Help your pregnant daughter with: Completing her education

The other day we posted about the topic "How much should parents help their pregnant single daughter?"We've received this question is various forms. Other ways this has been phrased is "How does a mom support her pregnant daughter?" "Should parents pay for college when daughter is pregnant?" Keywords we've seen on our statistics include phrases like "helping your pregnant daughter."

That post focused on the minimum basics of safe housing, nutrition, and medical care. We also talked about how education or job skills training would help your daughter and your grandchild long term. Today let's talk about some other help beyond the minimum basics.

Beyond the minimum basics of housing, nutrition, and medical care, parents of a pregnant teen should consider how they might help with these goals:

1. Helping your daughter remain in school until graduation. (Today's topic)
2. Preventing subsequent adolescent pregnancies.
3. Improving parenting skills.
4. Locating and using community resources.
5. Stabilizing family support systems.
6. Strengthening employability skills and efforts to become economically self-sufficient.

Again, your motive of considering these kinds of help is not to reward your daughter's behavior, but to help get her on the road to independence and to help give your grandchild a better start in life. Lets look at each in turn. Today's topic is:

1. Help your daughter remain in school until graduation. To improve your daughter's chance at getting a job that pays enough to support her and your grandchild, your daughter needs at least a high school diploma or GED. If she can get some college completed (even a two-year associate's degree) it would be even better. Instead of college, your daughter may be interested in a certified job training program that can give her employable skills. In our book "How To Survive Your Teen's Pregnancy", read the chapter titled "Completing School" for ideas about how to pursue education goals. Your daughter will probably need to find child care in order to complete this education goal. Will you offer her free babysitting? Will you charge her for babysitting? Will she pay a daycare center? Is she eligible for day care assistance from the local/state government? Is there child care at her current school? Or at another school that she could transfer to? Read the "How To Survive Your Teen's Pregnancy" chapter titled "Childcare responsibilities" that gives pointers on how to evaluate childcare options.