<p>Let me give it a crack…I have been kind of following this thread and trying to figure out what the OP’s beef is. His older kid is at Kenyon (very happy) and his younger one is going to Rochester (good school), but not the tippy top schools a lot of posters’ kids have been admitted to. OP probably feels his kids have put out, or at least tried pretty hard in high school, but still they didn’t end up at tippy tops. What he is trying to conclude is that for students to be admitted to those “lottery schools” they would have had to give up their childhood and have given up their first born. It is inconceivable to him that those admitted students were just normal, happy, not over the top stressed, and their parents weren’t pushy, helicopter parents.</p>
<p>I think that sums it up nicely. Even as I was writing that I dragged my kid all over the country to find a solution to her dyslexia, I was sure I sounded like a helicopter parent!</p>
<p>But, so be it.</p>
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I think that’s the subject of another thread. :D</p>
<p>Maybe I should start a thread:
“How your kid has put out to get into a college…”</p>
<p>no moonchild, I don’t think WE are hypocrites. I think ALL OF US are part of it. I don’t think full-fledged participants get to say they stand outside the circle and are “pure.” People suggest it is the vast minority that are “in the hunt,” so to speak, and 2 feet in any direction says otherwise.</p>
<p>Nice attempt oldfort. My kids tried as hard they reasonably could, and they had a lot of help along the way like a lot of the other kids here. Like I said at some point earlier…no injustices served at our doorstep. We put a lot of work and energy and reading and visiting into the process, as I suspect many of you did. You are right in the sense that they weren’t “lottery” winners if you’re talking about HYPSM, a handful of non-Ivy elites, an OOS public reach, and the top dozen or so LACs. Most of those they didn’t apply to because we knew where they had a decent shot. So yeah, not tippy-tippy top, but more than good enough for us…so I have to name drop…also Colby, Macalester, NYU, Bryn Mawr, Brandeis, Bates, Trinity, Union…to name a few.</p>
<p>And I think I’ve written about kids who are in another category, and obviously many of those kids are represented here, who I do believe are special and may well fare better in the “achievement treadmill” sense without having to be focused on trying to do that. I know when there is a difference, just as I knew there was a difference between me and peers who went to Harvard Law or med schools 30+ years ago.</p>
<p>In short, I don’t have a “beef.” I’ve been commentating…when not battling…and I get that some won’t like the commentary…but it is a discussion forum, correct?</p>
<p>poetgrl - that’s different isn’t it? It was related to a health concern and not a tennis match.</p>
<p>I am probably on the other extreme of helicopter parent. Been single for over 7 years and (overly) focused on my career to provide for the two kids with limited help. I remember reading one of my son’s college essays three years ago and finding that he described my parenting style as “lassie faire”. That stung. But it was true. I have never pressured my kids to do ECs they weren’t interested in. They learned to use the public transportation system in middle school. My D started and quit ballet, gymnastics, soccer, track, tennis, and finally crew. I never helped or supervised homework. Never woke them up in the morning or made sure they retired to bed at a certain hour. I have never given much thought to which colleges they would apply to or what the process was - until right at the time when they had to apply. Despite these circumstances they have managed to succeed. Not suggesting that my way is the right way. But kids have more in them than we give them credit for - they can figure stuff out.</p>
<p>I think there is a lot of anxiety out there in some localities, and I think it is really quite hard to avoid getting sucked into it. Many parents want to offer the best opportunities to their children that they can–I include Kennedy2010 in the group who wants to offer the best opportunities, because people have different parenting styles that they think will work out for the best. One could probably stir up quite a debate on the issue of waking kids up in the morning or not. (We did–like most parenting decisions, it has its pros and cons.)</p>
<p>When QMP was in 9th grade, another 9th grader (a friend) mentioned having started an SAT prep course. I experience a twinge of doubt, that perhaps we were short-changing QMP with the thought that no prep was needed. We got past the prep-course temptation comparatively easily, but I think we fell into other traps.</p>
<p>One of them, I don’t really know the best way to handle, even in retrospect. The high school had a lot of time-consuming assignments, that did not pay off in knowledge proportionally to the time required for them. (Several teachers are “local saints” in my opinion, because they did not assign such projects–notably the Latin teacher who announced early on that he did not see how making a macaroni map of Italy for extra credit would help a student to learn Latin.) Of course, one could allow or even encourage the student to just “blow off” the time wasters. On the other hand, the school had fairly severe grade inflation, to the point that I am reasonably sure that one grade of B would push a student out of the top 10%. Somewhere between 40% and 50% of the class had unweighted GPA’s of 3.6 and up. This doesn’t leave a lot of leeway for ignoring or “mailing in” big projects that were not really all that well-conceived by the teachers.</p>
<p>There’s anxiety because there are aspects of our children’s academic and EC trajectory that are outside our control and theirs, but may rest on some factor or smart stamp we don’t know about or couldn’t have foreseen. Thus people are worried about covering all possible bases. This is the case because there are limited spots and too many qualified kids, so teachers sometimes use whatever little thing they know about a kid to differentiate. </p>
