Some of this really depends on the individual child. My oldest attended the local public here in NoVA, spent 20-30 hours per week between 2 dance teams (studio and school) which was mostly year round, did a few other activities, took several APs, graduated in top 5 (out of 400) and never to my recollection was up at 1 AM or later doing schoolwork. Younger child commuted 20 miles (each way) to attend TJ. Lots of AP’s and EC’s and again did not pull all nighter’s or stay up late doing work. Grades were good and he usually spent only 2 or 3 hours per night (at most) on homework or studying.
I do believe that a lot of kids are sleep deprived. I can think of a few reasons:
The school they attend gives a lot of busy work
Lack of organization skills.
Child is in "over his head" and taking on too much.
Perfectionism. For whatever reason the child feels he/she has to get "perfect" grades.
I’m going to step in and defend the admissions folks. A lot of what they do is present a profile of prior freshmen classes. If it’s a competitive school, then of course they are going to accept a lot of outstanding kids. So it becomes a case of kids (and parents) looking at the profile and saying to themselves “I’d better be at the top of that range to make sure I get in.” Fair enough, but the result is the arms race that happens.
In our own HS, the administration is a real problem fueling this. As an example, they have told kids that they need to have 6 APs in order to be competitive for the large state school - NCSU. It’s a fine school, but c’mon 6 APs? If this is the advice given for the large State U, I can only imagine what they tell kids for a truly competitive school.
I can relate to both scenarios and types of students. I have 2 extremely gifted children with completely different personalities and, for lack of better terminology, body types. Both are on auto-pilot. One is high energy, goes to bed at 2, is up at 6, doesn’t drink coffee, and is bright eyed and ready to go. He thrives on overload. When he was in high school, we actually had to put on the brakes and tell him, no, he could not add another class or take on another role. Since he left for college, he has taken a minimum of 18 hrs each semester, works hours every week on UG research. He is the kid that when the class avg on an exam is in the 30s and the test score ranges are 0-100, he is the kid who made the 100.
His sister, otoh, is actually more globally gifted than her brother. She is advanced and incredibly insightful. But she needs sleep, at least 8-9 hrs per night. She was incredibly ill last yr and was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. Even trying to mimic her brother’s schedule would throw her into a flare. She has learned to guard her health like a rare commodity. She knows that going full speed ahead might very end up with a train wreck.
I am sure the top schools can fill their classes multiple times over with high energy kids like our ds. His energizer “batteries” are charged by challenging classes and challenging schedules and he just keeps cheerfully going on and on. He loves it. His sister on the other gets stressed when she feels like she can’t get it all done.
That is real life. Different people, different types of personalities. Dd would not enjoy being the only non-energizer bunny on a campus. Seriously. Who wants to be the only kid who needs to function like a normal human being?
Our public high school administration actually profits from fueling the arms race. Each year they expand the offerings of their summer institute, an enrichment program which allows kids to take honors prep classes (eg. a class to get your kid ready for freshman honors English, because they acknowledge that even the middle school advanced English curriculum does not), and courses that allow kids to skip levels (like an intense Biology I course so the student can go directly into AP). Over 700 kids attended the summer institute in 2015, which grossed $580,000 for them. Secondly, we must pay for each AP class our kid takes. I don’t mean for the exam in May, I mean to actually register for the AP class. Rumor has it the teachers demand more money to teach AP’s, but that has not be verified.
Many on here seem to believe that in 99% of the cases the child and parents are at fault. They are obsessively shooting for the elite colleges but aren’t cut out for it, they aren’t organized in their studies, or they are wasting time on FaceBook and mom just thinks they’re studying all those hours. But I would add to fallgirl’s list:
a lot of quality homework (in our AP classes, there is seldom busywork)
very rigorous curricula
greater demand for AP and honors classes than the local supply, leading to a weed-out atmosphere
As an example, we have a PhD from Europe who teaches AP Physics BC and post AP calculus math courses at the high school. He is fond of saying that his course will be the hardest class his students will ever take in their whole lives. Each year, students come back to visit him from MIT and the Ivies and tell him that his course was still the hardest they ever had. DS had him, so I can attest to the rigor.
I find some of the arguments here hard to swallow.
