<p>PG, I have every right to be upset at the general nastiness, and hurt over the jealousy of people I’ve considered friends! You’ve stated many times on many threads that you don’t care about a plethora of things. That’s great for you, but clearly I’m not you and until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes you should keep your opinions about my thin-skinned deficiencies to yourself. You may live in a different community around a different element of parents and thus you may not really get how bad it can be. Or maybe you’ve never had a target on your back because it’s not your kid who’s winning frequently in an obvious, public fashion right in your town, such that friends and strangers alike are privy to it. I believe you mentioned that your children did a lot of things outside of school. So if your kids excelled the pants of all the other participants but no one knew or cared, or if their activities were completely noncompetitive sorts of things, then your friends and neighbors won’t be at all bothered or jealous and so maybe you aren’t around negative energy enough to have it burn you. And I can be stoic about my social situation, but it’s hard to watch the nastiness affect my special needs child who’s worked her butt to be good at one thing, and then when she is finally good at something, she’s taken out of it to assuage the feelings of other kids and their parents. Just happened this week.</p>
<p>If they are friends, they won’t be bothered or jealous, but they’ll be happy for me / us / my kids’ successes, big or small. If they aren’t friends (or reveal themselves not to be friends), then what does what they have to say matter? You’re giving away your power by allowing stupid, petty, jealous people who clearly aren’t worth the time of day to upset you. I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t think you were a great person who shouldn’t have to feel that way about your kids’ (deserved) successes! </p>
<p>I agree it must be awful if the nastiness affects your special-needs child, and that’s beyond the pale, IMO. I’m so sorry for that. </p>
<p>Having just spent time with my friends who live in the Princeton area, as gorgeous as that area is, I’m glad I escaped that bullet!</p>
<p>I’m also guessing that on Myers-Briggs you’re an E and an F, which is why it’s important to you. I’m an I and a T, so it’s hard for me to understand, but I am trying.</p>
<p>Fear, competition for a limited EC pie, and a mob mentality about kids’ success, make enemies of even the best friends, and so using your definition I have no one left who merits the title of friend. That’s why it hurts.</p>
<p>I can’t post the link, but google jealousy and sports for an excellent treatment of this ugly problem.</p>
<p>^^^
I’m curious GFG - if you don’t mind, how would you label your area - middle class, upper middle, lower middle?</p>
<p>Because I would call my area upper middle, and I’m sure there is a lot of competition, although because my kid never met a class he liked, I was sort of blissfully unaware. THe counselors did refer to the level of competition at some parent meetings.</p>
<p>But there are so many ECs at the school that even my kid managed to stumble, almost accidentally, into a couple. For example, I think they probably have around 5 to 10 different types of publications kids can participate in. My kid was on the school website, and actually I was sort of shocked because he never mentioned it. I actually found it when I googled his name to see if he was in any trouble I didn’t know about ;). Far more choices than when I attended a school in the same district many years ago.</p>
<p>I take it the offerings at your school are much, much more limited. Or are you primarily referring to youth sports, which I know has almost always turned some adult observers into petulant children. Even when I was growing up.</p>
<p>I’d label my area mostly middle middle and bottom of upper middle, but I’m not sure since no one seems to be able to define what is middle class in America. If it weren’t for the cost of living here, I’d say upper middle. People are doing fine financially with nice houses and cars and professional jobs, but aren’t truly rich. They’re affluent but still striving, in other words.</p>