<p>For example, speaking of SAT prep in middle school, there were a few of my older children’s peers who did that but I wouldn’t say a lot. Definitely a lot more do now. But a number of their peers did take the modified SAT test in middle school if invited to, and there was parent chatter over whether your kid qualified to take the GT JHU classes or not. Also, there was a special state awards ceremony for all the kids who did well on that test and the very highest scorers were announced, so people knew who was who. </p>
<p>So my kids qualified, but we barely considered sending S or D to the actual classes due to the high cost. Neither did an acquaintance of mine for the same reason. However, in 8th grade this mom found out her D was not recommended for honors in high school in a certain subject. In discussions with the powers that be, she learned her D was right on the cusp and there’s a maximum number cut-off, so they ended up selecting another qualified child who had shown more interest in the subject by attending JHU. Huh?</p>
<p>Other parents of borderline kids were told things like their S’s social maturity or his anticipated high school sports involvement (because he won’t have enough time for honors work) had made the difference in choosing one child over another for an honors spot.</p>
<p>My kids were qualified to take JHU classes, one for math and another for reading, but they had no interest. I offered to send them to one of those JHU summer programs, they also said no because they had better things to do. I would say large percentage of students at my kids’ school were qualified to take those JHU classes, but only a handful decided to take them, and it has nothing to do with affordability. My kids didn’t bother to go to the state ceremony because of their EC, they received their certificates in the mail. </p>
<p>My kids went to a rigorous private day school. It was expected students would take academic seriously and there was always enough seats in honors/APs for whoever was qualified. Most of those kids also had their own ECs outside of school. If they were good in sports, they played at the club level. The school had some very good sports teams, except football, but I think those school teams probably pale in comparison to teams those kids played on outside of school. </p>
<p>I would say my kids didn’t feel a lot of competition with other students and I didn’t get involved with gossip because there was no need and no time.</p>
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<p>That’s life, theGFG. There are no guarantees of anything. Anything. </p>
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<p>Only if you choose to. I sat through all of those awards assemblies, but I didn’t commit any other kid to mind. My mind wandered. I thought about work problems, I thought about personal issues, and I nodded and smiled unless it was my kid up there and then I paid attention. My D was on varsity tennis. When I went to her games, I sat in the stands and had my own stuff I occupied myself with – a magazine, work-related reading, etc. – until and unless she was playing, then I was all attention. I smiled and engaged in polite chit-chat with the other mothers as appropriate, but we weren’t friends, I wasn’t interested in making them be my friends – I had my own stuff to do. I couldn’t name a single one of these women, or know which kid was theirs, or think of any conversation more substantive than exchanging pleasantries about the weather. I had no time or inclination to link them to their kid or to compare kids or yap about the coach or to get involved in any gossip they might be inclined to. Perhaps they gossiped all day long with one another about how well all the girls were doing and blah blah blah. Trees in a forest as far as I was concerned.</p>
<p>I have no doubt you are connected to people in your community far more than I am to mine, but you’re also demonstrating the downside – excessive noticing and involvement with who-does-what, which results in stress and angst for you when people get competitive. How is that working for you? If you like that, then great … But it IS a choice on your part to be part of all of this. </p>
<p>.</p>
<p>I think that a number of the private schools in the country do not operate in the same way that public schools often operate. For example, oldfort mentions that there were enough spots in the AP courses for anyone who wanted one, whereas in the school that TheGFG’s children attend, qualified students are excluded from AP. In our local HS, a student had to apply for AP, and not everyone was accepted. It is unclear whether this was linked to prior grades, or perhaps to some of the inappropriate factors that TheGFG mentioned.</p>
<p>When it comes to “yap[ping] about the coach,” TheGFG has posted information on other threads about a particular coach’s treatment of one of her children–it would make me yap plenty! </p>
<p>It seems to me that as much as TheGFG’s level of interaction with other parents is a choice on her part, it is a choice on your part, PG, to be dissociated from your children’s teammates and their parents. If QMP had been on a tennis team, and I had showed up for the games, I’d have been cheering for her teammates (presumably they were playing some other school or club), applauding particularly good volleys, commenting favorably after the games on any displays of good sportsmanship, and offering gentle consolation to the students who lost, particularly anyone who lost unexpectedly or after a close-fought match. I would probably comment on the good sportsmanship to the parents of any tennis player who had caught my attention in that regard, because that is important to me. As much as I think that virtue is its own reward, I think it helps to promote virtue when it is noticed.</p>
