How much did you "push" your kids

TheDad
Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:26:52 +0000

At 6th grade I was blissfully ignorant about anything concerning my future, and am doing quite well now.

That may be quite appropriate. Which is not the same thing as your parents not being aware, thoughtful, considering options, and making choices at that time.

My D certainly wasn’t aware, when she was three years old, that I changed offices so that I could get a work-based permit in another city two years later so that she could get into an elementary school that fed a top middle school…but I did so.

Nor was she aware that, prior to kindergarten, I put in my two cents with the principal and greased the wheels to have her assigned to the kindergarten teacher who had been teaching K since 1948 and whom every parent I ever spoke to, and whose student had had that teacher, absolutely raved about.

Nor that I exerted influence to get her dismissed from 4th-grade Math, because she was bored stiff, to go take Math with the 5th grade, with a teacher who became her teacher…by sheerest coincidence(???)…the following year and with whom she is friends to this day.

She certainly became more aware as she grew older. In high school I raised bloody hell in a way that she could not to ensure that her counselor rec letter was written by a regular counselor who knew her very well and not the so-called “college counselor” who was so inept and ignorant of the schools D was applying to that 90 percent of the parents who have been on CC more than two months would have done a better job. If the student can take on the high school bureaucracy, great; if not, no need to apologize for a parent getting involved.

(And no, there was no result of D being sheltered. Never even dreamed of intervening in any situation in college. She has watched how bureaucracies operate, how they’re influenced, and how they can be spoken to and at this point is capable of doing a damned good job herself. Lessons learned. Next case.)