Your Young-Adult Child

The National Fatherhood Initiative gives some pointers that can help you and your pregnant daughter improve her maturity and independance.

1) Legal documents. "Once turned 18, your son/daughter is legally an adult, able to enter into contracts and agreements without your permission." Talk to your daughter about her responsibility to read such documents carefully and to keep her end of the agreement. Offer to review any contracts or agreements for her before she signs them.

2) Making mistakes. Your pregnant daughter needs to move rapidly toward maturity since she is now responsible for her child's life in addition to her own life. She will make mistakes. You need to allow room for some mistakes that will help her learn valuable lessons, and be there to guide her as she picks up the pieces. You should not shield her from consequences..they are valuable to her growth as a person. On the other extreme, you may not need to impose extra consequences either.

3) Keeping records. Help your pregnant daughter set up a filing system to store her important personal documents such as her resume, bank statements, utilities statements, credit card statements, and other documents.

4) Focus on a goal. Talk to your pregnant daughter about her goal for the next 4 years. Does she need to finish high school? Finish college? Get vocational training? Get a job? Help your daughter get career guidance as soon as possible... this may be available at her school, or from a private counselor.

5) Relationships. Talk with your pregnant daughter about the important people in her life. Help her evaluate each relationship because she'll likely become more like the people she spends the most time with. Do her current friends act like the person she wants to be in five years?

6) Banking. If your pregnant daughter doesn't already have a checking account, go with her to the bank. Have her take the lead in setting up an account, but be there with her. Make sure she knows how to balance her account, and how to record transactions. Teach her about shopping for the best deals. Make a budget for her expenses. Go "window" shopping to start calculating how much money she will need to earn to pay for her baby's expenses.

7) Budgeting. Help your daughter write down a budget, even if you are paying all or most of her living expenses. "The important skill to develop here is minding money: how much and where it comes from, as well as where it goes. Encourage them to actively manage their money and find ways to save even a little for the “unexpecteds” that come everyone’s way." The chapter titled "Should she parent alone?" in our book "How To Survive Your Teen's Pregnancy" has a list of items to put into such a budget.

8) Prioritize and plan. "Teens are notorious for putting off the serious “stuff of life,” because to them it gets in the way of life itself." Help your pregnant daughter write down a plan of the next five years of her life. Put dates on events and action items. Be specific in the things she wants to do over that time period.