Read to your kids. Also related, listen to audio books in the car and on trips. Model a love of reading.
Delay screens (phones and the like) for as long as you can.
Spend lots of time together as a family.
Encourage outdoor and open ended unstructured time.
Encourage creativity.
Eat dinner together as a family as much as possible.
Accept your children for who they are, rather than who you want them to be.
Love them unconditionally.
Remember you are raising humans to be happy and secure, âsuccessâ and what colleges they go to are not the most important things in life.
12 Likes
A while back, a question popped up in the prep forum from an as-yet-to-be parent asking which private schools could give their unborn an edge (so they could buy a house close). Much of what I replied there applies to this inquiry.
You may find out you canât have children (even though you seem perfectly fine right now) or you could have a special needs child or a child who wonât or canât benefit from the plans youâre making for any number of reasons. Or you could find yourselves in financial difficulties in the future that preclude the ability to pay for the plans youâre making. Or you could find the perfect home right in the backyard of one of those perfect schools with a top-scoring bright child and find only thin envelopes in the mail come application time. Or, God forbid, you could experience what our dear friends went through this summer losing their exceptionally bright, well-educated youngster to a jeep roll-over accident. You have no crystal ball, you canât know what the future holds such that you can start making plans any specific plans now.
Iâm hoping youâre just very young so youâll have some time to figure out whatâs really important at this stage in your life. Kids need lots of love and attention. They need role models and friends and parents who love unconditionally and provide what they need emotionally. Thereâs nothing wrong with living in a nice neighborhood and wanting a good education for your children (thatâs why this forum exists), but most of the seasoned parents here will tell you that focusing on having healthy, happy, emotionally well-adjusted kids is the real goal. Where they live or go to school does not determine their success or happiness in life.
There is so much ahead of you and your spouse. Focus on keeping your marriage strong and loving. Focus on loving your offspring fiercely when they come along. Focus on the importance of every moment you are able to spend with your children. Teach them well. Love them better. THATâS what will give your kids the âedge.â The rest will take care of itself.
Oh, and pay attention to every post upthread that advised to start saving aggressively now.
18 Likes
Focus on providing your child a lot of love and security. Try to spend time together to do fun activities- this does not necessarily mean spending a lot of money - kids love to take walks in the park, go on picnics, walk around the zoo, listen to free music, etc.
Try to provide your child with opportunities to pursue his/her interests in whatever that may be. Encourage , but donât push. We had a rule that our kids had to finish the season/session with an activity but after that they were free to drop it if they didnât enjoy it.
Read to your child. Every day.
Redefine âgood schoolâ. A good school is one where your child can learn and grow and hopefully find his/her people. The good school might not be the most prestigious. Or prestigious at all. That said, your child may be a very smart child who prefers to work with his/her hands, join the military or find another path. Please support the path that is right for your child.
6 Likes
@Rickeycortez57, thank you for starting this thread. It has provided an opportunity to hear some wonderful advice from experienced parents. The advice is great for a parent-to-be, but itâs great for parents whose kids are any age, whether 7 months, 7 years old, 17, or dare I say 57.
2 Likes
Lots of parents like to see their kids do better than the parents did.
However, for kids of parents who have reached elite levels of achievement (and becoming a physician in the US is an elite achievement), any expectation to do better than the parents would be a very large amount of pressure, since there is little room for upward mobility (but plenty of room for downward mobility) relative to elite parents. Being merely good would be downward mobility relative to elite parents, but being merely good can still be a good outcome in absolute terms.
1 Like
As a mom of 5, I think nature is stronger than nurture. One of my twins is extremely motivated, the other is the opposite. Make a lot of money, for more opportunities. My high stats kids had to go to less selective schools due to finances, but even that worked out. The good thing about not have a large purse is that my kids knew they had to major in subjects that would lead to employment.
3 Likes
Yeah but I specifically said not to push your kid Til they break, you can still push them. Thank you for the clarification though
Teach him/her to read. Doesnât matter what he/she is reading. Just get him/her to read. Teach basic math skills. Take kid to library all the time.
