Our school had a lot of rules surrounding requests for reccs. You couldn’t ask until after Spring Break junior year, and some teachers had other rules - one would only take the first 20 who asked, the APUSH teacher was so popular a writer that his rule was that he’d only write one for students who got a 5 on the APUSH exam… which of course you wouldn’t find out until July, so if you wanted another humanities teacher as a fall back and THEY were popular you had to ask them early too, the you had to beg the guidance counselor to let you request three teachers (because you also wanted a STEM teacher) through the system that typically only allows for two. It was a hot mess.
Re the second child and different option, yeah, I get that. My younger kid didn’t have as high test scores but, even more than that, pretty much announced he just didn’t want things to be that hard in college and he refused to consider the harder academic schools. Plus I really struggled with his criteria - he cared more about big sports and vibe, older kid wanted best engineering plus ability to compete in his sport. Older kids criteria just seemed so much…. Better. I really struggled with how S25 structured his list and search.
All that to say, he’s seeming so happy. Was his list as top loaded as S22s? No. But that’s ok. He’s found a good spot. Your guy will find a good spot too.
Costco won’t do Audi FOBs. You are correct that you have to go to dealership and that it will cost close to $800. Our FOB broke when we were replacing the battery. My husband is an engineer and he tried everything to make it work again but no luck. I’m sorry and feel your pain.
We just went through this with my daughter at her school. He should email the school nutritionist. At least at her school they have an allergy form and they are required to make her a safe meal behind the scenes. But the nutritionist will be able to give him all of his allergy free dining options.
This is a safe space to voice these feelings. The competeition for recs sound so stressful, and it’s okay to worry about options for your daughter.
I can’t criticize anyone for being neurotic. I freaked out on S25 yesterday when I saw he slept until after noon and missed a class. Of course I didn’t tell him that I knew he missed it, but he offered it up when I texted to check on him. And then I freaked out that he was going flunk out because of joining the frat. I acted a little nutty with him and had to apologize this morning. He told that he promises not to become a “ne’er-do-well” and I promise to work on not putting my anxiety on him. sigh
We have Life360. All 3 of my kids have told me it gives them a sense of security to know that we can find out where they are if anything happens. They are 27, 23 and 18. I hardly ever check it. But I will sometimes before I call, to make sure they aren’t in class or at work.
Fear not, I am feeling a lot of the same things about my S27 and how different his process will be compared to S25 (and yes, comparison is the thief of joy, right?). And also trying not to compare the two because while both kids are “smart”, they have very different interests and excel at different things. S27 needs to discover and articulate his strengths (and not just academic ones) more, where S25 has always been more confident and assured about what he wanted from the get go.
I think all we really want is for our kids to have the most options possible and it’s really hard to imagine or consider doors closing for them when the process has barely even started. It’s not bad that we feel this way - I think it’s because we love them and believe in them so much.
Also, I know they use it to track me! I’ll be playing pickleball and the minute I get into the car I will get a call. “I saw you are done playing, can you chat?”
We don’t have Life360 or the like, but as the kids were growing up and scheduling for the family started to get painfully complicated we set up separate Google calendars for each of the six of us that we could all view, plus an “entire family” calendar (that morphed into an “everyone living at our house” calendar as kids peeled away to college).
dfbspouse and I have started to wonder if we need to set up new calendars the kids don’t have access to, because now we get frantic texts like “i saw dad has an appointment with a cardiologist tomorrow is he okay???”
(No, it’s a standard visit to check on standard things, please chill kids, okay?)
FWIW, both my kids have the location function turned on for Find My Phone. I don’t check it often, but will look before I text because I don’t want to bug them if they are in the middle of something. My S25 asked me to use it when his phone was lost while he was on vacation (a friend accidentally threw it away - he wanted to see if the trash was still in the can on the boardwalk or if it had been picked up before he went sorting through the trash). I don’t think it’s that uncommon so as to merit a “whoa”.
The only reason we don’t have a location tracker is because I’m too neurotic to handle the information . When C25 started driving they shared their trip progress with us and that was enough for me to know that Life 360 would turn me into a basket case! We do have the shared calendar and it’s surprising to me how much the kids check it.
I fall into this trap mentally sometimes, and I suspect most people do. It is hard and nearly impossible to avoid from time to time. I try my absolute hardest for my kids not to sense it/feel it (as I imagine you do). Though my kids are opposite - which has its own problems - younger is the driven one (both are smart).
Kids know I have it and don’t care - if they asked us to turn if off, I am pretty sure I would w/o question. That said, I would be surprised if they do anytime soon.
My 25 year old is still on the family Life360 by choice. She could take herself off whenever she wants but she’ll often check on us if we don’t answer the phone to make sure we’re OK
; )
. When C25 started driving they shared their trip progress with us and that was enough for me to know that Life 360 would turn me into a basket case! We do have the shared calendar and it’s surprising to me how much the kids check it.