Is anything not someone else's fault: or, do we coddle our children?

Parents Forum
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<p>These posts are all very insightful. Because she wanted to do things her own way, I knew D was going to face the harsh reality of applying to a college she really wanted to go to and not being accepted. She did well in HS, but had one subject in which she needed extra help, which she refused to get, and one in which she had a personality conflict with the teacher and other misc. issues. I advised, but never stepped in. </p>

<p>Bottom line, she ended up with stats that weren’t good enough to get her into her dream school, and she was crushed by the rejection. Guess what? Now, she loves her not-dream school and has learned that she’s not perfect and has to work harder in some areas. Learned the hard way, but that seems to be the only way that sinks in for her.</p>

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<p>I think these tough lessons are best learned when the penalities aren’t really as high as they will be later in life. This is why I have allowed my kids to stumble and make mistakes that are painful for me to watch, but are what they needed to do for themselves so THEY have their consequences and don’t see me as a “rescuer.” </p>

<p>It’s a form of “tough love,” but has worked out so far in our household. D had to go to CC & will now be transferrring to a U she’s excited about attending. S missed out on a term abroad & internship–perhaps he wasn’t ready? I know they have many options & will figure things out in their own time.</p>

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<p>How beautiful… the first reply is yet another excuse. Let’s get it straight, if DS cannot get his a<em>s strapped long enough to do a simple assignment, then a) he is lazy and b) he will have problems later in life. ANY job, even if you work for yourself, has 50% *</em><strong><em>, and if you can’t do the </em></strong> then your performance in the whole job sucks. The sooner kids learn that, the better they are at dealing with realities. I am with the OP 100%</p>

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<p>The problem is that people keep forgetting that intelligence is measured on a bell curve. There are very few geniuses, and very few with extremely low IQs. The vast majority of people are AVERAGE, and this is true not only in intelligence but in athletic ability, musical talent, etc. Yet we seem to think that there is something wrong with being average. We want to believe that all students are capable of A’s in AP classes, or capable of being the starter for the soccer team, or the next diva. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, or not, there will only be a select few who will be this stellar, and no amount of hard work will make the student with the 100 IQ like the one with the 140 IQ. Similarly, if one is born with the skill and agility to be a top athlete, no amount of practice will make that person with more average athletic abilities able to compete. We can’t all do all things, and parental excuses don’t change that reality.</p>

<p>Our society has decided that “Average” is never good enough, so we push kids, coddle them, and make excuses for them. It isn’t healthy for anyone, especially the kids (who suffer, either now or later).</p>

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<p>My OP wasn’t really about the very rare bona fide genuis with ADD/OCD who doesn’t do his homework, it was about the above average kid who is lazy, and whose parents do him a disservice by excusing what appears to be a very correctable situation.</p>

<p>Another point, as a person who lives in a university town, I see my share of genuises working on their PhDs at the age of 40, never having held a regular job. Generally, these people are unemployable because they never learned to function in the real workplace (can’t be bothered with busy work that doesn’t stimulate their intellects). </p>

<p>If they don’t get a professorship (and most won’t), they end up in some marginal existence. You can generally find this species at Border’s, making $7.25/hour.</p>

<p>If you have a trust fund and like to read Livy all day, that’s great, but perhaps not the best plan for most children.</p>

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<p>I think my parents are an exception to this in some ways.</p>

<p>“I got an 80 on the test. Ms. ____ put so many details and obscure quotes from the book. Ugh. I can’t believe this!” -Me
“…Should have studied harder and anticipated these things.” -Dad</p>

<p>And if I say a test was “easy,” he expects no less than a 100.</p>

<p>They (my parents) DO get frustrated with my older brother though because he IS really smart. In fact, he’s probably the smartest person I know not including my father (and I say this mildly unbiased because some of the things he spits out leave me dumbfounded). But he rarely managed to pull off As, and mostly got a mixture of Bs, Cs, Ds, and several Fs.</p>

