Parents of the HS Class of 2014 - Page 2

PaperChaserPop · 07-06-2010, 11:41 AM

Welcome 29happymom26, footballmom104, FallGirl, ordinarylives, PlanAhead, zandari, SlitheyTove, collage1!

Having had one child through this process and two in the pipeline, believe me, these four years will be over very quickly, especially, if your child’s schedule is packed with activities. There’s just never enough time!

Freshman year IS the time to explore and discover interests. We need to be vigilant in detecting signs of passion and fuel that passion if there is one. Hopefully, they will latch onto something for the next three years. More importantly, it is also the time to discover and form their identities and peer group associations. Give them some space, but do emphasize your family value to them and be there for them – as in really listen to them – as they face the most intense peer pressure in their young lives.

We just registered S3 for an all-day basic wood carving class this Saturday. Because of his age, either PCM or I need to be there with him. Like I said – time to explore and discover.

zandari · 07-06-2010, 04:31 PM

FallGirl, thanks so much for the guidance on abbreviations. The thread you mentioned is very helpful. Now I know what people were talking about in the posts I've been glancing at for the last year!

SlitheyTove and PaperChaserPop, thanks for your words of sanity on finding a healthy balance between letting our kids be themselves (and not somebody's idea of who they should be for the sake of impressing college admissions committees) and giving them the opportunity to find what they love and work hard at it. You are so right about how these years fly by. I cannot believe DS (notice the professional and correct abbreviation) will be heading off to college in fewer weeks than I can bear to count.

SlitheyTove · 07-06-2010, 06:24 PM

There's a big age spread for our almost high school seniors, D2 won't turn 14 for another 3 months or so. Our school district has a late cutoff date for kindergarten, so she wasn't the youngest.

Just dropped a bursting-out-of-her-skin-with-anticipation D2 off at camp. I used to think camp was expensive. Then I started reading CC, and calculated our EFC.

collage1 · 07-07-2010, 12:20 AM

Apollo6, my D will be at the same site as your S but doesn't attend until August--wouldn't that have been funny if they'd been there at the same time and met?! Please do let me know how he enjoys it.

momreads · 07-07-2010, 08:02 AM

Son #2 is a freshman this fall. Like many of you, he is young for his age (turns 14 in January). But he is very familiar with HS, as our high school includes eighth graders (and his mom also teaches there). He runs cross country and plays soccer and the alto sax. He spent part of this summer traveling throughout the mid-Atlantic and going to minor-league baseball games with Dad, who works in the field. Now, he needs to get cracking on his summer assignments from English (not his favorite subject) and world history.

He's already gone through the college visits, SATs, applications, proms, graduations, etc. because of his older brother, who is a rising college sophomore. And he has his list of colleges that he wants to apply to.

FallGirl · 07-07-2010, 08:45 AM

Quote:

He's already gone through the college visits, SATs, applications, proms, graduations, etc. because of his older brother, who is a rising college sophomore. And he has his list of colleges that he wants to apply to

Except that our rising college soph. is a D, I could have written this

ordinarylives · 07-07-2010, 11:40 AM

Thanks for the welcome, PCPop. Yeah, freshman year is the time to explore. We told OrdinaryD2 to pick what she really likes because if she thinks she'll be driving anywhere as a sophomore, she'll need to be thinking about a job sometime next summer. Not sure how that works with softball as games and practice times seem pretty arbitrary.

Wish we'd have pushed OrdinaryD1 to explore more as a freshman. She was still in gymnastics (we had encouraged her to stop), and it was hard to do much of anything with 4 hours of gym every day after school. She tried exploring sophomore year, after an injury booted her out of her sport, but it didn't work as well.

glido · 07-10-2010, 11:36 PM

My kids are so different, I don't know how much of what we learned with D1 will be applicable?

collage1 · 07-11-2010, 02:21 AM

My kids are so different too, glido...it helps to be familiar with the process and but their interests, approaches and personalities are so different that I have to make sure I don't make assumptions for D2.

