DormAid, DormMom, etc.

Parent Cafe
41

<p>I don’t have any problem with someone using their own money to buy a service, whether that someone is a student or an adult. If someone is willing to provide them a service like cleaning up after them, and they are willing to pay for it, I see no problem. Frankly, I think the lot of you are a little bit too concerned with what other people spend their money on.</p>

<p>I can see maybe being a little concerned with parents paying for it, as then the students don’t learn to take care of themselves or learn how to analyze the trade offs involved in hiring someone else to do it, but otherwise you’re all overreacting. A lot.</p>

42

<p>I don’t know about “moral fiber”, but my H is the CTO at a high tech company in the Boston area and you should hear him talk about “the entitled” and their idea of what defines work. A couple of years ago he fired an MIT grad who was so completely full of himself that it rendered him useless. He could not lead or follow. His self eval. was completely whacked. His co-workers dreaded working w/him. (Including other MIT grads) In a smallish company there are trade offs. Stock options, yes, a fully stocked refridg and specially designed office furniture, no. This guy wrote no less than thirty emails complaining about how the HVAC systems was drying his sensitive skin…Lots of complaining, very little actually work getting done.
I DO believe that there ARE kids that are too busy and or disorganized to get their laundry done. I’m just asking if parents are doing kids any favors if they don’t at some point have to take responsibility for cleaning up their own messes, frat party or other.</p>

43

<p>Not sure how getting one’s kids to clean up after themselves has anything to do with complaining or not about the HVAC system. </p>

<p>Civilization is really going down to hell in a handbasket (full of dirty laundry). My parents’ generation complained about mine even more ferociously. Not doing our own laundry or making messes would have been a truly minuscule infraction in the long list of sins the 60s flower children committed. As a parent, I’d be thankful if the worst that could be said about my kids was that they were messy.</p>

<p>Really, I am in agreement with 1of42. Too much judging other people’s children and other people here.</p>

44

<p>Does your CTO clean his own bath? Wash his own underwear? I doubt it.</p>

<p>Sorry, but you cannot predict a person’s value in the workforce or their moral fiber by their housekeeping history. If you could, the majority of men and messy women would be severely underemployed.</p>

45

<p>Marite said “Most of the attorneys and doctors I know do not clean their own bathrooms.”</p>

<p>True, at least in my neck of the woods. A few doctors whom I know do not clean their homes, do laundry, yardwork, etc. - their kids do. :wink: </p>

<p>Sarasmom, my H’s company dealt with a couple of those “entitled ones”, too. Everything had to be catered to them on a gold platter. I also worked with a totally useless scientist who always had to remind everyone of his PhD form Ivy-Walled U. Laboratory work, like cooking, can be messy. This guy would never clean up after using communal equipment (everyone else did), and his own bench looked like a sty! His results were equally messy. In the end, he got the honor to be the first one to be fired from that company.</p>

46

<p>My kids used to mow the lawn, shovel snow. Now that our nest is empty we’ll have the choice of moving into a condo or hiring others to do the work my kids used to do for free.</p>

47

<p>Cheers, You don’t see a correlation between pampered kids and “entitled”, pathetically whiny and obnoxious adults? My H and I both do, sorry.
BTW my CTO DOES his own laundry and cleans the master bath every other Sat.</p>

<p>Bunsen, I could tell you stories that would have you in stitches. H and other execs. have regular story swap sessions.</p>

48

<p>Who says that the kids who hire DormAid are pathetically whiny? That’s a totally different topic and a real red herring.<br>
It could be argued that kids who are used to having people clean after them will probably develop into neat adults because they are used to certain standards of tidiness and cleanliness. They may achieve this neatness on their own, or they may hire others to come and clean their house. Frankly, I don’t care. I do not believe that everyone should do everything oneself. I know lots of middle class families who are very untidy and messy. They don’t see anything wrong with that. I do. </p>

<p>Half of my H’s colleagues supposedly do not make their beds before leaving for work. In my book, that’s a no-no. But however messy their apartments may be, they are very hard workers and none show the least bit of entitled behavior. Personal messiness and responsible professional behavior are different things and should be discussed separately.</p>

