<p>finalchild, the research is pretty reasonable in this area. Most kids (nearly 80%) are happy with their choice no matter where they go and regardless of where the school the ended up at fell on their perceived hierarchy at application time. </p>
<p>M</p>
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<p>Best quote on this thread.</p>
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<p>This one is great too. Those of us who take the long view–and are not as concerned with impressing our peers as some–probably have a lot less anxiety than those who fear that their kids will amount to nothing if all the right boxes don’t get checked. mythmom had another gem in her post above:
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<p>I know exactly what has helped and hurt me in my career. And I have a good idea of what intangibles will help (but hopefully not hold back) my kids. These are not things that they will learn or not learn depending on where they go to college.</p>
<p>Thanks Sally. I think you got exactly what I meant and amplified it.</p>
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I was going to give a pass on this, but I couldn’t because it was completely taking what I wrote out of context. I didn’t say “good school…but,” I was saying that YOU were thinking “my kids tried really hard in high school and they got into Rochester,” so for other kids who got into HYPS they must have sold their souls (to the devil) in order to get into those schools.</p>
<p>My kids got into Cornell, so people could say “good school…but lower Ivy.” D2 probably could have applied (maybe gotten into) other higher ranking schools, but Cornell ticked off a lot of boxes for her and we also felt she could get a very good education there. Again, I really don’t feel our kids have missed out on their childhood. They did everything they wanted to do, except maybe not going out as much as they’ve wanted because of schoolwork.</p>
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<p>PG: The tennis scene interested me a lot. You always describe yourself as so non-social in real life, yet you are so involved here. Sometimes I wonder if this is just modern life now…a parent in the stands at a high school sport event, not socializing with the other parents there but with parents on the internet instead? Are we all on cc instead of paying attention to the match in front of us? :eek:</p>
<p>full disclosure: I am so snobby I really only wanted decals from some tiny liberal arts colleges the hoi polloi never even heard of… only cared if the other snobby people knew where my kids went to college. HYP just seemed so common ;)</p>
<p>Also : I really want to invest in the “oh crap!” company.</p>
<p>And: GFG- I am really sympathetic on the “Brad” comment. I have experienced the same scene and had absolutely no idea how to respond. If you know the parent/kid, you can try to come up with some positive remark to refocus on the other family. If you don’t really know them… ??? It always made me extremely uncomfortable. I never allowed my kids’ names to appear in print when it was a choice. Sometimes, though, it isn’t within our power to control.</p>
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<p>No, but as an INTJ, I suspect some of “us” enjoy the back and forth. It is quite possible to sit in the stands and watch your kids play a sport. You are engaged and care about your kids and you can socially interact with those sitting around you but that doesn’t mean you can’t be dispassionate about the parental politics. This is what is interesting/confusing when you read posts from people who take what is going on around them so very personally. It absolutely is the result of different personality types. If you live in an environment that churns those sorts of parental politics that is simply gas feeding the fire.</p>
<p>^ So true, momofthreeboys. Another introvert here.</p>
<p>As the saying goes, “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”</p>
<p>I don’t know what PG does in real life… I read it as she is not social with her kids’ parents, but she may have a lot of IRL adult friends and they don’t necessary talk about their kids. </p>
<p>I was friendly with some parents at school, but only because we’ve known each other since kids were in K and their K class was only 30 some kids. We’ll take each other’s kid out when we are in town. Our kid would say, “J’s parents came into the city last night and they took J and I out to dinner.”</p>
<p>With three kids, all of whom played/are playing multiple sports, I can see both sides of this “sitting apart in the stands” topic.</p>
<p>Different teams, and different sports, and different seasons within particular sports, have personalities of their own. </p>
<p>Specific sports, and specific coaches within sports, seem to lend themselves to creating toxic atmospheres. </p>
<p>Sometimes sitting in the stands but apart from the crowd is the only way to maintain sanity. I’ve done it myself, and I’ve had friends who have done it. Sometimes, it is a coping mechanism to keep yourself apart from that one really obnoxious parent, or from a group of parents that feeds upon itself to create a monster of horrible behavior. Sometimes the best thing you can do is create a little bubble of quiet around yourself.</p>