Implicit in many of these posts is that it’s a tragedy if an incredible student can’t muster enough of the “And” to get accepted to Stanford so has to settle for CMU (a world class university which is perfectly happy with the uber high score/high stat kid, at least in my neck of the woods- I imagine it’s more competitive if you live in Pittsburgh.)
The number of colleges that require the no sleep, hyper charged HS years, mega achievement profile is literally- three handfuls.
You’ve got a brainy, “lives to learn” kind of kid who doesn’t have the physical stamina or the emotional commitment to also be first chair in cello or to win Siemens or to start a new charity or whatever… Really high stats kids with nothing but a part-time job scooping ice cream or folding sweaters are getting into world class universities every single year. No fuss, no muss.
I know folks IRL who think that it’s a national disgrace that their kid has the academic profile but not the extras to waltz into Harvard. I say “get over yourself” (but I say it nicely). You think your kid will be surrounded by illiterates at Vanderbilt? You think there aren’t top professors at Emory? I’m not even touching the 10 or so truly world class public flagships-- but again, and even as competitive as it is at a Berkeley or UVA, from my perch in the Northeast I see the brainiac kids who (for whatever reason- and needing sleep is a perfectly fine one in my book) getting into Michigan without a lot of stress.
I don’t think you’re somehow failing your kid if your kid is falling apart during HS and instead of helping the kid ratchet it downward, you facilitate the madness by the endless driving and serving dinner in the car and allowing your kid to skip family occasions for an athletic meet. In fact I think the opposite. Be a parent. A 15 year old falling to pieces with no sleep and too much homework and endless and relentless pressure to be special enough for Harvard or Stanford is a kid whose parents have opted out of parenting.
Whether your kid ends up at one of the dozens of fine universities which do not require the academically gifted kid to also be logging hundreds of hours tending mutts at an animal shelter… or does win the lottery and get into one of the “you need the “and” factor” colleges… you’ll have done your duty to your kid.
You don’t need to intervene with ridiculous coaches who have crazy expectations of your teenager. Maybe you tell your kid “competitive soccer/fencing/water polo is not for you. Take an afternoon and rake some leaves after school and we’ll drink tea and talk about Downton Abbey”. That’s also parenting, and doesn’t involve the endless shlep/cost/sacrifice.
I am sure your S is superior to our children then. Or maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t assigned as much homework. Some AP’s are run like college classes, with just a few exams and maybe a paper or two. Others are ridiculous, with multiple assignments due each class. All I know is that the high school val who scored a perfect SAT the first time he sat for it and who graduated with honors from Princeton in a tough major was also up all hours right along with my kid.
My kids had some play dates and also played with electronics and legos. They did soccer for a while, but not travel soccer because IMO it was way too time consuming. We apparently were lucky that kids good take a reasonably rigorous schedule (8 or 9 APs total) and get plenty of sleep. They participated in a few school ECs, one of which did take both to State Level championships where both did well in their events. One had a passion he was very good at, the other not so much, but was able to write very engagingly about a couple of outside activities. I supported whatever they were interested in and as a WAHM was often able to manipulate my schedule to support their interests, but I am far too lazy to do much handholding. My oldest read lots of books about math and computer programming in his free time and both pretty much lived in the huge backyard sandbox in the summer.
Oh and nobody in our house cleans the bathrooms, we hire someone to do that.
Blossom, please go back and read my post about how hard it now is to get into the state schools in my region. Again, you are setting up a straw man. My point all along is that to be just “average” in some high schools requires quite a lot. Trust me, just being “average” here is hard enough for my D. We’re not shooting for perfection, and her grades and scores already ruined that long ago. My concern is that just like those on this thread who are incredulous, many college adcoms may not know that at QMP’s school, one has to compete with 35 other cellists for first chair, whereas at someone else’s school, the kid can make first chair because he was the only one who actually plays cello.
blossom - I think you captured the essence of what S1 of mine said - “Geez, to get into that school, I’ll have to cure whale cancer” Instead, he is very happy and doing well at a great public U.
I wouldn’t have allowed my kids to be up all hours during HS- period end of message. I would not have allowed an AP teacher to interfere with my parenting, regardless of how special or fantastic that teacher is. And I certainly wouldn’t have allowed a kid with a perfect SAT scores (first time out) to have absorbed the message that graduating from Princeton with honors is the only acceptable outcome.
