I echo what KT Mom says. Every word.
1. If you could give one piece of advice to other parents with children in grad school what would it be? I haven't had a child in graduate school but I was in graduate school. I think what I would have wished for is that my parent was proud of me, was there for me for support, but did not seek to control or define the experience for me, it's meaning, pressure me, or opine about the correctness of my goal. In other words, be a silent partner, be back up.
3. What have you noticed that has changed in your childs life as a result of being in a graduate program? I think graduate school for me was the first time I had a serious vision of what I could be and achieve and make of my life. I had to develop a certain kind of steel in my spine, and begin to take myself seriously. I was fully self-supporting and I put everything on the line in order to finish. It became my first and only priority until I adopted my son. I think I would have done most anything to achieve the goal of completing the graduate program. I think most people in order to successfully complete a program like this have got to do a version of the same thing. I think it would be a powerful and loving thing to acknowledge my child for this.
Thirty years later I have come to see that my graduate degree became the defining thing in my life. Certainly the title was something. But what I mean here is the achievement. It became the skeleton on which everything else hangs. It is almost as if parents provide the structure throughout childhood. But a graduate education (and other comparable endeavors) provides an opportunity for an adult child to create a structure for themselves.
