<p>My son just came downstairs in shorts and a tee shirt. It is in the forties, raining, and he walks about three miles each day between home and his two school campuses. Of course, he headed out the door without a coat. Sigh.</p>
<p>Aparent, my boys hate shoes. They would go barefoot if they could, but flipflops are the nearest thing. They drive me nuts when we are in the car as the shoes and socks are often shed, and when we stop, there is a scramble for footwear before they can get out. We lost a shoe at a rest stop once and did not discover the loss until we got home. S wore sandals in the snow at college. It’s a wonder he has all of his toes–maybe he doesn’t.</p>
<p>Have any of you taken a college trip with a kid in flipflops? Walking around campus to THAT SOUND! :eek: Alumother, sorry for digressing here. ;)</p>
<p>Alumother, it’s never too late to try to break this. But if you have a very high-achieving kid literally from birth, you may have to break that habit very early when the next one is born. Although the second may be just as talented as the first, she’s likely to have a different personality, different interests, and a different set of talents. So you have to treat each kid as an individual, and to some extent “take what you get” and allow them to grow into the kinds of people they want to become.</p>
<p>This took some learning on our part. In fact, we thought we’d created something of a monster with #1 because he was such an extraordinarily high achiever right from the start (but also not very social or physically precocious). And so we “laid off” with #2, and her talents emerged over time.</p>
<p>How about the smell of soccer cleats? </p>
<p>And what is it with the I never wear a jacket thing?</p>
<p>My S had to wear a tie for the afore-mentioned concert. He looked like one of the Beatles in the 1960’s, all shaggy hair and sideways glances.</p>
<p>Mackinaw - I was thinking. I do believe some of this has to do with ripeness. I remember I used to feel when D was 11 that if we lived in another time I would start the drums up to indicate to the next village that I had one ready for marriage and running a household. S, at 15, still reminds me of a young wild creature at times.</p>
<p>Yes indeed there is a maturing, ripening, changing. And the different “parts” of kids don’t all develop in the same phase – physical development, maturity and judgment, intellectual development. </p>
<p>In the extreme form, you may get a kid who’s a walker at 9-months, for example. We have friends with that “problem.” There’s a baby, literally who has all the mobility but no judgment about what’s safe or not.</p>
<p>In our case, there was a point at age 16, when our daughter seemed to undergo a personality change: new hairstyle, new friends, etc. And as my wife declared, “For a while there, I was wondering if we were ever going to really get a teenager.” Did we ever! But she gradually smoothed out, is out of college and apparently thriving on her own.</p>