From what I’ve read on this sight many students have a tendency to “manufacture” themselves. They are attempting to create the “HYPS etc.” student instead of being who they are and applying to schools that they find interesting and would suit them the best. I am sure many of us as parents are complicit in this. That doesn’t bother me too much until I see posts where students feel themselves failures because they only got into their flagship, or got shut out of the Ivys, or kids who commit suicide because of the pressure either they have placed upon them or they place upon themselves. I definitely believe one should do their best and be challenged, but doing things to make yourself look like something you are not doesn’t seem healthy. My concern wouldn’t that the father has to ask the question, it can be intimidating talking to an adult when you’re young, my concern would be if the kid didn’t want to study Chemical Engineering at all. I’m with others, I like the term.
This is not new.
Decades ago, I did it.
No one in my family had ever gone to college. I wanted a college degree, and since I found schoolwork relatively easy and since my parents were earning decent money, I thought it was a realistic goal. And my parents supported this aspiration. So I worked very hard in school and made sure to participate in plenty of extracurricular activities.
I didn’t have a passion for any of it. I wasn’t at all intellectual, and I had no interest whatsoever in my principal extracurricular activity – which was editing the school newspaper. I was in it solely for what I could get out of it – admission to college and eventually, a college degree.
My friends often told me that I was doing something dishonorable – that it was somehow morally wrong to put a lot of effort into things I didn’t truly like. Maybe they were right. Maybe I am the total scum they said I was.
But I got what I wanted, and I’m not sorry.
I don’t see why today’s “fake” kids should be sorry, either.
I’m not manufactured. I’m an American. I always talk, sometimes out of turn. I correct my parents too, if they’re talking and say something that isn’t quite accurate. “no mom, I’m a 2ND Lt in CAP, not a 1st Lt.” Maybe I could get into Stanford.
I guess they don’t want “manufactured” brilliance and excellence. They just want natural? Right.
The problem is that some of these kids may not actually know what they want in life. Their choices are influenced by their parents and circle of competitive friends.
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/in-mclean-a-crusade-to-get-people-to-back-off-in-the-parenting-arms-race/2014/03/23/9259c6a2-a552-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html]Authenticity[/url] is often a foreign concept to these kids.
“The problem is that some of these kids may not actually know what they want in life.”
I role my eyes everytime I see the term “dream school”. College should be a means to an end, whether that end is a job, knowledge, exposure to new ideas or becoming a more whole person whatever that means. It shouldn’t be Camelot and they lived happily ever after type stuff. It should just be a new beginning not the end. When students say that to me it means they haven’t thought beyond what they perceive others will think about them and what they think about themselves when they say “I go to …”.
What’s wrong with having a dream school? It sure is better than not having a dream to go to college.
I think @MidwestDad3 provides smart insight here. Helicopter parenting certainly is bad for the long-term outcomes of our kids, as they fail to generate their own motivations. But it feels like any sort of intervention by a parent to put their kid on course is deemed another eye-rolling example of micromanaging your kids. Parents do play a key role in helping spark their kids. The pendulum can swing too far toward a laissez-faire attitude about parenting, I think.
A student going off to college is not a child…unless it’s a kid who skipped a grade or two or three. That (perception) that college bound kids are children is, in my opinion, the root of many issues today.
“What’s wrong with having a dream school?”
I guess because dreams aren’t real. If you set a goal to go to college that great. If you set a goal to go to Harvard that’s OK too just be sure to have a backup plan because not all goals work out. I think too often kids will create this image of themselves attending this perfect college and being perfectly popular and everything will be perfect. It’s not. It’s hard work. There will be times when you’ll be miserable. If your “dream” falls apart that can be discouraging. If you have a goal you work through those things. You understand that this isn’t the end only the path to something new.
The Indian father was out of line- showed point of author’s “manufactured” kid. The college’s relationship is with the student, not the parent. This includes minors (we found this out when our 16 year old son went off to college). Kids I know with Indian immigrant parents that I know also would never let their parents interfere like this. Strong personalities and raised in the US. In fact- they also had parent-child clashes with their teens.
NO! My 1/2 Indian son is like both of his parents- strong willed and independent-he would not let us helicopter or manufacture him. I feel sorry for the kids whose parents do so many things without handing the reins over to their children (our son took those reins without asking our permission). I include parents masterminding ACT/SAT testing as well as college applications. Guidance involves making students aware of opportunities and suggesting they be taken advantage of. Kids need to own the process, especially by junior/senior year of HS. Perhaps our advice/hints were listened to and utilized- at least we voiced them and they were there to hear/read.
Plenty of kids – and adults – don’t know what they want in life.
If a kid does know but the parent is forcing the kid down a different path, I can see why that’s a problem. For example, we had a thread here recently where the parent of a highly academic student was upset about the student’s choice to prepare for a career as a high school art teacher and would have preferred that the student choose something else.
But if a kid doesn’t know, I don’t see a problem with the parent encouraging the kid to make choices that keep options open for as long as possible.
For example, if a kid wants to drop Spanish after level 2 because the kid doesn’t like studying Spanish, but the parent realizes that the kid could be a candidate for selective colleges that require foreign language through level 3, I don’t see any harm in the parents encouraging (or even requiring) the kid to take one more year of Spanish.
