<p>There seems to be some animosity towards some of the younger posters here that I don’t understand. If you’ve spent any time looking at the regular forums for students, it’s not hard to understand why an intelligent student would prefer the conversation here, and yet they are often treated as trespassers. I personally enjoy reading many of the young posters and think they add a lot to the discussions. Is this not an open community?</p>
<p>No rule. They just need to tread a bit more lightly here and be at the least mindful of parental sensibilities. I , too, enjoy the perspective. </p>
<p>They are all welcome. It’s just that some are more welcome than others. ;)</p>
<p>I’m a non-parent (20-yo student) who posts here from time to time as I read the discussions here. They are much more intelligent, and helpful to me. When I have something to add, I add it. I have never seen a rule against it, but understand that this was made as a “Parent’s” forum, so will not be a regular poster here, or start a lot of threads. The student’s forums seemed geared towards getting into college, etc, where this is more real-life stuff. I enjoy reading the topics here and the posters and quite amazing people.</p>
<p>Do not read too much into the perceived animosity. This community is very accepting. Heck, the parents have tolerated me for the longest time, ven if I have called them the Geritol crowd in a bit of a tease. However, there have been cases of students coming to the parents’ forum for the sole purpose of reminding them to look for a less vicarious life. There are limits to the say: “Mi casa es su casa.”</p>
<p>All in all, it works just fine.</p>
<p>Heck, we often send them here ourselves, when we find them drowning in venomous reactions on the dreaded kid threads while really needing some genuine help.</p>
<p>Then, we adopt most of the kids who come here, regardless of how they found us.</p>
<p>But we’re not too groovy with the ones who jump on threads asking for parent opinions or parent moral support to tell us that we know not what we do.</p>
<p>I am quite frankly in awe of some of the younger posters here in the Parents’ Cafe. Their intellect astounds me, and while I think I had no shortage of brain power at their age, I was not putting it to nearly as good a use. I welcome and enjoy their input. </p>
<p>However, I do believe in age before beauty, and even age before intellect, so I only get a bit annoyed when a select few, in their youthful exhuberance, suggest that they know so much more than the adults on the forum. It takes time to know it all, and at age 50, there is still lots for me to learn…even from the youngsters. I would expect that the reciprocal is true as well.</p>
<p>Other than that, it’s all good.</p>
<p>I hadn’t thought about this, but I like having the young’uns around. They tell us things our kids won’t/can’t and keep us from daring to think that we know anything. Also agree with all the comments above about behavior and decorum though!</p>
<p>Wait, do I count as a parent?</p>
<p>My fiance and I have a bunny (currently two years old), and she has a strict bedtime. We make her eat leafy greens and we do not allow her to fraternize with boy bunnies unsupervised. We are considering getting her into travel soccer and dance lessons, as I understand that she’ll need a strong extracurricular foundation to get into college. :D</p>
<p>
Excellent, as we do not wish to have to congratulate you on Grandparenthood prior to seeing the posted photos of you walking down the aisle.</p>
<p>Well, strictly speaking, she’s spayed. But it’s the principle of the thing.</p>
<p>“My fiance and I have a bunny (currently two years old), and she has a strict bedtime.”</p>
<p>I have 2 bunnies and 2 kids. Perhaps I should qualify as Super Mom. :)</p>
<p>The kids are great. It’s a treat to have them visit. Of course they think they know everything. I certainly knew more than any old fuddy duddy when I was 20. Along with hubris, the kids also bring keen insights into their generation, an ability to crunch stats like nobody’s business and references to poets like Rilke. My days would be poorer without them.</p>
<p>However, the Parent’s forum is not an ego-building, molly-coddling place. The regulars are here because they want to learn things they didn’t already know. young or old better stay away if they only want to hear how wonderful they are; ie we can be a tough crowd to impress.</p>
<p>
Most excellent. Keep her focused on her studies. </p>
<p>I thank the parents for tolerating my presence. I’m too old for the high school threads, starting to feel old for the law school forum (so many high schoolers asking if they’ll get into Harvard Law, so little time to dream up snide remarks), and am too young (eternally) for the Parent’s Forum.</p>
<p>Classic post, aries (#13). Classic.</p>
<p>Well, Athene sprang forth fully grown and armed with wisdom from the brow of Zeus; as for Aries, he was always fully armed, right? Just what’s needed in the Parents forum: dispense wisdom and engage in verbal jousting.</p>
<p>ariesathena:</p>
<p>I must say I’ve wondered about your handle for quite some time. As I read Homer, Aries is a maniac. He’s all about blood lust and unthinking, homicidal aggression. Athena is also a war goddess, but a much cooler head and is also, of course, goddess of wisdom and crafts. Yet, she has her unthinking side as well, evidenced by her bitter enmity with Troy over Paris’ awarding of the Golden Apple to Aphrodite.</p>
<p>Why did you choose these two? Just curious.</p>
<p>And fascinated!</p>
<p>logosprincipal:</p>
<p>Just to add a slight twist to what some have already said, message boards like this one seem poor forums for reasonable discussion with many young people. I found, when teaching undergrads, that judicious use of open-ended questions could back some students off of strongly held convictions they based only on … well … on almost nothing, really. The problem is that tone, context, environment, body language etc. are part of the ability to make that happen in a classroom. When it happens, it leads to deep learning not just of facts, but of ways to think and analyze one’s own positions.</p>
<p>Discussion boards like this one seem to lead more to strong, and even fanatical, defense of a position, even when the position becomes more and more untenable as new facts/angles are introduced. Since a large number of high school kids haven’t yet learned the habit of thinking critically about their own positions, discussions with them can often degenerate into absurdity, even to the point of ad hominem attacks.</p>
<p>I’d say that most of the parents who frequent this board learned the knack of learning from discussion instead of trying to “win” some sort of contest of their own making. I enjoy corresponding with most of them. This knack is rarer among young people, but there are certainly many who do have it, and I enjoy corresponding with them, as well.</p>
<p>Please stick around and talk.</p>
<p>Aries = astrological sign and Greek war god
+
Athena = Sprang full-grown from the forehead of her father*; law-giver to the Greeks; and trickster and prankster</p>
<p>However, in a long forgotten Tarahumara dialect, AriesAthena also means “One who teases Xiggi too often about his use of capital letters”</p>
<p>There is certainly no rule, nor even an expecation, against students posting in the Parents Forum. However, as Cheers notes, it’s not a ego-building molly-coddling place. AllMusic captures it nicely about some of the misplaced youthful exuberance (something I have never seen AriesAthena, for example, indulge in). And the Cafe is another matter entirely. </p>
<p>As a thought experiment, I would advise my D not to participate in the political threads were she inclined to be a CC poster (a domain she has left unto me). But were she to go ahead and post, I would expect her to receive no different treatment on account of her age. And while her sense of argumentation is good, it’s not tight enough to play in <em>that</em> crowd without getting seriously zinged.</p>
<p>I would rather see my son studying, spending time with his girlfriend, spending time with his college buddies, going to the theater, training for his sport, working, etc. etc etc. than constantly posting to a bunch of boring parents on CC… !</p>
<p>We are lucky if he sends us a weekly email. Facebook or Myspace may even be more appropriate for a current college kid than CC.</p>