<p>I taught both my girls to drive – in a local parking lot, and was fine as long as we stayed in it. I remember when going 25 mph with either of them driving scared me to death.</p>
<p>I am with the others who don’t drive with their kids! I am also feeling nervous, concerned, crowded and many other feelings about living with a 26 D and 20 S this summer. I am feeling like a failure as a parent because my D does not empty the dishwasher and my S is spending too much $$ on his hobbies. I am a therapist and know that there are so many worries for all of us but somehow they crowd me sometimes.</p>
<p>CF you must have missed the memo. (LOL - not hard given the activity on this forum)
S is not getting a CS degree. He was thinking of doubling but had decided against it. He has ALWAYS been a math major </p>
<p>He just has to get through these classes. I do think this IS the way they weed them out there. No one is going to just <em>get by</em> and gain a CS degree from this place. </p>
<p>If he had not screwed off his 2nd term, this would not be an issue. He is allowed to bag a course here or there on his way to figuring out what he wants to do. They specifically factor that in at his school. </p>
<p>I am not at all stating he should be given a <em>by</em> on this. I was just reporting what he had reported to me. He will not be a programmer - never wanted to be - but thought a CS double with Math would make him more marketable. He will be marketable with a math degree. He is starting to understand that.</p>
<p>However, his past foibles may catch up with him with the possible failure of this course. </p>
<p>FFScout - eek your kid and mine - cut from the same cloth - scary</p>
<p>Sorry for the misunderstanding, #tm. A math major sounds fine. Why do all these kids think they need to double major?</p>
<p>if he had been good at programming, the double would have been a no brainer since a CS degree requires so many math courses that overlap. But we had the talk about dropping the double major a few months ago at mid-term time roughly. He decided that programming was not for him. I hope making that decision did not end up with him not putting his all into the class. Well it’s a done deal. Just have to wait and see.</p>
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LOL! Almost spit out my morning coffee reading that one. I have been know to say on a regular basis that if S had been born first, I would have quit having kids! (Now that he’s in college, I don’t say it quite so often …) Honestly, his picture is in the dictionary under “stubborn.”</p>
<p>I’m totally clueless about anything resembling computer programming, and am content to remain so.</p>
<p>Re: texting & emailing – just yesterday I sent D & S an email with a calendar/schedule for the next 6 weeks or so, since there’s so much going on – D’s graduation & party, a cousin’s HS graduation party, S’s wisdom teeth surgery, etc., etc. When D called last night, she said she had texted S after reading the email, joking about him putting everything on his (nonexistant) calendar. He texted her back, “What are you talking about?” D: “Mom’s email.” S: “Haven’t read it.” Gr-r-r-r!!!</p>
<p>Re: driving – I banned H from the car when D & S had their Learners’ Permits. He has absolutely NO patience for that sort of thing, and would have just ended up yelling at them the whole time. He never rode with D until she’d had her license for probably 2 years. He still hasn’t driven w/ S. If H is in one of our cars, he HAS to drive – it’s totally a macho thing with him. When we’re on a long drive someplace and he starts up with a conference call, referring to notes, etc., I have to resort to threats to make him relinquish the driver’s seat. I told D I’d teach her to drive a stick this summer – H gave her 1 “lesson” last summer, and she came home in tears.</p>
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<p>Sabaray, that is sooo something I would do.</p>
<p>S2 has an exam today and another tomorrow and is then done. I’m still worried about his assumption that they won’t kick him out of the dorm before H gets there on Saturday. The lease on his house begins on May 16th and summer school starts May 17th.</p>
<p>It finally just got to the point where I needed her undivided attention and some d*mn answers, to be honest. </p>
<p>“Yeah, I’ll take care of it” is not the same as “I’m meeting with Mr. X at 10:00 am Wednesday to finalize xyz” in my mind. I need to hear the latter. </p>
<p>I think all the housing details for this summer are worked out. Here’s hoping, anyway.</p>
<p>CBBBlinker - Re: H and driving and working at the same time…Are we married to the same man??</p>
<p>D texted last evening to say that she was eating by herself in one of the dining halls and the entire basketball team came in and sat at her table. “So intimidating, Mom!!”, she wrote. These guys are the heroes of the campus this year. I think it was kindof fun for her.</p>
<p>I was terrible when D was learning to drive. I would let her drive to school, and sat next to her holding the dashboard and riding an imaginary brake. H took her out driving a lot and he was much more patient, thankfully. Still don’t like being in the car when she drives.</p>
