One Step Closer: 18-Steps to Your Child's College Success

Establish a 529 plan for your child prior to birth and encourage friends and family to celebrate your new arrival by investing in their college savings fund.

Encourage your baby to communicate emotions and needs through baby sign language.  For many children it reduces frustration and strengthens bonding with adults.  Find the basics online.

Play recordings and make music with your toddler. Music develops beginning math skills such as counting, sequences, order, and tempo.  The inevitable dancing, hopping, and twirling builds motor skills, as does home based rhythm instruments such as pots and pans.

Planting and tending carrots, sunflowers or tomatoes with your child is a great way to teach environmental awareness and explore the workings of nature.

Encourage a sense of self by chalk outlining your child on pavement or butcher paper having them add the special features as they see themselves.  Surprise Grandma and Grandpa with a newspaper stuffed, life-sized surrogate grandchild to keep them company.

Teach financial responsibility to your child by establishing an allowance.  Make sure there is enough to share with the piggy bank.  50 cents to one dollar per year of age is a general rule of thumb.

Begin a permanent library with your child’s favorite book and add a new book for each celebration throughout the year.  Be sure to go back to the early books with your child.

Teach your child to set financial goals by matching their saved fund toward something they want. Make deposit day at the bank a special outing.  Encourage relatives to gift to the child’s college savings account for birthday gift giving.

Develop leadership and organizational skills by having your child plan a Saturday afternoon family outing including the budget for the excursion.

Introduce the concept of investment with your child.  Show them how their college savings account or other investment grows over time.  Explain that their future is your greatest investment.

Introduce community involvement by helping you child find ways to serve community such as neighborhood clean-up, passing out water at charitable walks, volunteering to write get well cards, or reading at a nursing home.  Show them by example, the joy of service.

Have the family read a new book of interest to the child monthly.  Discuss the book during “family meal time”.  Biographies of successful individuals in areas of the child’s interests work well.

Check with your child’s school to ensure that your child is ready to take algebra or another higher level mathematics course by 8th grade.  Mathematics skills and appropriately sequenced courses are critical for college admission and early graduation.

Help your teenager explore career paths by setting up experiences at friend’s or relative’s workplaces.  Explore online with the teen the education and income from these careers and talk about the lifestyle each provides.

Work with the school counselor to ensure that child is on track for 4 credits Math, 4 credits science, 3 credits language and consider the possibility of your teen graduating and entering college early.

Encourage your teenager to take the PSAT as a Sophomore.  Explore International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement (AP) and community college dual enrollment possibilities.  The savings from compressing the time in college are surprising, when additional income earnings are considered. 

Researching colleges and scholarship programs with your teenager (resources: Fastweb.com, Collegeboard.com, and FinAid.org).  Make college visits, spend time on campuses in your area, encourage your teenager to shadow a student at the college. 

Support your teen in applying to colleges in fall, completing the FAFSA in February, and applying for scholarships throughout the year.  Have your taxes done early so that the FAFSA filing can be completed in early February, providing access to early financial aid.

Congratulations !    Your child is on their way to College.  Have you saved enough?