<p>As for your CTO, so what? Does this confer moral superiority over those who do not clean their own bathrooms? What’s is this self-righteousness on display in this thread? And sheer bloody-minded busybodyness?</p>

49

<p>Look, Marite, Cheers snidely asked if my H did his own laundry and cleaned the bathroom. I answered her. All I’m saying is that my H is in a position that requires him to hire people and manage them. He has often observed that spoiled kids often make obnoxious and unproductive employees. They even brag about how spoiled and pampered they were in the break room for God’s sake. It’s no secret. Ask any teacher at your local hs if she thinks that kids today are far more “entitled” today than when you were as a kid and they will tell you YES!!
Many people would look at my kids and say “they’re spoiled.” They have cars, we pay for their education etc. I’m not all offended. It’s all relative. Maybe they’ll be whiners too. We’re trying to do everything we can to avoid it. We’re all in the same boat here. We’re trying to educate our kids so that they can become productive adults. I see a definate correlation between kids who don’t “contribute to the greater good” and spoiled, whiny, obnoxious and ineffective employees, sorry if that hurts your feelings some how. It’s just an observation and I thought that was why we were here.</p>

50

<p>My feelings are not hurt because I do not consider my kids either spoiled or whiny. I do feel that an awful lot of smugness and intolerance is being on display here.</p>

<p>As for the entitled young workers, I feel that much of the blame goes to the educational philosophy applied from kindergarten all the way to college. We tell children to question, not to obey blindly, to be critical, to be creative, to be original, to think for themselves. Then we expect them to be not just team players but compliant workers. Is it any surprise that there is a mismatch? So give the poor deluded graduates time to turn themselves into organization men and women. They have 18+ years of indoctrination to wash out of their system.</p>

<p>And what that has to do with hiring someone else to clean is still a mystery to me.</p>

51

<p>I’m a little afraid to jump in here, including an admission. </p>

<p>But first, I am also reading of an assumed cause and effect and it is really a broad generalization. I don’t think that the fact that some well off kids have had maids or laundry services growing up or in college or whenever thus implies that they will be spoiled, obnoxious, ineffective employees or people in general. I am sure some may exist but I really dislike the stereotype if you are well off that implies certain attitudes. I think that kids who are well off can be brought up in atmospheres that are still grounded. I know a lot of nice people who have nice attitudes who happened to also be well off. And then, some aren’t. </p>

<p>But back to the maids…I also have read some posts saying that if you have had maids, you’ll never learn to do for yourself, etc. Well, first, I grew up with a weekly maid who cleaned our house. I don’t recall doing my own laundry until college. As an adult, I have never had a maid as I can’t afford one and have other priorities for our money. I could use a maid, LOL. But I don’t have one. Well, I certainly understand how to do laundry and clean and what not even if I had a maid as a child. </p>

<p>Now, onto my own kids. Like some others, such as AlwaysAMom, posted here, my kids did not do their own laundry when they grew up at home. I did it. However, as soon as they got to college, they did just fine to my knowledge doing their own laundry, cooking, whatever they have to do. One of my kids is pretty neat and the other is very messy. They are responsible for themselves now and how clean they choose to be. </p>

