<p>Congrats to PCP on the art award and to all those who received book awards. I had never heard of book awards - it sounds like a very nice honor. </p>
<p>MsPearl - I will confess that I let my room get very messy in college during finals and other testing. And now my daughter’s room is full of books, papers, and water bottles. I know that next week when all the assignments are over, she will clean her room again. Let your daughter have some time to just relax after a hard year of school. </p>
<p>Speaking of dorm-mates, my D will be living in a dorm this summer. She just had to fill out a form for roommate selection. One of the questions was to rate how neat you are on a scale of 1 - 10. I think she put a 4. Hopefully the room won’t be a total disaster if she is matched with another “messy”. </p>
<p>My D still hasn’t received her May SAT II scores. She takes the SAT I this Saturday. So I’m hoping that if the scores are good they will be posted tomorrow and boost her confidence.</p>
<p>I am curious about SAT IIs. For SAT I, we got a detailed report about how many wrongs in each area etc but for SAT II, I was waiting on this report that I thought would give similar info but all I see is you are in xx% which matched the 2010 percentile guide on collegeboard that has been floating around on CC.</p>
<p>So we dont actually know how many right, wrong etc for a SAT II?</p>
<p>Oh, so many ups and downs for our kids (and us!) right now. Like pathways, I hope none of your sons end up roommates with mine - I think I already posted, but I cleaned his room last weekend just so that <em>I</em> didn’t go crazy helping him get packed for Canada. </p>
<p>He left yesterday and just called, delayed in a village, because of…snow. And guess who didn’t take a warm winter coat? Sigh. He’ll survive it and, I suspect, grow up a LOT in the next 3 weeks.</p>
<p>pathways - lol about your d and the room mess. maybe she’ll get someone just like her for a roommate. my d did and they became close friends…their room was just awful ! a wonderful roommate for my d and we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way :)</p>
<p>I’ve talked to my kids about their rooms in college. I’ve mentioned that the “bomb went off” look might not suit their future room mates. They both look at me and mention that they aren’t in college right now and they will cross that bridge when they come to it! I insist that they clean their rooms before company and at least once a month. Although, that once a month has slipped a bit in finals/AP season. After school is over, they will have to purge! Until then, they just have to keep the doors closed!</p>
<p>Some time around the beginning of high school, I realized I had about four years to produce a semi-autonomous individual ready for college. I think the best way to learn how to handle freedom is to handle a little freedom in a relatively low-risk environment and gradually increase that level of freedom as it is earned. Failures can be used as teaching moments.</p>
<p>Our first test came with S’s taste in girls. I will be as tactful as I can be and say that his first “serious” GF was a strongly negative influence. I bit my lip and didn’t say much. We only intervened when the potential consequences could have been life-altering (I want to be a grandparent one day; one day soon, not so much). It was really hard to watch at times and it went on way longer than it should have, but he finally wised up and moved on.</p>
<p>By the time the second one came along, it was pretty clear he’d learned something from his experience. The third one is still around. She’s a peer intellect and musician, has her own goals and supports his, is a strongly positive influence, and for getting his priorities straight, karma threw in cute with the deal. He’s learned to appreciate strong, smart women years before his old man ever did–probably because we gritted our teeth and let him make his own mistakes.</p>
<p>He’s matured relatively quickly, picked up some some important life skills this way, and isn’t too much the worse for wear and tear. As long as we’re there to talk about the inevitable mistakes, I don’t think backing off a little is a bad idea.</p>
<p>Pathways: her room has been graced with curdled milk too many times to count! Lol. I know I need to back off but it is hard…during the school year I am very hands off but this last month of school I just flipped. I think it was a combination of CC and realizing we will have to take out loans for her school…and even then she might end up not where she wants to be…</p>
<p>And I pretty much accepted that her room will be dreadful 95% of the time but the rotting, moldy food gets to me. as far as the mess in kids room others on CC are experiencing: I have no advice and if I did it probably wouldn’t work! Lol. </p>
<p>I like the idea of giving her a set list of chores, and who cares what time she gets them done. And I think letting her make up a schedule with me to help is a good idea. I will go to WAlmart today and but her a calendar. And her dad always tells me. Let her fail. If she doesnt do her assignments on time she will learn a lesson. And it isnt like she isnt capable of the work, she just puts everything off to the last minute. Frustrating. I actually recommended she do her project on a thousand acres or woman warrior but from the books we had in the house and what she narrowed down, she went with Bovary because it,had the most ap test references…something like that. After every,book there were numbers written and she wanted a book followed by more numbers.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the advice. If I could hire a college counselor I would but I don’t even know if they exist in our area. We have cows that break out of their farm and wander on our front lawn occasionally and horse and sheep behind the fence in the back yard we even have an eccentric lady in the farm behind us that collects old boats…I think there are at least six fairly large boats in her field. And on separate occasions she comes to the fence up where our trampoline sits on our side with a gun or a camera and tells my kids she will shoot our dog if he keeps running into the back field with the sheep…or shows us dead pics of cats she thinks she trapped that might be ours or,our neighbors, she even offered to give our dog free lessons on how to behave…but alas, no college counselors! Lol</p>