<p>The flip side of that are the majority of games and seasons that create wonderful moments and memories. </p>
<p>There are some coaches who address issues immediately, at the first day of tryouts, and at the first parent meeting. My favorite was a brand new coach who started out her first parent meeting by saying, “This is a team with great potential. I will not stand for any bullying by players or parents. I do not want to hear any negative comments about other people’s kids. You are there to support the entire team. If you can’t do that, I will ask you to leave. I don’t want you to come to the games if you can’t cheer positively for every player on the team.” That statement nipped a few things in the bud, and the team went on to have one of those rare, unexpected dream seasons.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, I was a sports mom and one kid was MVP one year and team captain the next. I still couldn’t tell you what the particular rules of that sport are and how exactly someone scores. I could give you a brief biography of every other mom sitting in the stands and of each team member. My husband went out on a limb to help get one of the team members into that kid’s “dream school” because he thought the kid was so great. In terms of character.</p>
<p>^^nothing to do with topic… just wandering down memory lane.</p>
<p>With crew, there is no sitting around the bleachers pontificating. Parents are expected to load and unload supplies (everything from food & condiments, to grills, utensils, coolers, serving platters, cleaning supplies), drive supplies to regattas hundreds of miles away, pitch tents, grill, cook, serve, make coffee runs, make food runs, disassemble the whole setup and clean up the grounds at the end. Bring everything back to the boathouse and unload supplies. Not much time for making digs at other people’s kids. We all share in the “misery” together and bond over it.</p>
<p>If there were 20 people in a room and 19 of them agreed on something, I’d be likely to be the one who disagreed. Not because I enjoy being contrary or playing the devil’s advocate, so much as I think differently from most other people I encounter. Those who know me best will testify that I can’t be persuaded or peer-pressured into doing or saying something I don’t think is true, right or best. But it’s also true I probably feel it too deeply when my way of being displeases/angers/intimidates people. I’d like to be me and yet still be accepted. That happens less than I want, however. </p>
<p>The above is the main reason I pay attention to social dynamics: I am different (probably that personality type only 1% of the population has) and feel the need to try to figure out what life philosophies and motives make people say and do all those things I would never say or do. For example, with respect to the EC/college stuff, when I look at my life and see lots of mediocre, I try to figure out why certain other parents act so jealous of me and my kids, despite having what seems to be a lot more than I do in almost every outward aspect except maybe the college status of my kids. They have a better career; more money with all that brings as far as lovely homes, cars, and vacations; they are skinnier and better-dressed; their spouse is more successful; they seem to have more friends, and it’s not like their kids are bums. So why can’t they convince themselves of how wonderful they are, or how superior to me they are, if that’s what they feel the need to do?</p>
<p>So I am interested in what it is about colleges that gets people so bent out of shape, especially if their lives are so rich in many other ways? One honest mom admitted to me that her H was upset because he felt that they were the “type of people” whose kids should have gone to better schools. My assumption is that the two of them have Ivy degrees and are outwardly more successful than DH and I am, and so perhaps they feel that if OUR kids did well, THEIR kids should have done just as well or better. Therefore the H feels he’s failed somehow.</p>
<p>On a similar vein, it seems many men want to provide well for their children. So they work hard, pay for the camps and lessons and tutoring, and hope to set their kids up for a successful future. But then if the children don’t get in schools as good as they’d hoped, some men might feel a sense of personal failure. This could be because the type of college your kids attend can be viewed as a signal of parental wealth. Thus, Dad-the-provider feels he looks better if his child attends a fancy private school than if he attends a cheaper school. A co-worker of my H saw in the company newsletter that our D had won the National Merit scholarship sponsored by that company. The blurb mentioned where D was attending. So the guy, whose position is in the same salary scale level as H’s, ask H, “Are you making more money than I think you are that you can afford a school like that?” Rude, but at least he got it out in the open. He could have stewed on it, wondered if he was getting screwed by the boss salary-wise and then felt bitter, and so on.</p>
