How do you know when your child is ready for BS

[stalecookies]

@cityran

We chose/choose BS because we don’t have great local options. So it has been our choice, not our kiddos’ choice. It turns out, Kiddo1 was not ready. She was mature, she was smart, she was excited for challenging courses, but she struggled. A lot. She’d call asking how to use the laundry machine (despite having her do her laundry the previous summer), and how to place an online order with her credit card, and how to talk to the head of her extra curricular when he said there wasn’t room for her, and the list goes on. But now, in her second year, the calls are less about “how do I do this” and more about "this happened and this is how I approached/fixed it ". This week, she called frantically because she’s run out of contact lenses. We have been trying to get her to wear contact lenses for years, and she’s been reluctant, so she only has that one trial pack. She was finally ready to wear them, and woke up early every morning to put them in and figured it out on her own.

They can always ask another kid in the dorm how to do laundry.

However, I think the real “are they ready” test is: can they advocate for themselves? Can they independently figure out what is required of them?

One of my friends has a kid the same age as mine, and in theory she would love it if her kid were in private school,. Although her kid is “smart”, he repeatedly has failed to notice key requirements for course success, and his mother has felt the need to intercede. In 2 instances when my kid was still in public school, I asked what my kid’s take was on the problem, and my kid pointed out very clear grading matrices for the assignments, and extra credit policies - all on the class bulletin board.

Same kid during online classes at a local-ish private school apparently had similar problems, so has returned to public school.

I’m sure you encouraged your kid to problem solve using the tools available, and didn’t call the head to complain about teachers every time there was a little blip. (It’s not just the kid that has to be ready - the parent(s) also have to be ready to encourage these steps towards independence.)