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<p>And not only did parents do this, but society seems to be accepting of this. In response to efforts to coddle our children, education turned to worrying about the child’s self-esteem and doing away with criticism. (Of course there is no such thing as reality or constructive criticism.) We praised kids for the good they did, and didn’t mention what they didn’t do, so as not to harm that self-esteem taht we thought was so fragile. Teachers who tried to get the kids to see the error of their ways were tagged “mean” and “too hard.” The longer this went on, the more studies were done to see the effect of this. Two rooms - identical curriculum and a test that was truly unfairly hard. After virtually everyone failed, first teacher told the kids that the test was unfair - it was too hard, but they had to take it. She praised them for the one or 2 items that they had right out of 30. The kids in the other room had the same result, but a teacher who yelled at them, and told them they were all lazy and didn’t study enough. Another couple weeks went by, and both classes were taught the same things, and took the same test. First room, everyone failed. When asked what happened, they said it didn’t matter, because the teacher knew it wasn’t their fault, and the test was hard. And they were thrilled to have gotten one or 2 answers right. In the other room, just about everyone passed, with even a lot of A’s. When asked why they did so much better, the kids said that they had to do better, because 1 or 2 right wasn’t good. In the real world, if this had happened, parents would be there screaming at teacher 2, (I know-I am a teacher) and she would have had to back down. So now, the evidence is coming in that we have a generation of kids who think that mediocrity is fine and will be making excuses for everything that happens to them because of this.</p>

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<p>ejr1: I wish my D had teachers that “screamed” at her when she was in HS. Not necessarily truly screaming, but being uncompromisingly demanding and brutally honest in their feedback. I had a chemistry and a math teacher like that in HS. Both scared the bejesus out of me, and even though I always got A’s in both classes, my knees were shaking every time they called on me in class. Guess what, it was good for me, and later on in life I found out that these teachers were considered one of the best in the country at what they did, and sent a disproportionate number of kids to the national round of science olympiads (this was overseas). </p>

<p>What I was confronted with in my D’s HS was a teacher, who even though D had a C on a mid-term progress report, was telling me how great D is and how spectacular her writing was. D still got the tongue-lashing at home and was told that she is lazy. I guess now that she is in college Child Services cannot come and take her away for “child abuse” :D</p>

<p>MSUDad - I hope that your reference to geniuses working on their PhD in their 40s was meant as “geniuses”. There is really absolutely no excuse for anyone not getting a PhD in about 5 years.</p>

<p>-Allmusic- I disagree with the premise of your message, that hard work cannot make up for lack of talent. To an extent this is true, hard work cannot make up for a complete lack of talent, no matter what. However, the top echelons of any profession are populated by people with somewhat above-average talent who are willing to bust their tail. Take any sports superstar and look at his/her newspaper clippings. Most of them talk about the incredible work ethic that made them a superstar. Montana and Rice were complete nobodies, uncelebrated until they made the most of a chance they were given. Whoever had heard of Tom Brady before Drew Bledsoe went down? Bledsoe was the highly touted talent that never went anywhere. Brady was drafted in the 4th round, I believe.</p>

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<p>I agree that society has gone the complete opposite way in dealing with kids in school…from the days of the Catholic Nuns smacking students on the back of the hands with a ruler, to the passive, “we have to be nice to everybody”.</p>

<p>I noticed a trend when my “now 17 year old” was in Kindergarten. On the last day of school there was a little assembly and EVERYONE got a certificate for something. It was RIDICULOUS!!! Best Eyes…funniest laugh…cutest hair…you get the drift! </p>

<p>Then you have the “pay to play” sports, dance studios, and kid theatre companies where EVERYONE gets a part and gets to play X amount of minutes.</p>

<p>I completely agree that when young, we should encourage good sportsmanship and encourage fun in sports and theatre, but we have done our kids a HUGE disservice!!!</p>