<p>You guys make my day. Sending you imaginary space, Oregon. And to all the not-so-intrepid parental passengers, thank you for sharing. I am so terrible at driver training that my son decided in HS for a few years that he didn’t want to drive, even after pro lessons. He waited so long to do the second session that just last week he had to take the beginners again (since he’s now 18.) (He’s not a bad driver, but he truly does have a visual scanning deficit and it seems to make his reaction time slower…and with auditory processing issues, noises on the road confuse him.) In retrospect, knowing what we know now about his “divided attention performance”, I am beginning to understand his reluctance. The trail marking test that he did so poorly on during neuropsych testing is the same one they make ambulance drivers PASS or no job. (He likes driving up north in Canada at his dad’s, where the pace is slow and people leave ample space – it the US Freeway/city/aggressive thing that bothers him.) At any rate, now he’s a little sorry he kept putting it off and he’s home for the summer and will be relying on public transit, so I expect that I will have to just swallow hard and get as many hours on the road with him as possible. My H. works ALL the time, so it’s really down to me. I do believe, however, that his brain is a little closer to ready now than it’s been in the past, so I am praying that I can find a way to be a good and patient teacher.</p>
<p>Since that’s unlikely, if any of you would like to come for a summer visit and be pampered as a live in driving instructor, just say the word!</p>
<p>You guys just made me reaize that I have not ridden with eggson driving since before he got his license when he turned 16. Yes, he is 19 now. Those learner permit days still have me a little shaky.</p>
<p>He has completed on final (it was “fine”) and finishes sometime Friday. Says he does not need help moving home, which I think means that DH will get a call at the last possible minute about bringing the pick up truck.</p>
<p>LISP - I always thought this was a speech impediment.</p>
<p>^^ LOL!</p>
<p>You all are making me feel SO much better about the driving thing! I really thought I had some shameful parental deficiency 
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It was really a mix of remembrance, and a call to action to all of us, but especially the youth, to become more active in fighting injustice on all fronts. Probably the most moving moments were seeing Bill Schroeder’s 90-year-old mom, listening to Jeff Miller’s brother talk about getting the news, and hearing Barry Levine, Allison Krause’s friend, speak for the first time about pulling her behind a car to protect her, not knowing she had already been shot.</p>
<p>S made me nervous - no longer. D never made me nervous. In fact, both of them lovingly point out how bad I am when I drive “their” car that has a manual transmission. (Quite frankly, I agree!)</p>
<p>woody, I learned to drive in a VW bug with manual transmission. Driving lessons consisted of my mother (widely regarded as the family’s worst driver) taking me to the fairgrounds and prompting me when to shift. Yikes. </p>
<p>Now that the kids both have some experience I am not quite as nervous when driving with them. H, on the other hand, causes some anxiety. And truth be told, I’m a speed demon. It’s a miracle I haven’t met our state troopers up close and personal on my drive to work.</p>
<p>S did his sophomore paper (huge research project) on Kent State. It was a great choice of a subject and how the conservative voices of the time escalated what need not have been escalated due to political posturing. With kids in college, it’s hard to believe that these kids were the same age as our kids. </p>
<p>I hated the stage of the learner’s permit. But worse was when D16 actually passed the test and the guy said to H, “she needs a lot of improvement.” His response was and then why did you give her a license? One off ramp accident already caused by slight panic. Fortunately she is one to hit the breaks instead of gunning the gas (which is what I did at 16 only to freeze in the middle of the intersection - not good).</p>
<p>I am very comfortable riding in the car with any of the three drivers (H or either of the boys). The only driver I don’t trust is myself. I am practically blind and have some mono vision thing with my contacts that reduces my depth perception. I get behind the wheel of a car as little as possible but in the suburbs it can’t always be avoided. I constantly remind my boys to be patient with all those bad drivers out there as most of us are doing our best. I have (knock on wood) never had an accident or been arrested for speeding but H points out that is probably because I so rarely drive. One of my checklist items is to move to a city with public transportation once we get around to downsizing.</p>
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<p>My dad had a VW bug with manual transmission when I was learning to drive. Let me tell you that my dad is a saint - truly; he’s not going to die, he’ll just be taken straight up to heaven in a few years. Anyway, he thought I should learn to drive a stick, so he took me out one afternoon in his bug. After the (terrifying!) experience he said, “It’s not really important that you know how to drive a stick.”</p>
<p>Too funny - my dad insisted I learn to drive in his manual transmission VW bug too! And he never backed down. I hated it at the time, but I’m grateful now. Although there are still moments when I am stopped at a light on a hill and I have just a glimmer of memory of how stressful that was with a stick.</p>
<p>I’m actually kinda sorry we don’t have a manual transmission car to teach our kids on.</p>