<p>I want my children to be responsible, not afraid to challenge themselves and happy, even if their idea of happy isn’t my idea. If either of them end of leading “normal” lives that is fine, so do I.</p>
<p>"The replies so far are quite composed, mature and dripping with wisdom. That is the “right” answer. "</p>
<p>So, because I didn’t give you every single detail of how or why I came to the ability to change my view of success, it is viewed as trite? It was tough, really stinking tough to see S1 make some of the decisions he did, but for his sanity, mine, and our relationship as parents we had to step back and ask what defines success. Right now, for him, this does not include college. That was difficult to swallow. He is however awesome at his job, well liked and respected there and great at home. He handles his finances, car, etc., on his own. These are things that some students won’t do for years while they live in the cushion of college. He is showing positive forward motion, personal growth. The point is to be moving forward, not stagnant. Did I think success would look much different for him 5years ago? You bet! When I see his peers returning home from their first year of school, hear of not so stellar grades, a lot of money mismanaged, and a good deal of partying… I look at my son who is taking personal responsibility and think of all the goals he has achieved, and thank God I can kiss him goodnight. There are parents who can not, and would give anything to. How’s THAT for politically correct?!</p>
<p>*My job is to make sure he doesn’t settle for vanilla or average since he has the tools to reach higher and accomplish more so no, now that you asked, I damned well won’t let him settle for being average. *</p>
<p>Interesting.</p>
<p>I have a D who read middle school level when she was in 2nd grade & adult level when she was in 4th. It was a PITA in some ways, because try and find material that challenged her vocabulary but with appropriate thematic content.</p>
<p>However while being an early reader is something great-grandparents love- like having Shirley Temple curls, it doesn’t really mean that much.
( Although it did mean, I had to encourage her to expand her comfort zone- try a t-ball team for instance)</p>
<p>Both my kids are amazing- they have already had more achievements and opportunities than I did when I was 15 years older. But I don’t need them to be superstars for me to enjoy their company- I am more secure than that I hope.</p>
<p>I have tried to raise my kids to be compassionate, to not be afraid to fall or get up again, to find beauty and joy in the world- if they can do those things- they are amazing successes.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with Average.
We have two kids + a dog. We make the median income for US, we are involved in our community and are stunningly average and happy as clams.
Pretty great if you ask me.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well said (unless off course all of us live in Lake Wobegon where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average,” 
)</p>
<p>" have tried to raise my kids to be compassionate, to not be afraid to fall or get up again, to find beauty and joy in the world- if they can do those things- they are amazing successes.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with Average.
We have two kids + a dog. We make the median income for US, we are involved in our community and are stunningly average and happy as clams.
Pretty great if you ask me."</p>
<p>I agree with you.</p>
<p>What is average? Most people have a diversity of strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, most of us live in a cacoon of sorts… Building our sense of average and not average of a given attribute from the tiny world around us… Mr. Far above average genius in high school X or Miss Far above average athlete in town y might just be deemed ‘average’ in the bigger universe, or what mAde them stand out in high school is no longer meaningful or relevant to success or happiness as an adult.</p>
<p>You want trite? I don’t push, but I water. I water my kids, give them sun and rich earth, and hope they grow up into the most healthy tallest happiest flowers they were meant to be. My kids suck at some things and that is soooo oerfectly okay…they are exceptional with other things. My job as watered has been to support them, find things when they were younger to uncover their interests and strengths, give them a great enriched environment in terms of school, exposure to diversity, life experiences, travel… often with the theme to view the world as a candy store of possibilities… There is no one narrowly defined measure of achievement, no one career, one right way to live. </p>
<p>They are finding themselves and I’m also discovering who they are. They share our values of doing well in school only to keep all doors open since they can’t possibly know what their adducts selves will want to do with their life, they are good people with character, they have compassion, and they follow through on their commitments.</p>
<p>Each are different people and will morph into hopefully interested, happy people that can live the independent life they’ll choose for themselves. How the heck am I supped to know if they are average, above average or whatever and what relevance does it has anyway? As an adult, I don’t think in terms of where I fall in some imaginary bell curve, and why would I? I just know I very much love my life.</p>