<p>There used to be more clubs at the high school. A whole bunch of them got axed recently, and now they are also pay to play. Getting the leadership positions people think they need for college apps. just got tougher, and I don’t think students are allowed to start a new club anymore just so they can make themselves officers lol. Due to parent pressure and depending on the coach and team, some positions like team captain might be easier to achieve now but are essentially meaningless, eg. all the seniors are captains. This came about after one coach (basketball I think it was) made the grave mistake of naming 2 out of 3 total senior varsity girls captain. The parent of the non-captain girl threw a major fit and so the D was added as a captain. Thereafter, there was an unwritten rule that if you have 3 seniors you can’t name only 2 of them captain. Around the same time there were also situations when an exceptional junior was named/voted captain and the senior parents complained bitterly that it wasn’t fair and that s/he needed to pay his/her dues and wait his/her turn. So then some arrangement was made to add a senior or two. Coaches handle this landmine in different ways. One way that happens in a neighboring district is to have a captain of the week so all the seniors can put captain on their apps.</p>
<p>So parents can get really uptight over all these leadership things, and I’m sure that’s a pain in the neck for the school and the chosen one(s) who may experience the wrath of the jealous ones. Coaches are also pressured to nominate kids they shouldn’t for all-conference and all-area honors. That happened on D’s team, and the coach tried to pressure the newspaper, but the sports reporter put his foot down </p>
<p>Obviously, there are plenty of people who aren’t caught up in any of the rat races, or in all of the rat races at once, but they are usually in at least one, be in academics, music, or sports. The closer to the top a kid is, the worse it is. Hell hath no fury greater than that of the mother of the kid who just missed out.</p>
<p>This is intriguing to me because I am pretty far removed from the type of jealousy you are talking about. Kids from my D’s school come from 40+ different zip codes so none of the parents are really close to begin with. And oddly enough - none of my lifelong friends ever had children so they all dote over mine. Where I do seem to run into this competitiveness among parents is from some of the parent’s of the rowing club that my D belongs to. But half the time I think maybe I am imagining it…</p>
<p>Thanks gondalineNJ! The topic was started in good faith, and then when not taken that way or vaguely and globally denied right in the middle of this hotbed of super-duper college admissions preoccupation I got a bit provocative and snarky at times. Got my clock cleaned pretty good, and at least a few will tell you that my beating was well-deserved. I disagreed with their disagreement on my main points, but I can only weakly complain about the beating. Thankfully, a couple like blossom hung in there and kept pushing me. Nothing like a good biographical confession to warm the atmosphere up a bit.</p>
<p>Anyway, love the term “achievement treadmill.”</p>
<p>And LBowie, you are right, if we’re talking about certain prep schools and high-income, high-end publics. Our high school is an arguably slightly above average large public (not MetroWest if you know what I mean). We’ve had a couple of phenomenal kids go to Harvard in the past 4 years, but we’ve also had some with 2200-2250+ with 4.0s who were between #2-#4 in the class with strong ECs who have been shut out. I can think of one who applied to Midd, Tufts, Brown, Amherst, Bowdoin, etc and got in none, and landed at Northeastern. She’s doing great, but still…A pretty special young woman. So our kind of school I’m talking about the top 3-7% or so, and we’ve had some very impressive kids in that range who couldn’t get in Colby or Trinity or some others that seemed like pretty strong matches and who on paper might be competitive for places like Vassar and Wesleyan but who in reality had no shot at all.</p>
<p>I cannot contest that there regional issues with this stuff. That said, competitiveness transcends regions. Maybe some are more so in athletic or some other area. And I agree that this stuff can really stress friendships and have friends secretly hoping some kid doesn’t get some award or doesn’t get the school he or she wants. I can guarantee you that even in Appalachia the mother of a kid who always have tracked pretty even with the val and the salut isn’t going to take too kindly to hearing that her kid is #3. And I bet all the country there are hard feelings when a kid who feels deserving isn’t named a captain or a starter on a particular team or gets put on JV instead of varsity when his best 3 friends did make varsity soph year. That has been my earlier point about emotions. Resentment doesn’t just exist in certain zip codes. We all have it and we all manage it however we manage it, and if you think you aren’t capable of resentment then I believe there either is self-deception OR you haven’t had the kind of setback yet that will stimulate it.</p>