<p>Ok…onto an admission…I can feel the flak coming as I write this…LOL…but my youngest D is living in an off campus apartment this year and the situation is a little unusual. It is a pretty luxurious apartment for a college kid and atypical of her friends’ apartments. Actually it is a condo. The situation is that her roomie’s parents (who live in another country) bought their D a Manhattan apartment to live in while attending college (and beyond?) and it is fully furnished in an adult way, not a college kids’ furnishings. It has two bedrooms and two baths and kitchen, living and dining room, large deck, doorman, laundry, etc. We are not paying half of what it costs to maintain this place, I’m sure of it. We offered to pay what we paid for the dorm for 8 1/2 months/year. All my D had to do was move in her belongings and everything else is provided for in a luxury type way compared to what she’d normally have to scrounge to outfit an apartment. After we agreed on a lease agreement and that she’d live there and we are very pleased and she feels like she lucked out and went to heaven (and we even were able to stay on her leather sleep sofa on a quick trip to NYC to see her perform a week ago!), we found out that this girl has a maid every three weeks and that we had to pay half for it. I didn’t realize that when we agreed she’d live there (and we are very happy with her luck in living there) but I didn’t see a way out of it as her parents expect us to pay half of the maid, cable and internet. They should only know my D is on financial aid and I have to borrow money to even pay housing. But it wouldn’t be right to say we didn’t pay our share as she already had the maid as she has owned this apartment for a year before my D moved in. So, I am paying $50 every three weeks even though I am not keen on it but it is money I’d have put toward college expenses otherwise. So, now, my kid who has never had a maid, has one in college and I don’t!!! I pointed that out to her and she does see the irony in it and understands and feels for me, LOL. So, the first day the maid comes…my D gets home very late at night every night given her schedule and she IMs me and says she cannot believe someone cleaned her room! (something she has had to do…not that she barely does it, lol). She said, “I can’t believe someone actually made my bed”. She just had never thought someone would do that for her. (truth be told this kid doesn’t make it but my other kid does and I raised 'em both but c’est la vie) Does this mean my kid will never learn to do for herself? Hardly…it is just this one situation…and she still does her laundry and own dishes and what have you. But at least the bathroom is clean! </p>

<p>And this past weekend, she hosted her own birthday bash at her place. She knew how beautifully furnished it is and hoped kids would respect that. I asked her afterwards if the place got trashed at all and she said, “nope, my friends all stayed to clean it up afterwards!” So, there you go…and trust me, some of these kids are wealthy. </p>

<p>So, wealth doesn’t equate with a certain attitude, nor vice versa. And I expect both my kids to become productive members of society and not have “attitude.” So far, so good.</p>

52

<p>Marite, Interestingly, I feel the same. I don’t take offense at being called “intolerant or smug.”</p>

<p>Soozie, Hi! Thanks for sharing.</p>

53

<p>“As for the entitled young workers, I feel that much of the blame goes to the educational philosophy applied from kindergarten all the way to college. We tell children to question, not to obey blindly, to be critical, to be creative, to be original, to think for themselves. Then we expect them to be not just team players but compliant workers. Is it any surprise that there is a mismatch?”</p>

<p>Marite, excellent point! I have to add to that. My H was shocked to see the slogan in our D’s kindergarten classroom that said “Learning is fun!” He thought “fun” was hanging on the monkey bars on the playground at recess, but what goes on in the classroom was supposed to be “work”. The came stories about school principals who would dress in drag and dance on the school roof if the kids at school read X number of books by date Y. Fun! Fun! Fun! And then… school and college are over and real life hits you hard.
“Individualist free thinkers"X"expectation of fun”=disaster in the workplace</p>

54

<p>When my kids were little in school it seemed they got a sticker, candy or some certificate for every little thing they did. It concerned me, that they wouldn’t learn to feel the pleasure for a job well done for it’s own sake. I also worried that the “real world” would certainly not reward them for getting thier work done on time, it would just be expected.</p>

55

<p>I actually think that learning is fun and should be mostly fun. I do not believe that one learns best if knowledge is presented in a joyless fashion. And there are ways to reconciling children to the boring tasks that often accompany the acquisition of knowledge. But I do not think that anyone should be rewarded for merely performing according to expectations. Rewards should be for exceeding expectations, and these expectations should be set high, not low.</p>

<p>The other point I was trying to make is that k-12 education is geared toward preparing students for college. An acquaintance of mine once was hired to study whether our k-12 education system matched the needs of our local industries. Captains of industry all complained that high school graduates–and at the time, the proportion of high school graduates going straight to work was higher than it is now-- were ill equipped to join the world of work. They lacked the skills and they also lacked the discipline to do so. Then my friend interviewed members of the educational establishment; and almost all without a fail portrayed their mission as getting students ready for college.</p>

