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<p>I don’t know. We could also teach them to point out and fight injustice when it occurs…especially when it’s happening to somebody else who can’t defend themselves, of course.</p>
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<p>Of course, this is correct. But we, as parents, have the benefit of maturity, experience after HS and perspective. When you’re 17 or 18, you just don’t have this. If your senior is mature and has a good self-esteem, they can certainly do their best to put it all in perspective, while looking forward to college, but it often hurts on some level. </p>
<p>Over the years, the same kids in our district have gotten all the awards. Our senior awards ceremony isn’t until next Thursday (with the varsity awards on Tuesday); curious to see how this goes. It’s a dinner and the awards ceremony - I hope it goes better than what malan89 had to sit through!</p>
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<li>Awards can (usually) be unfair in the sense that many rely on subjective standards.</li>
<li>When there are humans involved, things are usually subjective.</li>
<li>In the long run, high school awards won’t matter much, if at all.</li>
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<p>I keep saying this over and over. It helps!</p>
<p>pizzagirl, no one is disagreeing that’s it’s great to spread the wealth and recognize as many positive things as we can in our children. What I’m saying is that the stated, publicized criteria should be respected and adhered to in the decision-making, and the award should match the recipient. If you want to value the kid who is a real team player, always cheers for his/her teammates, that’s great. Give him the team spirit award then. The problem is when the coach gives him the athletic ability award while the kid with tremendous athletic ability receives nothing. Any time people decide to violate the established award criteria for their personal agenda–even if that agenda is well-meaning–there’s a problem. If the math award is supposed to go to the top math student, but darn it, it’s a boy again this year and the teacher’s a woman and really wants a girl to win it for once, it’s still wrong to give it to the girl. Stick with the criteria, or create a second or different award to accomplish your agenda. One coach really wanted to honor a certain athlete, but couldn’t justify giving him MVP. So he gave him the consistent performer award. Sure he created an award just for that kid, but it was appropriate, it fit the student, and he didn’t gyp the MVP to do it.</p>
<p>D had her first graduation “practice” yesterday. She mentioned a couple of odd things (in my opinion). It is a Catholic school with a graduationg class of 154.</p>
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<li><p>The children whose parents attended the school get special recognition as part of grad ceremony. They get their diplomas with the parents walking up with them. To me, this is totally ridiculous. 
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<li><p>There are 4 speeeches. The Val & Sal each give a speech, and the best friends of each of them talk about the Val & Sal. This seems really ridiculous to me. The graduation is NOT about the Val & Sal. It should be about the entire class. :(</p></li>
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<p>In response to post 343:</p>
<p>In our hs, I do think that a smaller percentage is subjective and that is what creates much of the hurt feelings. Most of these awards are objective. Examples of the objective awards: NMF, NM commended, 4 year of a club or activity, president of a club, lead person for a club, person with the highest score on a departmental exam, etc. These are all objective awards. There are a few awards that are subjective, at least in part, and I can point to many students that would qualify for some of these awards. That is where hurt feelings come in.</p>
<p>Our academic/athletic awards ceremony was last evening and I think our teachers did a fairly good job of awarding the honors. The one girl who received multiple awards was not one of the three tied for valedictorian but by my son’s estimation, should have been val. He said that she was not eligible due to a period of time spent in South America. I will admit that I was a little disappointed that my son was not honored in a subject area that I thought that he excelled in, but he was happy and I am glad that the girl who got the awards received them. Sadly, she was not at the ceremony to hear all of the wonderful things said about her because she was competing in an event for her sport. This has been a good thread for me to read which I have read from start to finish. I often need help keeping things in the proper perspective. I think our school did a good job of stating what was being awarded and how they were chosen. I am sure that there was some unevenness (my son’s academic scholarship was not mentioned while his close friend/rival’s was) but I think that was because the college of his rival sent the award letter to the school. We know, and our close friends know, that our son also got a scholarship. And, I remind myself of his experience at middle school promotion: he was a top award recipient, one of 3 speakers chosen at the morning program, and spent the evening at home playing video games by himself because he wasn’t invited to any of the parties. Four years later, he still has the top grades, didn’t get individual honors, but has many friends and is so much happier than he was 4 years ago. I like his status now.</p>
<p>^ Good post. When we highlight to our child the positive developments we’ve seen occur in his life, that goes a long way toward serving as a buffer for both the child and ourselves when these hurts come their way. They shouldn’t let awards or the lack thereof define them, but this is easier for some kids than others. One reason that I was just as angry but not nearly as agitated or troubled when S was slighted, was that he was a very self-assured kid who knew who he was and what he had accomplished. In short, he was never particularly vulnerable to peer pressure or in need of external validation. This is not true of D, however. Maybe some of it is the gender difference and the fact that the majority of the adults in question who overlooked her are men. While I know it’s important for me to help her process this, anything encouraging I say she writes off as “You’re my mom; of course you think that.” Also, this kind of stuff has happened to her an awful lot and she’s really beaten down. How do we help our kids when they encounter this?</p>
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<p>It will be interesting for you to see whether this affects her carreer choice or future at all.</p>
<p>I am a lawyer. As I’m sure you know, there are basically two types of practices in big law firms: Litigators, who go to court, and transactional attorneys, who do corporate and real estate deals. </p>