<p>I think the EC stuff deserves more discussion.</p>
<p>Final, I interviewed a few kids from Appalachia for my alma mater and I can assure you that parents there would think you had two heads if you suggested that being #3 was problematic. The Val is often tracked into a vo-tech program (nothing wrong with it, just saying) and so the idea that being #3 isn’t going to get you into Colby or Tufts or Bowdoin: Wow, not on their radar screen.</p>
<p>I don’t believe the problem you describe is an East coast one (but Boston suburbs are particularly sensitive to the “safety school” phenomenon…) since I’ve seen it in Atlanta and Palo Alto and Winnetka and Scottsdale and points in between. But if you look at religious or ethnic sub-cultures (the LDS community and the range of schools they’d like their kids to attend, and no, it’s not just BYU; Catholic kids coming out of the top tier parochial HS’s who are vying for Notre Dame, BC, Georgetown, Holy Cross, Villanova-- and then the huge drop off, etc.) seems to me putting my sociologist hat on, that every sub-culture has its pecking order.</p>
<p>But the pecking order in Appalachia (where it definitely exits) has nothing to do with being ranked #3 and what it might mean for that kids future at Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Ha ha finalchild you nailed my neighborhood! To tell you the truth, I don’t actually know where a lot of kids in my son’s class ended up for college apart from maybe a dozen kids, mostly his friends. It’s not publicized anywhere, and though I am nosy, I am very modest in my nosiness. Maybe more of a nosy wannabe. There were situations like the one you describe of really good students being turned down a lot of places.</p>
<p>Oh, I think we’re all capable of resentment (in general). I think, though, that there are epiphany moments in one’s life - and I think I’ve had a few of my own - in which I’ve realized that resentments I’ve spent a lot of time nurturing are only eating away at me and no one else. That helps me re-orient my thinking and feeling to a point where I <em>can</em> genuinely “let go.” </p>
<p>For example, my nephew is at Princeton (which to me is like the Ultimate Dream School). There was a point in my life at which I would have been jealous and resentful (his parents put him in a fancy private school, bought oodles of college counseling, private coaches in his sport, blah de blah) and I can truly say now that I’m happy for him and don’t have any jealousy. It’s a mindset shift. I’m not claiming it’s easy. It took a boatload of therapists, ha ha.</p>
<p>I think I missed a lot of that because: 1. I have a career that matters to me and that brings me into contact with some young women who are in trouble and I see “how bad it can get,” even among our wealthiest families. 2. My kids were the “best” at the things they were good at and didn’t tend to compete in areas where they weren’t. I don’t know if that was a defense mechanism, or just a smart use of their time, and I don’t really think it merits my time to ponder. 3. My kids get a lot of positive feedback from work and whatnot, bosses, etc… Enough that I don’t “worry” about their post educational future.</p>
<p>But, I have seen the “Mommy CEOs” as we called them during the PTO years, and the stress they felt about their kids place in the social/academic/roster/ pecking order. It did seem painfully anxious around them. But, mostly I was just very grateful to them for doing the stuff I didn’t have time to do, and I kept it at that.</p>
<p>Now, when your kid plays a sport at the level my kid did before her career ending injury last spring? You see some really ugly competitive parents. It’s unavoidable. But her EC was self-driven. I frequently used to point out that kids used to play in the park, forchrists’sake, whatever happened to that huh? </p>
<p>But it was fun to watch some of those games and to watch her face when she won. </p>
<p>The other one has a career future in her EC and starts in the field after she walks in graduation. It worked out.</p>
<p>But, you know? That one couldn’t read til she was 12. gifted dyslexic. I dragged her all over the country to find a solution for that, and Let me tell you how THAT will put it all in perspective for you. 