<p>I actually think it’s unhealthy for kids to grow up with a constant reference point. To other people. What a set up for misery and insecurity! I know a teen who truly excels at everything- always class Val, top athlete etc,- she can’t live with herself not always being ‘the best’… And you’d think she was happy yet she’s constantly miserable, never good enough because there is always someone better than you at something. It’s an impossible standard. This girl was recently hospitalized for over a month because she almost died- quite literally- from a combination eating and exercise disorder.</p>
<p>blueiguana: I had always figured both of my students would go to college right after high school, and they did, but my son “loved” college too much (but not his classes) and the middle of his third semester decided to join the Air Force. I was actually very happy as I knew I wasn’t going to send him back to college for a fourth semester unless he had a miraculous change. My family was shocked that someone so smart, and he is that, would not succeed in college. Entering the military as an enlisted member and not an officer was also a big culture shock for my family. </p>
<p>He is now at boot camp and from his letters he is holding up, but missing home pretty badly. My family has finally gotten used to the idea that he is doing this and now some members think maybe one of his cousins should do the same thing after high school, although his cousin’s parents still have a big stigma against a child of theirs joining the military as an enlisted member. It isn’t the worry of going to war, it is the “stigma.” I think everyone is waiting to see how my “regular” son matures and prospers. It will be interesting.</p>
<p>I have dealt with the sad looks from friends of mine whose same aged sons are off at college, but with a very few exceptions, I actually think my son finally made a better choice. Most of his friends are majoring in areas where the jobs are few and far between and they aren’t keeping the best GPA, so they aren’t going to be as competitive in this market and last, some of them are accumulating a lot of student loan debt to do this. Only one of my friends told me that she wished her son would follow suit because she knows he is wasting his time at college. </p>
<p>I am confident that this is what my son needed to do and being regular, if he does take advantage of all the educational opportunities the military offers, will prove to be to his advantageous. We will only see, but in any case, both his father and I are very proud that he is trying to fix his mistakes in a legal responsible manner.</p>
<p>Proud_mom,
My heart and thoughts are with you. Enlistment was, and still is, and option S1 has in consideration. I don’t think it’s the best option for him, but that’s his decision, and the blunt fact is ‘It’s not my father’s Army anymore’. My idea of what an ‘enlisted-grunt’ is and goes through is decades old, so I have to let go of that as well. There are paths of success through the armed forces that can offer so much for many non-traditional students. My family is not military, my husbands is. So the support is there.<br>
I’m sure the lack of communication from your son (ie letters vs. text) is hard and lends to more worry. It would me. It sounds like your son made a decision to do sometime he could believe in, something he was proud of. He wasn’t content to sit another semester at school. Good for him…and good for YOU for supporting him. That support is much harder to come by than many people realize.</p>
<p>^ you two sound like the kind of parent I aspire to be, but not sure I’d have the strength to rise to the occasion as you have.</p>
<p>I wanted to quickly toss out, there has been a very specific time where I accepted ‘average’ and refused to push for more. I spoke earlier of S1… this is about S2 who is the classic good student and just finished his Jr yr.
You have to know your student, know their limits, know what’s going on in their classes…not every assignment but overall. My son wasn’t kicking it out of the park this year in APChem. Having been the first … non-A he’d ever gotten, I started to get on him a bit. Are you prepping your labs? Doing your hw when it’s assigned, not in a rush when it’s going to be collected, etc. Through a couple of months of following progress and asking what the heck is up he finally gave up that 90% of the kids in the class cheat and most of them still have grades lower than his. My son doesn’t bs me. Integrity is everything to us. We talked about it some and I left it alone. I backed off completely. I did not want to pressure him to the point where at one bad, stupid moment he decided to go with the crowd and disrespect himself by cheating. That may happen someday. No student is a saint, but I did not want it to happen because I put and insane amount of pressure on him.
So he got a B in lecture and a B+ in lab. Average to some. Honorable and exceptional to us!</p>
<p>btw- He blew the other kids away on the SAT2 Chem test from what I understand. An ‘A’ means very little if you can’t actually ‘do’ the work. AP scores should be interesting.</p>
<p>starbright- don’t be too impressed at this parent. It has not been pretty. It is a road. Success is a journey. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up 
We live in such a high-stress, dog-eat-dog area of the country. I grew up here so I am jaded, not easily impressed by titles, inherited, earned, given by daddy, whatever. I don’t care what people DO, tell me who they ARE. Are they good husbands? Are they involved in their communities?
