How My Messy Path to College Is Helping Me Parent a Teen Choosing Hers

My daughter had just started high school when I founded my startup four years ago. Just as she was starting to feel the wild emotional swings of adolescence, I was climbing onto the roller coaster of the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Complicating things even more, I had no direct modeling for how to parent a “normal” teenager as I lived on my own from the age of 16, dropping out of high school before going back to get my GED, Bachelor’s, and ultimately, an M.B.A. from Champlain College.