<p>What I see now is kids who don’t have any idea that they have to WORK for a spot on the team or in the play!! And the parents!!! Iye, Yye, Yye,!!!
Calling the school screaming about their S or D not getting to play enough on the varsity team! Screaming that their D didn’t get the lead in the school play…and what is the school thinking…are they crazy…these parents are hysterically spouting. "She has been dancing and singing since she was 5…we have spent thousands of dollars and hours so that she can get to Broadway…or for the boy, so that he can play for the NFL!! YIKES!!!</p>

<p>Unrealistic about college acceptances? Of course they are !!! They do not live a REAL world!!! </p>

<p>Trust me…the days of Daddy being able to make a phone call and donate enough money to the college in order to get little Johnny into college is coming to a screeching halt!!</p>

<p>These colleges have SO many stellar applications from kids that have REALLY done the work and REALLY have the drive to make their college experience a success that they don’t need to “make deals” anymore (with the exception of some of the highly sought after athletes).</p>

<p>It is as much a shame for the parents as it is for the students when they start getting the rejections that are a reality in the real world. </p>

<p>We need to start preparing our kids for the harsh reality of life and stop the “hovering” and “coddling”!!! It is not helping to produce a healthy society.</p>

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<p><<so now,=“” the=“” evidence=“” is=“” coming=“” in=“” that=“” we=“” have=“” a=“” generation=“” of=“” kids=“” who=“” think=“” mediocrity=“” fine=“” and=“” will=“” be=“” making=“” excuses=“” for=“” everything=“” happens=“” to=“” them=“” because=“” this=“”>></so></p>

<p>What is the evidence for this? The top schools are rejecting hundreds of highly qualified candidates that work incredibly hard. There is no evidence we have an entire “generation” of mediocore students. In our HS, a kids needs a 4.0 to be in the top ten percent. There have always been hard workers and “hardly working” kids. This generation is no different. In fact, my kids have much higher expectations on them than I ever did - both in school work, in ECs and in outside activities and that is true of most of the kids I know. </p>

<p>Very few parents are unaware of the odds against their child making to the Ivy League, Broadway or the NFL. Some parents may want to let their children try to make it in a tough field, but the ones I know are mostly pushing their kids for a backup plan that doesn’t involve waiting tables.</p>

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<p>MSUdad: What percent of PhDs do you see that are approaching 40 and still not done who have been at the Univ. continually since graduating college? I bet it is very small. Most universities would not tolerate this and most people can’t afford it. Most PhD candidates I know either finished in a respectable amount of time or left as ABDs to work. Some managed to hang out at a University as research assistants or the like, but very few. </p>

<p>How do you know these students are not done because they won’t do busy work? Most graduate students TA classes or are research assistants, both of which require a lot of grunt work in the lab or correcting papers. Hard to believe a PhD student never had a “real job” that did not involve a high percentage of tedious work. </p>

<p>I think the difficulty with your original post is determining whether the parents are excusing their child’s behavior or simply worrying about it. I am not sure it is as easy to change a child that procrastinates or does not get his or her work done as you seem to think it is. A lazy child does not automatically equal bad, overindulgent parents, the way some here seem to think. I know incredibly hard working, dedicated parents who are involved, but not hovering, that have a hard working kid and one that just isn’t. The parenting style wasn’t any different, they do not excuse their child’s behavior, but certainly are concerned. It is easy to say change the child or let them fail, but not as easy in practice.</p>

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<p>^^</p>

<p>No one is in a graduate program for 18 years, obviously.</p>

<p>Just went to a friend’s 40th b-day party. Just finished his orals. By his own admission he’s never worked “a real job” (there were intervening things like part-time at the library, Border’s, adjunct at a local college, some assistantship) Of the 8 PhD students there, one had a faculty job lined up, two had left ABD for paying work, and the other 5 still had their clothes in milk crates, livin’ the grad student life. Age range of about 33 to low-40s. </p>

<p>Two family members did the same thing, wrapping up the PhD at 44 and 45.</p>

<p>“How do I know they haven’t finished because they won’t do busy work?” That was not my comment; my comment was about their employability outside of an academic setting.</p>

<p>Again, if that’s the life you want, that’s fine with me. I love learning for learning’s sake.</p>