Most people when they see professional success overload…to extreme… get a bit immune. I want to know who you ARE, not what you DO.</p>
<p>blueiguana,</p>
<p>BOTH of my sons, one 15.5 and the other 12, told me that cheating is rampant at their high school and middle school. My oldest told me that he was the ONLY person who didn’t cheat on his honors chemistry class. He said they all used their cell phones to bring in formulas to the test. How/why the brainless teacher didn’t monitor all the kids looking at cell phones during the test is inexcusable. </p>
<p>But I haven’t called the school or emailed the teacher or yelled at my kid. He failed the final and ended up with a C in that class. That is fine by me if that is his best effort because he didn’t cheat to get higher. </p>
<p>Same story with the little guy who swears up and down that the parents of his friends help them with assignments and that is why they get higher grades. I am sure it isn’t 100% true but he is right about one thing – he does his own work. </p>
<p>It will pay off later, like you said, when they have to take a standardized test and cheating won’t be so easy or in the Real World when, shockingly, you do have to know this stuff.</p>
<p>^^Oh yes ACC I believe that. My kids also told me there is much cheating and much parental involvement. Mine are all in the upper quartile. I have no desire to “do” high school again let alone three more times so have no inclination to look over their shoulders unless they ask for help and then I won’t do the work for them just offer suggestions or direction. Clearly they don’t cheat…their grades just aren’t high enough. Yup average I guess. H and I are like blueiguana - don’t much care what others DO or what they HAVE and are far more interested in who they ARE. If we’re average, our house is average and our kids are average…well cool cause life is not bad and the kids are succeeding at life whatever that means.</p>
<p>Luckily/unluckily for my boys, I have no ability to help them with science or higher math. I couldn’t do it for them if I wanted. I am quite the internet sleuth, so I’d like to think I’ve taught them to be resourceful. When you don’t understand something ‘google’ is your friend. Verify your source, but if you are totally stumped on something and not near your professor, and your bff isn’t answering your texts, you may be able to find the answer yourself. Sans that, go in at 6:30am and see your prof BEFORE school.
The cheating bothers me. I don’t know why. Well, I do. Those kids are puffing up their GPA, inching up their class rank, which does affect my boys. In admissions it will be determined if they took enough APs for their school…based on what the other ‘top’ students are taking. S2 takes what he can while keeping a 3.85uw…balance. This has amounted to several ‘honors’ or pre-AP as we call them, and 6 full APs by graduation. This will actually fall short of his peers as he is in the top 5%. There was certainly changes there with end of the year grades. He should still stay in the %, but I think the key is top 10%.
My point being, the false sense of achievement other students show, may make my son’s honest achievement pale. That is the frustrating part. Your classmates do become your direct competition. We have three VERY competitive state schools…so it does matter. No guaranteed admissions etc. The top 10% (70kids) are going to be applying for MANY of the same schools. Our state schools are very well regarding and students are thrilled for admissions.
For this reason, I can say my son is very ‘over’ high school. I know he will enjoy his sr. year, but the level of cheating is so profound, for students that don’t need to, and take it so casually. He has lost respect for so many of his peers. Again, my kids are not saints and are not immune to poor decisions. The realization of the sheer numbers of kids that are not honest really pulled me back and helped me (I hope) adjust how I approach a not so stellar grade.</p>
<p>blue,</p>
<p>You are absolutely right. Desirable schools are getting harder and harder to get into and class rank is crucial and one is, in fact, competing against their peers of admissions and jobs and so forth. I appreciate the fact that you aren’t naive. </p>
<p>So, your/mine/other kids are in a difficult position. Cheat, like nearly everyone else, or watch peers get away with it and, according to my son, and like yours he doesn’t BS me, laugh about it the whole time. </p>
<p>I tell my kids not to do it. </p>
<p>No doubts. No hesitation. </p>
<p>If it isn’t earned it has no honor regardless of the consequences. </p>
<p>I believe eventually you will have to know the stuff in your field and that eventually if you are cheater it will catch up to you one way or the other. This is a case where standardized tests actually help the honest students because the number you get is legit. </p>
<p>I wish I had a better plan to deal with cheating by others but I can control what others do.</p>