I have a nephew who recently graduated from Princeton. Horrors- he didn’t get accepted to his first choice doctoral program so has had to “make due” with his second choice. He had a relatively normal childhood filled with chores, family responsibilities, etc. and with two working parents didn’t have a driver/cook/laundress on call at all times. I doubt he is spending his PhD years wondering what would have become of him had he gotten less sleep and taken more AP’s during HS, and I doubt he is wondering “Should I have slept less/studies more in college and would that have gotten me into my top choice for grad school?”
Sometimes getting your first choice is a curse and not a blessing.
I read this thread and feel anxious. All this pressure isn’t worth the Crackerjack prize. Childhood is a precious, limited time of exploration, a time to develp (non-competitive) social skills, and a time to cultivate passions and the ability to play. I sometimes worried that my DD wasn’t competitive with the other high-performing kids in her school, but I thought it was more important that she read, sleep, and play with her passions. She did just fine in the lotteries.
I don’t know what all of these hours of competition gain a child. How many of the cellists will play again once they graduate? How many human hours are spent on childhood music practice? Obviously some instrument practice is fun for a lot of children, but 365 hours a year is a lot of sitting inside alone. APs aren’t college courses, though they are sold as such (most elite schools don’t credit them, or only credit 5s). These are structured, linear activities that don’t allow for creativity. I rather my kid be a composer or work in a lab (or a supermarket) than follow the adult-scripted path.
I don’t live in GFG’s world, though I know lots of Tiger Parents. I suspect a move down the road to a more middle class town would shift the culture. I recognize that a good part of the problem is that teen culture is so toxic. I have sympathies with soccer mothers that I didn’t when I started parenthood. I know that desire to keep the kid from falling in with drug, hookup, and slacker cultures. Children need to be offered good choices, often pre-selected by parents. Still endless grinding and no sleep are not good choices.
Blossom, OMG this is not about getting into HYPS! As it stands now, D does not have the stats to get into either of the two closest state schools, because now the competition for those schools is such that near Ivy level stats are required for many majors. This is an environmental problem which stems in part from the influx of the best and the brightest Chinese and Indians to our region whose culture dictates a high stress, super labor-intensive approach to education which has dramatically altered the character of our high school.
Blossom: the competition has increased over even the last 8 year so that getting into CMU, Vanderbilt or BC now requires almost perfect grades and good ECs, if a kid is from an over-represented state. Otherwise, I agree with you that there are many fine universities for kids that take a reasonably tough schedule, but still manage to sleep, do activities that are meaningful to them, and have fun. But they are not getting into even the top 40 universities these days.
Again, a reference to ‘maybe he doesn’t have as much homework’ or there’s something different about his high school. It should strike us that if the load on your kid is too tough, wherever it is, he’s not getting the sleep or social time/down time he needs, something is wrong. And, not just wrong with the high school, this is your own kid suffering. Do you have no options but to keep him on that track? No control at all? For what, his shot at Stanford?
Someone explain how you can complain and yet accept this. One poster said something about knowing her kid is smart and wanting to encourage. That’s different than allowing some level of torment. I don’t mean marching in to the hs to complain. Start at home. And don’t blame the top colleges because they can cherry pick.
And this is also different when your kid loves something, whether it’s ballet or a sport, national level debate, robotics, thrives on the experience and wants the extra effort, is able to balance the rest.
Right. A world class university, that a decade ago, used to serve as a “safety” EA choice for tippy top students in my NE bubble, who after that EA acceptance only applied to HYP in regular admissions, now has single digit acceptance rates.
We have a thread going about state colleges. Those are shutting out a lot of local students. Looking out of state may be a financial hardship for many families.
The admissions arms race is escalating. I have no idea where this ends.
We can do our best to pass on our own values to our own children. Unless we are able to shield them from media and peer pressure entirely, we can’t really control what message they absorb. We can tell them it is the wrong message. But we can’t force them to believe it. We really don’t have that much control as parents. imho.
If so - I NEVER said anything of the sort. I just said that he was able to complete a rigorous HS schedule without being sleep deprived. It is possible.
I’ve been seeing a lot of anti helicoptering parenting in the media recently, almost as if there is a campaign to bring awareness to this issue. I’m not sure what’s driving it.