I also don’t see any harm in the kid deciding on his own to take that third year of Spanish even though he doesn’t like Spanish just to keep open the option of applying to colleges that require three years of foreign language. You don’t have to have a “passion” for foreign language to be entitled to make this decision. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to continue your study of Spanish simply for what you get out of it – in this case, the option of applying to a wider variety of colleges.
Let’s allow for the possibility that some people don’t look at it that way. For example, for me – a first-generation college student – going to and graduating from college was mostly an end in itself. Maybe it “should” have been something else, but it wasn’t. And I refuse to feel guilty for my feelings of decades ago.
If we are really being honest, we have to admit that we all “manufacture” our kids to some extent. They don’t raise themselves; they respond to expectations, demands, opportunities and circumstances around them. Eventually, though, the passive young adult whose parents have pushed him into most of his activities and structured the majority of his life is going to stall when the parents aren’t behind him anymore doing the pushing. At what point do we accept that our job “manufacturing” our kids is done and it’s time to live with the result, given the materials we had to work with?
I actually thought the condensed advice at the end of the article was pretty good:
Embrace the kid you’ve got
Give them unstructured time to play
Make them do chores
Let them make mistakes
Widen the college mindset
It’s an interesting posit. I have been on both sides of the coin, as both a parent and employer/professor. As a parent, I had to learn early on, with much nudging from both my wife and our daughters, is to just let go…and it was sage counsel well served. It is their lives not mine, and while we can provide insights and some historical instruction (i.e. back in my day speech…insert pithy story for kids to roll eyeballs at), in sum, if we are actually confident in how we raised our kids, you let them roll their own dice.
As to helicopter parents, I have to say, that in the last 10 years or so, they have been profoundly, and much to the detriment of their children, on the scene. I have had calls at nights from prodding parents seeking larger assignments during an internship, requesting meetings about their children’s job evaluations, how I selected class assignments, and even trying to insert themselves in salary negotiations.
I have to say, I pity these kids…so while the parents say they have good intentions, they do their children no favors. Failure is a large part of life, and the quicker we learn to do it on our own, they better we adapt and evolve in our decision making. A grown person at 24/25 should not have their parents involved in either their education or career…as it simply thwarts maturity and development.
There’s really nothing better than being presented with a false choice in a discussion of childrearing methods, is there?
I work in an academic department at an Ivy and it wasn’t very long ago that I heard some faculty talking in the hall outside my office about the increasing frequency of PARENTS contacting them to discuss assignments, schedule appointments, complain about grades, or discuss advising, etc. for their “young adult children.” Where are the bright, motivated, self-reliant scholars? How will they ever grow up this way? It’s weird. Were these kids so manufactured that they can’t think for themselves?
It’s not new, though. Back when I got my first faculty position in the 90s, I was told (and quickly found out for myself) that one of the great hapinesses of FERPA’s existence is that when parents call to complain about grades or such you can shut them down with an appeal to a federal law. My then-senior colleagues said that before FERPA was passed, they had no such ready-made deflection—and since FERPA was passed in 1974, they were talking about a rather deeper past.
:-?
Hmmm…If my DS is manufactured…did he come with a factory warranty? I must have missed the product recall…
Should I pay for the extended warranty, or just trade him in for a newer model…something Asian or European…something easier on the food budget…
“when new student Arjun and his parents met with then-dean of freshmen, Arjun didn’t speak first. His father did. In fact, Arjun didn’t say anything at all as his father explained to the dean, Julie Lythcott-Haims, that they wanted to discuss Arjun’s opportunities for doing research in chemical engineering.”
Why were the parents even in this meeting to begin with? I find that extremely odd. I can’t even imagine going to a meeting with my kid’s college advisors/dean of students.
I remember when my kid was in first grade and some problem came up. I told him to go the next day and talk to the Principal and tell her what he told me, and he did. Except for teacher conferences we always encouraged our kid to deal directly with his teachers and administrators by himself.
Now I agree that the student has to handle college himself…but isn’t it ironic that parents are expected to pay the college’s tuition or “EFC” based on parental income, assets, etc…but then to promptly butt out after handing over the cash? 
This is a good thread. I was feeling bad hobbling my kid by not beginning the manufacturing at 6th grade!!!
PS, the 1998 boy model does tend to consume a ridiculous amount of fuel. I didn’t see that on the manufacturer’s sticker!!
I find it so interesting that the answer to the point that perhaps Arjun had cultural issues at play…was a few posters stating that the kid and family needed to learn the mores of American culture if they were going to be in America. FIRST, Arjun and his parents may VERY WELL be US Citizens. That makes them just as “American” as anyone else on this board.
SECOND, who ever said that if you are an American you can’t also have cultural values that are different from the mainstream? Whatever happened to the great immigrant experience of America? Or is each and every person to experience being an American in the exact same way??
Most likely, Arjun has a dominating parent, a parent who didn’t understand it was time to let go and let Arjun lead. It was a good teaching moment for the parent, in my opinion. Arjun will also have to learn to take the lead away from the parent.