<p>Well, good luck to all our wonderful messy procrastinating kids this summer! I am of to the Walmart to buy a big calendar. </p>
<p>My daughter’s room always looked like a natural disaster had just struck. She was clean, but terribly messy. I learned to close her door and not look. She’s an adult now and a lot better. She’s not perfect, but I think managing a classroom the last three years taught her the value of organization and neatness. She’s also very careful about the common areas she shares with others and any mess is in her own bedroom/bathroom which is, after all, her space. They grow up.</p>
<p>Where we live seems to be one big anthill. My kids learned very young that there’s a reason food is not allowed anywhere in the house outside the kitchen / dining / livingroom area. If they take food into their rooms, the ants find it way before I’d have any chance to object. :p</p>
<p>mspearl - we’ve all been there - but just think, in a little over a year, her room will be spotless and she won’t be there to mess it up!! (It helps me to think of this as I survey my DD’s room - and to think she was so neat and tidy when she was younger)!</p>
<p>Congrats to all the book award winners - I don’t think we do anything like that at our high school.</p>
<p>Just finished planning our summer college visits - I think it would be easier to plan an invasion of a small country then to balance 6 schools in 3 days in 3 states!! But I think I have it figured out. And one school even offers partial reimbursement of DD’s air fare!!</p>
<p>My D does, it’s huge and posted on her bedroom wall. She writes everything in different colors. It would make me crazy, but it works for her. I bought a pad of paper for easels at Staples and she uses that to make custom time periods (roughly a month, but it can vary).</p>
<p>As for messy rooms…my 10D was an order of magnitude neater in her college dorm room than she ever was at home. Our rule is that the room must be dusted and vacuumed at least once a week - with allergies and asthma we have no choice.</p>
<p>It has been a week of near misses around here this week. Alcohol at a grad party of kids from DDs school led to police intervention - luckily DD was not there. Train derailed at the edge of our neighborhood - luckily none of the noxious cargo spilled. Three tornados touched down yesterday - luckily all a few miles south. </p>
<p>Now we are looking for a little more luck on the last final which is tomorrow - yay! No SATs for DD this weekend. She leaves for S. America on Tuesday and with her last final on Friday it just seemed like too much. Good luck to all the test takers.</p>
<p>I was terribly messy as a kid, clothes on the floor, papers thrown toward the garbage can but not necessarily IN, etc. My locker at school was always messy. My purse was never neatly organized. My college dorm room was messy. My office at work was messy. My house is still messy.</p>
<p>In the grand scheme of life, when it’s important to our kids to be neat and tidy they will. And if they’re like me, it just won’t ever be that important.</p>
<p>Ms Pearl-i think a lot of good motivated kids are acting the same ways-my daughter is-She has her second SAT tomorrow-needs to do better-her scores just do not reflect her average-she plans on going over to her boyfriends tonight etc etc. we all the drill-We can’t do it for them-at this point we can sway their actions but me keeping her in her room tonight is not going to help matters-she’ll defy me and not do what she should-so we compromise-she goes until 6-Summer is here-AP’s are over and these kids just want school to be OVER-they do need to realize college is not far away and work spent now will pay off later-that’s our job to remind them-but we can’t make them-that’s why boards like this help us as parents we are not alone-we all have teenagers-and most are like yours and mine-people just don’t advertise it-you only hear about the perfect ACT/SAT child with 10 AP’s etc etc Good luck-</p>
<p>mspearl - This is a very tense time for all of our kids, trying to finish the school year strong and juggle college prep and tests. Today I had a similar harsh morning with my son. Today is his last full school day, Monday starts final exams (which are two a day and the second final is done by 11:45 am). It was bittersweet as I made him his last Junior Bag lunch this am but it was just plain bitter after I asked him on the drive to school if he had completed the three things that needed to be done by today ( SAT prep work, community service hours for NHS, a missing English assignment). He blew up at me. I reminded him that today was the last day and that he may not speak to me in that manner ever, but especially since my questions were only for his benefit not mine. The English assignment (that he was absent for originally d/t a math team competition) he claims will be waived. He wants me to stop bugging him about the NHS hours and I never got the SAT prep work answer.</p>
<p>I am so over this school year…and maybe next. This same kid was holding my hand in public last week (his doing) and very sweet and pleasant in general…a few days ago. Is it boy hormones? Immaturity that is threatening to become chronic? Or is it just end of the year stress coupled with his trying to cut the apron strings? IDK. But right now I am ready for empty nesthood!!!</p>
<p>D was home for 24 hours (and cleaned up nicely for her sister’s 8th grade graduation and a nice dinner out with the grandparents) and is now off to ARML. The school year will officially be over when she returns Saturday night (and when the teachers turn in their grades – there are still some mysteries out there, though D tells me that I’m being overly nervous).</p>
<p>I asked D about drivers ed this summer and was turned down flat. At this rate, her sister will be driving her everywhere! </p>
<p>Is everyone ready for the college application push? I’m insisting on at least one completed essay before MathCamp in July. There’s just no time in August before school starts up again. In theory, she’s on board. We’ll see what happens in practice.</p>
as far as the mess in kids room others on CC are experiencing: I have no advice and if I did it probably wouldn’t work! Lol. </p>