<p>I feel like one of those OTHER parents in the tennis stands right now…haha…
And I was a state semifinalist tennis player myself :).</p>
<p>“full disclosure: I am so snobby I really only wanted decals from some tiny liberal arts colleges the hoi polloi never even heard of… only cared if the other snobby people knew where my kids went to college. HYP just seemed so common”</p>
<p>^^^^Love this! And me too. And for East Coasters, at least a sliver of the appeal of a Grinnell, Mac, Oberlin, Kenyon, Whitman, Claremont school.</p>
<p>oldfort, that is exactly what you did, or at least a part of it. You “took a crack at it,” mentioned the two schools, opined that they aren’t “tippy-top” or something like that…and you overtly designated them “in their place,” so to speak…Why can’t people own things? You are were right, right?! And your other point was wrong. I don’t think my kids lost out because they didn’t give their souls to get in top 10. They worked as hard as they did to get in where they did, and all things considered I feel extremely fortunate about where they have ended up. I’m not gonna be another parent who insists “could have or did get in such as such but picked so and so” to prove my greater authenticity and greater humility or greater, more mature understanding that “my kids are not defined or made” by the schools they go to. And I’m not gonna say something like I sent my kids to very nice private schools with total disregard for any correlation to colleges. I think I actually have said that many of the kids who get in top 10-15 schools are very special, and are often the ones who don’t have to ironically be as focused as the tier of kids jostling between top 15-60, although I don’t many of them have time for 2 month sojourns off into the woods or some 2 month rebellion period either.</p>
<p>BTW, the thing about MANY of us finding a way to get qualifiers in our statements or what I would call “outcome presentations” is a VERY frequent thing. Seriously, I am never on the site for more than 10 minutes without seeing a bunch. I don’t want to get too specific in “calling out” from other threads, but one of the most frequent is the final school wrapped around some others the kid got in, even if the method is via something seemingly indirect like variable campus beauty, campus size, or something else remarks, blah, blah, blah…Because some parents (and I’m sure they all are not as painfully fragile as I :)) who have kids get in a top 6-15 school feel some compulsion to explain they could have chosen top 5. And then there’s some recent stuff about parents and kids literally sobbing and commiserating about getting 4s instead of 5 on AP tests (presumably because that will be the final straw in their “tippy-top” outcomes). Or how many more times you should take the SAT when you’re already “in the clubhouse” with a score north of 2200.</p>
<p>For many of the rest of you here, apparently these things aren’t rampant as you browse around the site. I just happen to come across the rare finds on the site by incredible coincidence…every 10 minutes.</p>
<p>And I am INTJ…:)</p>
<p>If you find this site so ripe with unpleasantries, why spend time here making yourself uncomfortable? It seems counterintuitive.</p>
<p>thanks, sally</p>
<p>jymbo, assume you’re speaking to me? Where did I say I find any of it unpleasant? I find it very interesting…and entertaining. I do find the abject denials a bit frustrating.</p>
<p>^finalchild, if you are insinuating something about kennedy’s social class I hope you’ll stop. Plenty of people make tremendous personal sacrifices to get and keep their kids in the activities they love. My daughter was exposed to ballet in preschool and has wanted to do nothing but dance ever since. No team sports. No girl scouts. No school-based activities. Dance is one of THE most expensive activities for kids (right up there with hockey and a few others) but her passion and commitment are so deep that we have done everything can to support her–often at the cost of other things we would be spending our money on if we had it.</p>
<p>Thank you, sally. Well said.</p>
<p>finalchild-
Perhaps I misread, but there is an inherent edginess to your posts, with a sense of delight in needling or making subtle or not so subtle digs at others. I there is something in the posting style or content of posts on this site that brings that out in you, then it seems to cause unpleasantries. Please take a look at that. </p>
<p>And my name isn’t jymbo. Was that meant as a playful compliment or a snarky play on a name. Dont know how to take it.</p>
<p>Hmm, Final. That one went right over my head - please explain yourself so that I can properly skewer you!</p>
<p>I am ESTJ - and I think it is the “thinking” “judging” parts of your personality that most define interactions on CC.</p>
<p>finalchild is right about people adding qualifiers to college choices. If it’s true the selected college is a perfectly good school, that’s affordable, and a nice social fit for their child etc., why do so many people say stuff like “D could have gone to a higher-ranked school, but you know how snobby they all are (or some other unfavorable comment), so she chose X State.”</p>