<p>Lawyers are usually pretty good at choosing which field to go into, based on personality type. The litigators either Win or Lose. There is actually a third party (judge or jury) who says “you win” or “you lose.” I always think litigators have personality types that need the definitive affirmation. I am a transactional lawyer; I don’t need attention or affirmation - I just want to get the deal done, smoothly, effeciently, and in a way that satisfies my client.</p>
<p>There are other “win or lose” careers also - sales for example - you win the big account or you don’t. The military, of course, where you can truly win or lose battles.</p>
<p>In the future, your D might seek a carreer that gives her literal affirmation, or she may be content doing a job with little recogntion.</p>
<p>Well, supposedly businesses like recruiting athletes for sales because they’re competitive!</p>
<p>GFG, we help our kids when they encounter this by reminding them that this is HS; it will be over in the blink of an eye, and that in life there is always someone prettier, thinner, richer, and with nicer toys and the sooner you stop keeping track, the happier you will be in your own skin and with your own life and choices.</p>
<p>Get past it yourself and your D will take her cue from you. But if you are always watching to see who is bending the rules to give the math award to a girl and not the guy with the highest GPA or sniffing out which coach gave preferential treatment to another athlete you will miss out on all the joy that goes with appreciating your kid- and to heck with the awards.</p>
<p>I never heard of any other school having the Val and Sal’s friends talk about them at graduation. That is very odd and seems inappropriate. After all, even though the Val and Sal traditionally give speeches that day, the intent of the speeches is to celebrate and send off the entire graduating class. Thus they’ll talk about any significant school or world happening that occurred during those 4 years, and will express the usual platitudes about succeeding in life.</p>
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<p>Can you focus on the fact that she’s going to freakin’ Stanford (and again congrats to her!), so whether she sweeps the hs awards or not doesn’t mean anything? She already won a “trophy” that is BIGGER than all of the trophies being given at these senior awards.</p>
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<p>That is SUPER obnoxious. So now everyone can play out BFF’s in front of the whole school. Blech. Reason #3,251 that you couldn’t pay me to go back to hs!</p>
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<p>In my family, there are 3 kids within a year of one another - my nephew, who just graduated and will be attending HYP, and then my two, who are rising seniors, and who will be applying to some excellent choices but HYP et al is simply not in the cards for them. How should they react to their cousin winning “the big prize” of HYP? Should they be resentful, or should they just be happy for his success and secure in the knowledge that they don’t need to compete with him in any way, shape or form – that they need to do what they have to do? </p>
<p>There are big life lessons in this, theGFG. It’s one thing that hs kids don’t have the perspective to understand that hs doesn’t matter, but I agree that you need to model for her the belief that “ah, well, so you didn’t win the senior award for X. Look at all you have accomplished, you’re going to Stanford, so it matters not in the least that a high school filled with people you’ll never see again didn’t ‘honor’ you beyond, oh, being sal and team captain and scholar-athlete.”</p>
<p>I still find your posts to have a lot of “she deserves … she’s entitled to” about them, and I’m asking you to consider why it’s so important that an already-“decorated” person needs to collect more minor trophies when she’s already won a big one.</p>
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<p>The kid with tremendous athletic ability has ALREADY won state or regionals or whatever. Why do you keep saying that kid “receives nothing”?</p>
<p>Early in my career I learned that the person in the biggest office with the biggest bonus and the fanciest title was often NOT the most productive, or most talented, or even the “best” employee. It was frequently the person who was skilled at walking that fine line between sycophant and politician (shareholders be damned.)</p>
<p>If any of your kids are emerging into the grown up world with the mistaken belief that the trophies get handed out to the “best”… they have many disappointments ahead of them. Please- model some high minded behavior for them while they are still in HS so they can get over all of this before they become adults.</p>
<p>Don’t any of you work for morons in your real life? And haven’t you communicated to your kids that the recognition doesn’t always go to the person who “deserves it”? Why feed a kid’s sense of entitlement by belaboring the point that someone else got an award that they were technically supposed to get?</p>
<p>We help our kids develop a sense of self by showing them that some stuff just doesn’t deserve the “mental real estate” it will occupy in our brains.</p>
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<p>Some might say that the kid with tremendous athletic ability receives an unfair boost in being recruited to play at a top university, when they might feel that the “award” for admissions should rightly be based only on academic potential / promise and not ability to kick / catch / throw / hit a ball (or whatever sport). Maybe that’s equally as “unfair” as the state-athletic kid getting looked over for the high school’s top athlete award.</p>
<p>Good grief. If the school had an award for “Most Outstanding Artist,” would you think it would be OK not to give it to the actual most outstanding artist just because that person is going to a top art school? Sometimes people feel they are entitled to something because of the work they’ve put in to achieve it–when that isn’t recognized, they can feel cheated.</p>
<p>I don’t see the point in any of this. I mostly felt that my school’s stance against academic competition was excessive and pretentious, but to the extent that it prevented all this drama over senior awards, I’m grateful for it.</p>
<p>There was a cookout for seniors who had no cuts, and diplomas were received in the order that we joined the community, with those who had attended the school for 14 years getting theirs last. Otherwise, there wasn’t any public recognition around graduation lauding any student’s individual achievement. </p>
<p>If the English faculty thinks you are super wonderful, they can tell you and your parents what a joy it was to teach you and how much they will enjoy seeing your future success. That’s at least as meaningful, and far less divisive, than handing out an English award.</p>