‘College is the Best Four Years of Your Life’ and Other Lies Parents Tell Teens (opens in new tab)

In the endless stream of advice we offer our teens, it is far too easy to fall back on clichés, well-worn turns of phrase or unquestioned ideas that contain only a shred of truth. Sometimes when I am heaping these meaningless, or worse, harmful, words on my kids I stop and think, is this really true or have I just heard it so many times I have come to accept it as truth? Here are a few of the aphorisms I have at one time or another offered up and why, instead, I owed my kids the truth.