<p>Every so often, one daughter sits down and tells me TMI about her friends and what they are up to, what concerns her. It’s her way of downloading and talking it out. So, when those other moms portray everything with a rosy glow, I try to smile and make nice.</p>
<p>I share much more, good and bad, with closest friends- and I don’t mind their bragging or their issues, I want to share their pride or help. We’re that close.</p>
<p>But for the random parents, the ones I run into once in a while? I learned long ago that info shared in an ocasional conversation tends to be stored like a snapshot. Not the whole picture, not the rest of the story. I’m more reserved.</p>
<p>Within my own extended family, a couple of aunts on the business/engineering oriented side would brag about their kids’ ability to network in fraternities/sororities and try to downplay/avoid any mention of their kids’ issues. Only reason why the rest of the family knows about them is that those issues ended up festering to the point where it couldn’t be hidden any longer and desperation drives calls for help like the time my older cousin came close to being expelled multiple times for academic reasons for concentrating too much on his partying/alcohol double major. </p>
<p>For the rest of the family, the rule of the day among most of our cousins is that our parents only talk about our negatives…whether real or perceived to the near exclusion of any positives…especially considering any mentions of positives such as admission to a respectable college/academic awards would be considered bragging of a crass sort. </p>
<p>This is either due to concerns it may hurt the feelings of other cousins/their parents whose kids didn’t have achievements of the same type/level or the perception among some that it shouldn’t be bragged about because “that’s to be expected”/“admission is just another footnote…come back when you have the degree in hand”. If you only heard accounts about me around 10-20 from the 'rents/relatives…you’d think I was a juvenile delinquent that’s bound for Rikers…not a respectable private LAC. </p>
<p>Then again, their focus on negativity did have a silver lining…the exploitation of excessive lowered expectations. Many relatives…including my own father were shocked not only when they found I was admitted to my LAC on a near-full ride scholarship…but more shocked at how well I did there considering my transcript was the near polar opposite of my rather mediocre high school academic transcript. </p>
<p>From such experiences, I will strongly encourage any future kids to keep such information close to their chest and will run interference to fend off prying questions about what I’d consider to be extremely personal information from relatives/neighbors. </p>
<p>This is reinforced by encountering far too many people in both my personal and professional life who blab TMI about personal matters which in the experiences of several past supervisors and myself…carries over into other aspects of their lives…including the professional realm. </p>
<p>Knew of several biglaw associates, financial analysts, and IT personnel in financial/legal firms who were fired for this very reason.</p>
<p>There is no difference. Nobody assumes anything, they just know where the kids are, but only if they asked. Hopefully there is more to share than talking about kids all the time.</p>