks of high school, particularly if she went to a small junior high or elementary. This is what happened to Kelti Goudie, an Oromocto, NB, grade 11 student, who went from a school of 500 students to one with more than 1,300 teens. “I was panicking, and getting squished in the hallways. But now I’m used to it,” she says. Katelyn Hughes, a grade-nine student in Smithville, Ont., says it took her months to figure out her school has two lunches and learn what all the different bells throughout the day signify. Halfway through her first year in the building, she still sometimes worried about getting lost. “I knew where my four classes and the auditorium were, and that’s it,” she says.

Cheat sheet Consider calling the school to see when your teen can scout out the empty hallways over the summer.

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