4 Moms Answer Reader Questions

I think your oldest is right on!
As a bit of advice from someone that took a very, very similar route, I would offer encouragement to take gen ed course first. I was duel enrolled as a high school student (really “triple enrolled” because I was taking classes as my high school, the local community college, and the state college that I planned to attend after graduation). My districts only rules for dual enrollment were that I had to have a particular score on a state standardized test (which I did) and the college courses I took had to be courses that weren’t already offered at my high school (which was never an issue).
I thought for SURE at 16/17 that I knew what I wanted to be/major in so I ended up taking all of my duel enrollment courses in my specific major–no gen eds. My plan, for after high school was to take a mixture of classes in my major and gen eds until graduation. This is what I did for the first two years after high school.

My duel-enrollment classes were, of course, free (paid by the school district) and I had several academic scholarships as well (My parents had always told me that would do everything they could to help me pay for my bachelors, but since we were not a rich family that it was important for me to study hard and apply for all of the scholarships that they could).

My first two years, everything went according to plan, but sophomore year, (half way through) I suddenly realized that I really, really, did not want to peruse the career that I’d majored in (which was a huge deal, since I’d been planning my major and future career since I was 10!) I really started freaking out since the majority of my credits were specific to my major and most of my scholarship money had been used up. I changed my major about 5 times that semester and took as many gen eds as I could, but come summer I still wasn’t sure what I wanted.
My parents told me they were planning to take out a loan to cover the rest of my education, and while I firmly believe that education IS one of the only things worth going into debt for, I didn’t want them to in this case since I had no idea what I wanted to study (not that college is or should be a trade school either of course…)
I ended up taking a year off and working (which turned into 2 years because I got married during that time and the planning, etc. took a good chunk of time and money) and then going back to the local community college to finish up on the gen eds required for a BA (Thanks to Pell grants, state funding, and a little help from my mom and dad–who did not need to take out loans–I was able to do this debt free too!) It was during that time that I found something that I was truly passionate about, and now, almost 10 years later, I am finally getting ready to finish up my bachelors (while working full time).
I have been really, really, lucky that I have never had to take out student loans (but I do plan to for my masters if needed) but my degree will still have taken me over a decade to complete when all is said and done. If I had taken gen eds while in high school and during my early college years and used that time to figure out what it was that I truly wanted to study (people do change so much during the teen-twenties transition years!) I would have finished my BS (did I mention that after finishing up all of my BA requirements I realized that the degree I felt most passionate about pursuing was a BS?) and would probably be working on my masters right now.
I love my life, and love my journey, but ultimately it would have made it so much easier if I had waited to dive into major requirements AFTER most of my gen eds had been completed.