That kid graduates in June. I couldn’t be prouder of her, but not for the reasons most parents are feeling that way. There was a time when I was worried if she would make it through high school. the fact that she went to college was just grace, for us, that she had so many excellent choices seemed miraculous, and so, my perspective might be skewed.</p>
<p>Where I grew up, a lot of the boys aspired to help out in their father’s or uncle’s business and then one day own a similar one of their own. The girls wanted to get married and have kids, albeit go to college and work a while first. Many looked for the traditional female professions like teacher, nurse, or real estate agent so that they could have flexibility. I can’t remember ever hearing about any parents complaining about stuff related to playing time or positions. If someone else’s kid got captain, they’d assume that kid deserved it most. I’m sure there were politics and I know I saw some, but nothing much was perceived to be at stake if Sam got captain over John so the upset was minor. There were only a few hyper competitive kids, and they tended to be transplants from NJ and NY, LOL.</p>
<p>Now that I think about it, that’s the biggest difference between then and now, or there and here: there was no larger significance attached to school and EC accomplishments or the lack thereof, beyond the basics of graduating school vs. dropping out. Sure, plenty of students wanted to be good at music, sports, and studies and some worked very hard toward that, but any achievements or awards weren’t viewed as much to be a harbinger of college admissions success or future career success. Things were only what they were: this kid is good at field hockey, that kid plays the trumpet really well, or that one gets straight A’s and is the Val. Nor was there as much of the sense that a kid’s academic or EC accomplishments reflected on the parent, though people would certainly look down on the parents of a kid who was disrespectful or always in trouble.</p>
<p>that’s true. Your parents only came to “some” of your games. They never went to away games, unless it was a championship.</p>
<p>I was one of the editors of the school paper and I don’t even think my father knew this. Nor do I think he would have cared.</p>
<p>ETA: my friends and I were in AP classes and I don’t even think anyone else in the school knew what they were. actually, we didn’t even know what they were until we were in them. We just got put in there.</p>
<p>
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<p>The less kind among us have been known to refer to them as “stay-at-home litigators.”</p>
<p>Pizzagirl: I like your description of your change. It’s one to emulate. Envy really is a corrosive emotion.</p>
<p>SOG, love “Stay-at-home-litigators”…or alligators (which is what I thought I saw the first time).</p>
<p>blossom, ever heard of the Hatfields and McCoys :)? Yeah, I meant those schools for my current area, not Appalachia. Many of the Appalachia kids are dreaming of U Tenn, U KY, WVU, Marshall, Transylvania, etc. My general point on resentment is that if somebody doesn’t give you something you strongly believe you or your kid deserves (for anything), then some resentment (some more, some less) can be pretty automatic. In our current area, I see it a lot with junior and senior awards nights, and who gets named to all-conference and all-state teams, etc.</p>
<p>I thought this below might provide a little perspective on the whole topic, or least make clear I’m not just making stuff up out of thin air. This is from the 2015/2019 thread (rising high school juniors, right?)…[Another sign of my “newness” here is I don’t know how to get those nice box quotes you guys do.]</p>
<p>“If the DD scored 2200 or 33; admissions applications would be much more defined. Mom & Dad would be breathing a huge sigh of relief. The DD would just need to decide which schools coaches she’d be contacting for overnight visits, merit aid offers, chances for a Likely Letter etc.”</p>
<p>Since those scores will likely not occur in round 1 of testing, the slow torture process of the college application & matriculation will continue to wear us down to the proverbial bone."</p>
<p>
THe first AP at my high school was US History. When my dad saw that on my schedule he got upset at me - thought I was slacking off because they didn’t put me in honors. He insisted I go to the guidance counselor and ask them what I needed to do to get into honors. That’s when the GC explained to me what AP was. And notice I said my parents told me to go talk to the GC - they didn’t go. I think they spoke once to my GC my whole high school career, and I was mortified at that. Of course, I think I spoke to my GC maybe twice.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1500350-senior-awards-ceremony-take-away-my-grown-up-card.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1500350-senior-awards-ceremony-take-away-my-grown-up-card.html</a></p>
<p>And the best from a fellow baystater who scribes…“I’m not bitter and I’ve learned not to care at all. My son’s going to Harvard in the fall.”</p>
<p>So, yeah, I get a little dizzy in the head when some say everything I’ve said sounds very foreign (and so not them), when you can’t walk 2 steps here in any direction without running right into it.</p>
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<p>So you couldn’t resist pulling a post and “calling out” a poster from another thread to what…show that we’re all hypocrites? And I was beginning to think you were a nice person.
If you read the whole thread, you’ll see that the majority of posters are very unmoved by the whole awards ceremony hype. I’m not sure I understand why you want to be a part of this forum since you feel it’s full of unenlightened, super-competitive, pushy parents.</p>