Dr. Wes: It’s that time of year – that special season known as “seniortime.” OK, I made that up for this column, but seniors and their parents know what I mean.

Spring has sprung, love is in the air, just waiting for a June or August breakup before college, and prom has come and gone. We stand on the precipice of the next big thing: graduation. Today I’ll join Double Take’s senior-in-residence to prepare everyone for the next few months of general weirdness between parents and young adults. You’ll be faced with perhaps the most dramatic period of transition yet. I don’t want to scare anyone, but how you handle the next few months will impact your relationship with your teen and their transition to adulthood for several years to come.

In preparation, let’s take a moment to review a few complex realities:

The point of adolescence is to prepare kids for adulthood. Most young people living at home after graduation are now adults. They have the rights of the majority. However, because they are living at home, they still have an obligation to the family beyond the legalities of reaching adulthood. This will be true now, and when they come back over the summer, and if they have to move home at age 23, and so on.

Very few teens – no matter how well-raised and responsible – have all the responsibility and resources necessary to exist on their own at 18.

Young adults don’t do well living at home.

Put simply, at 18, most teens have all the yearnings for freedom and few of the skills of independence. This makes them both annoyed with and annoying to their parents for the months leading up to college or other new living arrangement. While this transition starts well in advance of graduation or the 18th birthday, it becomes more acute this time of year.

As with most things in the family, communication is the best survival skill you can learn. Parents and teens need to sit down and figure out the following issues:

What’s the short-term (this summer) and long-term (five-year) goal? Be sure everyone’s on the same page about work, college, living space.

How long is the teen planning to live at home, and how does that plan fit each goal?

What’s the move-out plan? Into a dorm, apartment, living with friends? Who’s paying for that, cosigning, etc.?

While still at home, what will the rules be regarding finances, curfews, friends (or romantic partners) staying over, cleaning, laundry, utilities, etc.?

Everything needs to be on the table in these discussions, and parents should do as much as is reasonable to increase the young adult’s sense of freedom AND responsibility. For example, it’s a little weird to have a curfew for your 18-year-old, unless she starts missing work. This is not a matter of rules, but of responsibility. Worse, if she keeps losing her job, she’ll be living at home forever. Likewise it is intrusive to be dictating who the young adult is spending time with – but it is equally intrusive for him to expect to shack up with his summer girlfriend in the parents’ basement. In short, for young adults living at home, life should be an enhanced versions of the teen years: later hours, fewer questions, etc., without turning parents and teens into nothing more than roommates.

Along these same lines, parents should be cautious in using the “not while you’re under my roof” threat. More than one teenager has taken up his folks on that one and gotten into a great deal of trouble right out of the starting gate. At the same time, teens, remember that after graduation, the tables turn. They are no longer owed the life of children. They must now work with their families like adults. This may take some adjustment, but it can be the beginning of a wonderful new relationship.

Marissa: Around this time of year, graduating seniors have just one thing on their mind: moving out. I know that’s not the case for some seniors, but many will be moving out and moving on to another city. Excitement and anxiousness to start something new can be overwhelming at times, and it is all they can do to sit and be patient for this new phase of life to start.

While seniors are bursting with these positive feelings, frustration starts to develop in the midst of it. They are stuck in between being a kid and being an adult and often have no idea how to act and feel. Parents can be the same way, too.

For the majority who will not be living at home and will be going to a public university, curfew will no longer exist and there won’t be anyone who needs to be informed constantly of their whereabouts. This new freedom is extremely enticing, and it’s hard to wait for it. Most people I know who are arguing with their parents are dealing with this very issue or issues that are related to curfew.

I think that having no curfew, while nice, isn’t the only way to go. Simply having a later curfew can be a good compromise. On the other hand, seniors no longer want to feel like they have to report their whereabouts to their parents. We really hate to hear, “Just wait a few more months, and then you’ll have all the freedom you want,” but I believe it’s true. We’ve waited this long right?

Next week: The winner and runner-up of the contest to take Marissa’s place as the new Double Take columnist will be announced and their essays published.

– Dr. Wes Crenshaw is a board-certified family psychologist and director of the Family Therapy Institute Midwest. Marissa Ballard is a Lawrence High School senior. Opinions and advice given here are not meant as a substitute for psychological evaluation or therapy services. Send your questions about adolescent issues to doubletake@ljworld.com. All correspondence is strictly confidential.