<p>Actually, staying in lock-step with age peers during childhood is a recent aberration in parenting. It’s not the most healthy way to bring up children. </p>
<p>[Age</a> Segregation in School (Learn in Freedom!)](<a href=“http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html]Age”>Age Segregation in School (Learn in Freedom))</p>
<p>swatparent, you can do sports as a young one in HS. I was on my HS’s varsity soccer team at 12.</p>
<p>Lazybum.</p>
<p>There ARE students who are developmentally and intellectually advanced. But many aren’t. There is one 8 year old taking math classes with others ranging in age from 13 to 18 and she really looks like an 8 year old! A few years back, there was a 10 year old preparing for her A levels (the equivalent of APs) and again, she looked like a 10 year old. No one would confuse them with college-age students. Ditto the 11 year old boy who was studying quantum physics. I did not follow what happened to them. They were all homeschooled, but I think they were beginning to reach the limit of what was available outside of a university setting.</p>
<p>Tokenadult: I agree. Age segregation is a fairly recent trend, as is mass education. In pre-industrial societies, children were taught (if they were taught at all) quite often at home by tutors or in the local equivalent of the one-room school.</p>
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<p>I have heard this to be true for many PG kid families, but we’ve actually felt parenting our son to be easier than the average child is to parent and easier than most with extreme learning differences. We haven’t ever had to take the time to teach him how to read, for example (he caught onto that with no phonics or Baby Mozart tapes or flash cards or anything starting at age 18 months), or to use a toilet (he asked for a camera and I said, “Something doesn’t seem right to me about a kid in diapers having a camera, though I can’t put my finger on why that is, but let’s discuss this again once you are out of diapers” and that was it - he started using the bathroom that day, and later noted that he hadn’t before as he saw no reason to take time out of whatever he was doing to leave to another room when he could just go wherever he was and have someone else deal with his cr*p later when it was convenient for him) or to do most things children have to be taught to do. Some exceptions include learning to tie his shoes (I did teach him that), how to ride a bike (a friend taught him that as I have forgotten how myself, amazing that this might be), and how to tie a tie (his father tried to teach him this, though he actually ended up teaching himself later using instructions he found online).</p>
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<p>Thankfully, I find these exclusively online. In our 3D interactions, people do understand, especially if they have met our son and then they see just how very well-adjusted and happy and good with people he is.</p>
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<p>Yes, that is the same thing I noted…that some are developmentally advanced such that they blend in at young ages in college while others (like our son till he was 13) are clearly “standing out” due to their size or voice or whatever.</p>
<p>And this can cause for some confusion with some students, like my son attended classes in college without a parent, but the first year our son was in college, he was in a LINUX Users Group that met at night and my husband once drove him there and sat in the lecture hall playing some game on his Palm Pilot while our son took part in the session. A student in that group came up to me later that week and informed me that he thought it was my husband who was a member of the group and that he just brought his son along as he couldn’t find a sitter until our son opened his mouth and started answering questions for people asking for help, and then he realized it was just my husband who was along for the ride.</p>
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<p>Actually, your son’s undergraduate professors had the legal right to discuss his academic progress with you as long as he qualified to be claimed as your dependent on your tax return, according to the terms of FERPA (Family Educational Privacy and Rights Act.) This would be true even if he did not sign a waiver and regardless of his age.</p>
<p>As noted above, the rights under FERPA transfer from the parents to the student, once the student turns 18 years old or enters a postsecondary institution at any age. However, although the rights under FERPA have now transferred to the student, **a school may disclose information from an “eligible student’s” education records to the parents of the student, without the student’s consent, if the student is a dependent for tax purposes. Neither the age of the student nor the parent’s status as a custodial parent is relevant. **If a student is claimed as a dependent by either parent for tax purposes, then either parent may have access under this provision. (34 CFR § 99.31(a)(8).)</p>
<p>Source: [FPCO</a> Frequently Asked Questions](<a href=“http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/faq.html#q5]FPCO”>http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/faq.html#q5)</p>
<p>Many people do not realize this, but if parents claim children as their dependents on their tax returns, colleges do have the right (but not the obligation) to share information about their children’s academic records with them.</p>
<p>Wow, that is interesting, as I never heard the college student being a dependent for tax purposes had anything to do with whether students had privacy rights or not! Thanks for sharing that! Has it always been that way, do you know, or is this a change in the law in the past 8 years?</p>
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<p>It is certainly not a change in the past 8 years, but relatively few people know about this provision of the law. Until fairly recently, even some college administrators apparently did not realize that FERPA permitted the college to share information with parents who claim a child as their dependent for tax purposes.</p>
<p>Many colleges still do not exercise their option to share educational records information with parents of tax dependent students, even though FERPA allows them to do so. However, a growing number of colleges are starting to change their internal college policies to allow this.</p>
<p>Here is an article from the Cornell Sun discussing Cornell’s decision to take advantage of this provision in FERPA earlier this year.</p>
<p>[Cornell</a> Allows for Disclosure of Student Files | The Cornell Daily Sun](<a href=“http://cornellsun.com/node/27156]Cornell”>http://cornellsun.com/node/27156)</p>
<p>It’s interesting that the article only seemed to get one response and was out in February of this year.</p>
<p>I do think whatever the policy is for a college, they should let it be known, and at our son’s U, the policy was that college students of ANY age (dependent or not) had privacy rights unless the student waived it, or at least this was how it was stated to us by several people working at the U (including the Honors College director, I believe), so my guess is their understanding of the law wasn’t clear. My husband and I happen to believe that if a student is under 18 or is a dependent whose college bills are being paid even in part by the parents, the parents should have a right to know what the child’s grades are (and that the child is indeed enrolled and passing classes). Ideally, children would just give that information to parents (as our son has, but it’s likely been easier for him as his grades have been high), but in the case of the girl from U of Alabama who had a 3.6 GPA her first year at age 15 and then got caught up in sex and drugs and got a 1.9 GPA and was tossed off the campus while her parents were never informed of any of this (and we continuing to pay her room and board as her scholarship only covered tuition), that was nuts (especially as the U promised the parents they would look after the girl, and had heard rumors of what was going on with her well before she got the 1.9 GPA).</p>