FallGirl · 07-11-2010, 08:57 AM

My kids are very different also. I know that a lot of the knowledge that I gained with the first one will come in handy (it already has), but it's going to be a different approach.

zandari · 07-11-2010, 03:33 PM

"Freshman year IS the time to explore and discover interests."

PCP--I would like to think that this is the case, especially since these kids are only 14 or 15 years old. In our town, however, by freshman year students have already been been pushed to choose their interests and specialize. There is virtually no hope of playing on a high school sports team (other than intramural) unless they have spent several years playing club (travel team) sports. Similarly, the higher level band, chorus and orchestras are geared toward students who have been taking private lessons for several years. Theater productions feature students who have been enrolled in theater camps and who take voice lessons...you get the picture.

D has a number of interests, and she is fortunate to have had the opportunity to take private lessons and to enroll in great summer programs. She has had to specialize, however, and will not be able to use high school to sample as wide a range of interests as she would like. For example, she enjoys volleyball, but between homework, music lessons, and wanting to try the speech team, there is no way she can fit that in. Also, since she has not played club volleyball in elementary school and middle school, her chances of making the team are not great.

I'm curious if high school been a time of specialization or sampling for other people's children?

Apollo6 · 07-11-2010, 04:14 PM

2014 Son (as the third child but second son, would he be S2 or S3?) is having a great time at Spanish immersion camp. While I was away at a Rotary exchange conference with 2012 Daughter, he called home. Sorry I missed it. Got a glowing interim report from his teacher and counselors, however. I'm so glad he's having fun and that we made the right choice in sending him there. I'd offered him CTD, THINK Institute or Concordia Language Villages. He chose the last and it looks like he made the best choice for this summer.

FallGirl · 07-11-2010, 04:29 PM

Zandari - It is much the same here, I'm afraid. There are a limited number of sports/EC's that are realistically "open" to explore to students who are not experienced/accomplished in an activity.

sydsim · 07-11-2010, 04:44 PM

Yay! Finally, a thread for us! D will be 14 in September. She's a little younger than most of her classmates.

She's been playing flute for 4 years now and started practicing with the HS marching band a few weeks ago - and loves it! After saying how much she "hates" cheerleaders (sorry, her words, not mine.), she decided to try out for the HS squad and made JV - go figure. Practices started last week.

Three honors classes in the fall, started WH reading assignment. Although she's gets good grades, she works hard for them so we borrowed the Bio and Geo books for the summer for her to look them over a little before school starts. Just a little nervous about the heavier academic load added to band and cheer (MS did block scheduling so she only had 3 core academic classes at a time. In HS, she'll jump to 5.)

Oh, almost forgot about summer theater camp. She does plan to audition for the spring musical (thank God marching band and cheer will be done by that time).

She's my only, but I have been helping my niece, a rising senior, navigate the college admission process a little.

Now that there's an official thread for us, I no longer feel like a CC helicopter stalker

PaperChaserPop · 07-11-2010, 07:15 PM

Welcome momreads, glido, sydsim!

S3 was supposed to be in a wood carving class yesterday, but the class was cancelled

.

zandari, your comments are on the spot for some popular activities. The range of activities unavailable to beginners depends on the school. Private schools are all over the place on this. Less competitive public schools will have more opportunities for beginners in activities that can lead to varsity/top school level participation in later high school years. However, to have a shot at a serious state/national/world recognition in a popular activity, you must already be pretty good at what you do before freshman year.

This is not to say you shouldn’t be involved in an activity unless it leads to a varsity letter or recognition. If an activity provides valuable life lessons and your kid enjoys it, why not? Too many kids miss out on valuable teamwork lessons because they don’t want to join a team on which they can’t shine individually. It is very important to learn how to conduct oneself and contribute when one is not the star of a team. Even if you are a superstar in something, chances are you are still just average in many other things.

Yes. It is a bit discouraging to know junior has no hope of making the concert master spot if he just picked up violin last year, but there are still so many other EC’s open to our kids. If they want to be very good at something by college application time, they still have a world of less popular activities to explore!