It is hard to tease out all of the emotions involved with this decision with a high stats kid. (Just sending my third kid to college and the first two were nowhere-near-high stats kids and they were WAY easier in this front).
I have kind of the opposite kid to yours, in some ways. He almost immediately rejected the notion of zeroing in on any particular school, and eventually decided on his safety. We, his dumb parents, pushed him to apply in addition to reach schools. He refused over and over, yet we kept pushing. Why did we want to spend $50k more per year, you ask? For me (the mom), I will admit that I wanted to be able to brag to friends, to visit him on Parents Weekend with all the other Ivy League parents who have convinced ourselves that we have a great kid (must be genetic!), and know that for the rest of his life, he would have that ability too…to say ‘I went to IvY League School.’ This is a powerful urge which made us pretty much fail to listen to what our son was saying for weeks regarding his reasons for the safety as the right choice. You may not have those feelings, but we did, and it hurt our son, I think.
There is also the sentiment that this is an ‘all-or-nothing’ game, where if your kid doesn’t get the big prize, he goes to Booby Prize College. Along with the kids in his HS who barely showed up and certainly never gave up a Saturday night party.
A few Thoughts have occurred to me since our S20 basically told us to knock it off and that he is going to his safety, period. They may relate to you. First, your son’s accomplishments in his HS are not a secret to anyone. Everyone knows how smart and hard working he is. He competed, and he won. That will never change.
Second, your son’s HS accomplishments are truly only the beginning. Our two older kids have blown us away with their young adulthood accomplishments. (Which we had absolutely nothing to do with). While learning of our youngest’s SAT scores was a happy day around here, what the other two have done, as adults, were happier days for us.
Your son has felt the agony of defeat very recently, but mostly the joy of victory. And there is much, much more to come. So, to your question…how to deal with your son? I think you should of course be there there for him, but maybe you can adopt an attitude and tone of ‘this is just a blip…no biggee.’ Because, this is actually true.
My oldest made gigantic personal and professional sacrifices for two years to stand in line to purchase a lottery ticket for a ‘dream job.’ In the last round, he did not get it. We half expected him to need therapy to get over this, as we chanted the same ‘hard work will get you there’ mantra for those two years. He did not need therapy, though. He instead shifted to Plan B, another two years of personal and professional sacrifice for another lottery ticket opportunity. He had survived the first one, and this emboldened him to do it again. But was smarter this time. And when he scratched the ticket, it was a winner.
Your son’s future is bright. He has learned how to compete and win in HS. Those same learnings will stay with him forever. Look deep to make sure your disappointment for your personal dreams are not impacting how you deal with him, and then buckle up as he will soon blow you away with his accomplishments. You will need a bucket to store all of your pride.