<p>In college, the highest value is not compliance but questioning. Good profs tell students that it’s not enough to have done the readings and to be able to summarize an author’s points. Better grades will go to the students who can critically engage those readings, poke holes through an author’s arguments, challenge his or her use of evidence, think of novel ways to design an experiment or interpret data. Academia does not reward the merely hard-working, conscientious, tidy lab workers but the ones who shift paradigms.</p>

<p>When one compares American culture to others, it is striking how important small businesses are to the American economy. These small businesses are often launched by individuals who prefer not to be cogs in a corporate machine, not to be team players, or, in the Japanese phrasing “salary men.”
Maybe the MIT grads who behaved in an “entitled” manner did so not because of their MIT degree but because of their MIT education, an education that had better equipped them to be innovators and inventors rather than parts of a team working by someone else’s rules.</p>

56

<p>Going back to the subject of young people’s cleaning habits, I have a story about my son who graduated in 2006. For the past year, he was sharing an apartment with a friend, and the friend’s parents provided basically all of the furniture and other household items. In this apartment, neither young man took responsibility for cleaning - of the bathroom, in particular (I got some very “graphic” reports from my horrified daughter, after she visited her brother :eek: ) Now he is in his own apartment, has chosen and purchased his own furniture, and he seems to take a lot of pride in it and keeping it spotlessly clean. I am not sure if it is due to maturity or because it is his own stuff and not someone else’s, but it is very pleasant change for the better. (For what its worth, I did my kids laundry and most housecleaning until they went to college, although they did help with vacuuming, putting away laundry, emptying the dishwasher, taking out the trash. But my kids did all of the lawn mowing for many years - my husband taught them to use the lawn mower when they were pretty young - and I have no idea how to do that. So if my husband couldnt do it for some reason, I would need to hire someone because I really have no desire to learn how to use a riding mower.)</p>

<p>EDIT - This may be of interest to some here. My daughter spent the summer in Taiwan and is spending a semester in China. In Taiwan, the apartment she was living in came with maid service. The person who owned the apartment hired the maid to clean the rental apartment as well as her own apartment. And in China, she is living in a dorm and weekly maid service is provided. I am not sure why, but I guess it is part of the culture there.</p>

57

<p>

</p>

<p>In law school, we were often told that for exams, it didn’t matter if we were right or wrong; the professor wanted to test our reasoning. Same for passing the bar exam.</p>

<p>While creative thinking is important in pushing the boundaries of the law, I can’t remember the last time a client walked into my office and said, “I don’t care if I win or not. I just want to see how you think.”</p>

58

<p>MotherofTwo:</p>

<p>You could be describing us. Now that my two kids have gone, H is thinking about moving into a condo. No more lawn mowing or snow shovelling.</p>

<p>We have a woman acquaintance, from China, who literally did not know how to boil an egg well into her graduate school career. She never had had to learn how to clean and cook as her parents had hired maids to do all the household chores so that her children could focus on their studies. She only moved out of graduate dorms when she got married (at which time she asked H and me how to boil those eggs she was going to be living on). She is now a well-known scientist at a major research university. She leads a large research team of graduate students and post-docs. And she probably has someone to come and clean and makes use of take-outs and ready-to-heat food. Spoiled? pampered? maybe. A productive member of society? Definitely.</p>

59

<p>Chedva:</p>

<p>I could make a hobby out of counting the people who leave the legal profession after a few years and decide to switch careers. A young woman I know left a six figures Wall Street salary and is currently living the life of a starving graduate student, working for a Ph.D. in a discipline in which job prospects are uncertain. She is not married or has children, so she was not looking to cut back on brutal hours. She just realized after working for a couple of years that the legal profession just did not suit her.</p>

60

<p>soozievt, I agree with your opinions on this topic. Also, if one of my children were in your D’s position, I would do the same thing. Your D lucked out. Also, her roommate’s parents are not only wealthy, but are making decision to invest in this property, rather than throwing rent money down the drain. Hopefully, when they sell they will get their money back and make a profit for themselves. The maid, cable, etc. in this case is a small price to pay for a NY bargain!</p>