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<p>That’s really funny that was picked up by my “fellow baystater.” It’s a shame that we can’t all just be honest and express our feelings on here without getting slammed by another parent. We have basically been out of the loop with this third kid for a variety of extenuating circumstances. He got no special treatment from anyone or did he have any connections. We had no college counselors or essay readers. All of his success came about from his own hard work while I was fighting stage 4 colon cancer. So when I say I’m not sweating the small stuff on scholarship night I mean it. I am really looking forward to my son going off to Harvard in August. If that offends someone, then so be it.</p>
<p>Agree. Wish the competitiveness was not part of the college app process. But in many cases it is. In the kids and the parents.</p>
<p>PG, your typical pattern of posting consists of you telling another poster some version of “So what?” or “Who cares?” and then you proclaim yourself above it all or outside of it. In numerous other threads you tied that stance of yours with implications about sophistication and intelligence. We get it–you’re more evolved, you’re smarter, you’re less inclined to human foibles. Great! Now let me and anyone else who cares to, continue the discussion. </p>
<p>I’m not asking for your advice or suggestions. I was attempting to contribute to the topic of this thread, which I think relates to the pressure parents feel (not you of course) to have their kids follow a linear path of academics and EC’s in order to get in top colleges. My discussion of jealousy was meant to relate to the stress parents feel because they equate success in EC’s with future admissions success. So if their child is not successful, they become anxious about their S or D’s future, and sometimes that worry comes out as nasty competitiveness.</p>
<p>What you don’t seem to understand is that we live in community. Do you seriously think the idea of sitting alone with a book is so original I haven’t thought of it and done it? But when people say, “You’re always reading a book. You never chat with us,” they’re suggesting you’re anti-social or rude and so then you decide to chat with them a little to be nice. That doesn’t mean you GOSSIP. But negative stuff comes at you whether you want it or not, and whether your did anything to invite it or not–especially if you’ve been identified as the parent whose kids got what they want for your kids. I am sick of the implications that I’m choosing it, allowing it, or contributing to it. </p>
<p>My D was only the second kid in school history to get into H, and the first to attend S. People know that–not because I bragged or gossiped with them about it in the stands, but because it was ANNOUNCED at the NMF ceremony, and the sport awards ceremony, and published by the GC’s, etc. etc. When your kid’s doing well, people come right up to you while you’re sitting there all by yourself reading that book and try to probe you for the secret to that success. And they also come right up to you while you’re minding your own business and spew their venom. I’ve told the story before on CC about working at the snack shack (obligatory for parents of varsity athletes, by the way) and a parent came up to window. I said, “Hi, Brad. What would you like?” The answer was, “What I would LIKE, is for your daughter to be in the newspaper less and mine more.”</p>
<p>Pizzagirl maybe in a class by herself, but I also have to say I (and a lot of my friends) didn’t really experience that much animosity from other parents, and our kids were not slackers either. If any parent would be so “low class” (to quote Pizzagirl) to say something that offensive to you then I would choose to ignore it. My kids used to get some of the best solos at their ballet studio and were admitted to some nice summer intensives that other dancers were rejected. Not once, has any parent said anything but positive to my face. I have also sat through hours of dance lessons and rehearsals with computer and reports, and most people didn’t engage me either. At least in my personal experience, I have witnessed that much negative competitiveness.</p>
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<p>Absolutely, it’s a choice. No argument. </p>
<p>I can definitely see how if your kid did well, people come right up to you while you’re sitting by yourself reading the book or otherwise minding your own business. And Brad at the snack shack sounds like a first-class jerk. But I guess I’m truly not understanding why you take the utterances of people who have revealed themselves as being first-class jerks to heart. Brad’s clearly a waste of space. What he’s got to say isn’t worth anything. </p>
<p>It seems that you want to change the Brads of the world to be more self-perceptive so they don’t come out with stupid statements like his. Unfortunately, you can’t change others. All you can do is change yourself. </p>
<p>As for human foibles, I’ve got plenty myself. There are pros and cons to how you’ve interacted with your community, and pros and cons to mine. It’s all a choice.</p>
<p>So sorry, TheGFG. I have not said anything yet on this thread, but I have to say. Brad is a jerk (named changed to protect the “innocent” I assume).</p>
<p>Let me revise post #332 to replace “level of interaction” with “extent of interaction” as a choice of TheGFG’s. That’s what I meant, really, and not the type of interaction, which seems rather nasty on the part of the other parents. </p>
<p>Additionally, it has to be acknowledged that some of the extent of interaction is forced, as in staffing the “snack shack.” I’d bet that many private schools do not have mandatory parent staffing of the “snack shack” equivalent.</p>
<p>I think Brad sounds like a funny guy who is giving a backhanded complement. Am I the only one? That would make me laugh.</p>