Donât worry about sports. Let him/her play if he/she wants to, but never let sports get in the way of academics.
Also make enough money to go to a feeder private HS.
2 Likes
Minimize screen time! Not just theirs, but yours as well. Set an example of real life interactions with others and the world.
8 Likes
As a parent who sent one child to Duke and another to U Mich here is the secret (with apologies to Steve Martinâs How to be a millionaire*):
First, Give birth to a smart child who wants to go to a good school.
Hereâs what I didnât do:
-
Teach them the importance of education
-
Limit Screen time( would I have if it seemed problematic? Probably but they both seemed to have self controlâŠsee the bottom line below)
-
Read to them everyday ( I HATE reading out loudâŠI did model reading and provide books. But 4) below made it less urgent . If they had struggled with reading I would have done so to try to help)
-
Teach them to read ( both read by age 4âŠwe think it was by watching tv with the closed captioning on)
-
Sit down for family dinners more than twice a week ( I did talk to them while they ate)
Bottom line: get lucky
*Answer : First, get a million dollars
3 Likes
You didnât do any of these things?
1 Like
The best wisdom my mother ever gave me about parenting is that âyou donât get to pick what theyâre like.â You donât. Genetics and personality will determine more than a lot of people want to admit.
That said, while you canât force a baby to become a nuclear physicist or a prolific author, you can teach them to be a good person, work hard, and excel at their strengths.
16 Likes
Heck, you canât even force a kid to like algebra, let alone physics!
4 Likes
Correct. Many of the things you are âsupposedâ to do we just didnât. When my younger daughter had a reading test in kindergarten the teacher when reporting her high reading level said â You must have read to her constantly!â And I was like âmmmmm, sureâ. But no. I just despise reading out loud and I was VERY lazy about it. Both girls started reading well before kindergarten. My sister in law, a school âreading specialistâ was stunned that we never read to them much or explained letter sounds. She was convinced it must have been the closed captioning which we always had on.
The thing I learned from parenting is to just take it one step at a time. Step one, get pregnant 
Enjoy every minute with them, especially when theyâre young. Teach them to read early. In my opinion, thereâs no need to skip 2 grade levels for them to excel. Iâve seen kids at that level. Academically, theyâre smart, but emotionally, itâs difficult to relate to peers more emotionally advanced.
Also remember every kid is different. Some may be academically gifted. Others are athletes. Some are musicians or artists. Others still may not necessarily present their âgiftsâ right away, but find them in college. We encouraged our daughter to take pride in her grades and accomplishments and loved her unconditionally. She starts college in the fall.
3 Likes
Donât worry too much, kids develop at their own pace.
I had one kid who taught himself to read when he was two and another who struggled until the beginning of second grade when suddenly he could read anything which he realized when he could read Harry Potter while I was reading out loud. Both kids ended up with sky high SAT reading scores. We had a house full of books and everyone was always reading.
We limited TV and would have limited computers except my older kid was six he got interested in some programming my husband was working on and got so interest my husband taught him Visual Basic. That kid is at Google now!
I read endless books about WW2 sea battles and the Titanic to the younger kid and heâs in the Navy.
Itâs not that I wanted either of those careers for my kids, but when they were interested in something, we went with it.
All that said, if I were to give one piece of advice try to have family dinner regularly. We talked about books we were reading, black holes, history, about DHâs research or my architecture projects. The got exposed to a lot of ideas without our really thinking about it. I think our kids developed into people with curiosity about a lot of different things.
2 Likes
The OP has not commented here or posted anything anywhere else in CC⊠Hope this means they are busy with school⊠
7 Likes
Yes you can definitely say that.
There is too many people to reply to as well, but I will appreciate all this advice and moving forward I will be sure to come back to this thread!
2 Likes
Thank you, this is very helpful.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. If youâd like to reply, please flag the thread for moderator attention.