I get the idea that everyone on here really keeps their children’s nose to the grindstone and brooks no foolishness. There is is no question that academics is stressed more today than it was when I was in school. I was talking to a friend, and he told me he didn’t remember being told a single time that it was important for him to do well in school.
In my high school and college days the drinking age was 18 for beer in my state. When we graduated from high school we started to be invited to adult cocktail parties. The fact that I was 17 didn’t matter. I was out of high school. Most high school juniors and seniors drank beer on the weekends and most parents didn’t care. And yes, some parents essentially “hosted” parties, and the general consensus was that they were doing a good thing if they were keeping the kids off the road.
The world is different today. I know I stress academics far more than my parents did. High school kids are still drinking, but no parent in their right mind is going to allow them to congregate in the barn or basement or whatever. Sometimes I wonder if the double standard is fair. Anyway, any thoughts?
I was not pushed to the grindstone. In fact my parents told me to relax. I’m now I’m grad school and still don’t understand how to relax…
My parents did allow drinking between me and close friends. They figured we were going to do it and they rather we did it in a safer environment. Was it illegal? Yup but they would rather risk getting in legal trouble than letting one of us die while driving or of alcohol poisoning. (Fwiw we rarely took them up on this offer, maybe 5 times with 2 or 3 friends, and they never went out and got new alcohol. It was just whatever was in the house.)
I think if you’re using CC as an example, you are not going to get a sense of what the majority of parents are like. My parents would never even think of making a CC account or doing any college research for me.
After 18 my parents were fine with me drinking. The only thing my dad made a big deal about was not to drink and drive. And they wanted me to do well in school but they didn’t make a big deal about it. I did well enough on my own so they never bothered me about my grades.
I was reasonably studious in high school, and was not interested in any recreational drugs (including alcohol and tobacco).
On the other hand, college admissions pressure was not all that high back then, compared to now, since most colleges were much easier to get into and much less expensive (whether you look at list price, or net price after financial aid for lower income families) back then.
I was fairly studious, but not because of any parental supervision. My mom let me miss as much school as I wanted, for example, and I don’t recall her ever asking about my schoolwork, once I was maybe in middle school.
My kids grew up in a totally different environment, and they knew they had to build some kind of college resume and keep up their grades to go to the kind of schools THEY wanted to go to. I did what I could to help them, including lots of college search help, but if they would have said they wanted to start at community college, I would have been fine with that. My kids are not big drinkers, and at 19 and 21, they haven’t had more than a taste or so of alchohol in our home. The 21 yo is not interested, and the 19 yo was kind of “excited” to drink when we took them to the Caribbean. We are meeting up with family this winter, and I will let my 19 yo have alcohol if he wants it, but he has never asked at home. I would not allow them to do any drugs at home.
I was very driven in high school. I was upset if I got less than an A+ in any class! I’m not sure why I was that way. When I got to college, I discovered that there was more to life than grades and had much more fun.
I got good grades, but I was a problem teenager, too. My group drank and did some other things (sneaking out at night, dating older guys etc). We were “band nerds” but got in a fair amount of trouble. Apparently drugs were pretty big at my high school even back in late 60s (mainly pot, but some other stuff, too) but I never saw any of it. We were all about alcohol.
I was a good student in a small town. Beta Club, anyone? haha! I didn’t knock myself out though. I had a part-times job junior and senior year. My biggest concern was always my boyfriend!
I knew I would be attending a nearby directional state u. so there wasn’t any stress about college admissio
I was a goody-two-shoes too, but my brother wasn’t. Now I have 2 kids who also have totally different study temperments. That’s why I strongly believe nature plays a larger role than nurture.
My family emphasized education as much as I did with my kids. No grindstone, they were equally concerned with how we thought, challenged ourselves, and had some sort of adventurous spirit, experienced different things.
Oh, and they weren’t concerned about alcohol, seemed to think that if we experienced responsible drinking (this meant, at home,) we would be less tempted to use getting drunk as teen rebellion.
I had decent grades but could have done better. My school choices were limited due to finances. My kids grew up knowing that they would be able to attend any school they could get into so they were very motivated by that.
The rules, laws and consequences were very different in the 70’s. Drinking age in Illinois was 19 (beer and wine) in reality bars would let you in with a college ID. I was 17 my freshman year. My kids were HS juniors when they turned 17.
I hated school, wife liked it (I include college). I did fine except in math, and ended up with a Master’s. S16 has done well in everything except English and Biology. When he doesn’t like a class, he does next to nothing. He tests well, though. S18 probably likes school even less, but does well enough. Each is in a magnet program that I would never have wanted to tackle. Neither has been in any trouble. Both would rather go to a movie than a party.
I had a lot of fun partying in high school. it was pretty common in my town. My mother was pretty strict in terms of curfew ,but never really stressed that grades were a priority, unfortunately.
She never noticed when I came home on time that I had been drinking
It was always the goal to find a place to hang out without parental supervision…that usually meant the local beach
I raised my own kids to make education a priority , not look for any haven to hang out . Our house was the place where they could be with their friends and be safe . When I think about how lucky I was to get through my teen years unharmed, I chose not to tempt fate with mine.
My older girls drank a few times as teens but nothing compared to my own adolescence.
Our house still remains the place where friends are always welcome. Our youngest is not a drinker at all , but nevertheless, it is still the safe haven and will be
I was a rebel when I was much younger, probably ADHD, in my old country. Got I to lots of trouble at school, nothing with drugs. But certainly was the class clown. Then I came to this country and became studious. I was probably top 1% in high school in America. Same as in engineering school. But I mostly like math and science stuff, they are subjects that save my bacon. My kids are much more well behaved than I was, but I was the risk taker of my family. The try many things and failed and learned from them was definitely my motto because I lived through it. And oh I did party a lot my freshman and sophomore year. I had to keep up with the boys in my family.
I never cracked a book in high school. Ever. No studying, winging it on everything. Had to study a little more in college, but did the minimum to complete an engineering degree to the standards of the Air Force (over a 3.0). Plenty of partying, but that wasn’t relevant to the lack of studying. I just didn’t have a reason to study beyond the minimum required, and it wasn’t that interesting to me, though I did very well in subjects that I enjoyed. Both of my kids, I think, are similar. They do really well in subjects they are interested in, otherwise, they do the minimum. However, they have both managed to be quite successful in their lives, they’re just not motivated by academics.
I was a pretty straightlaced kid who liked school, but from time to time I did stuff that baffles me now. I ended up over my head in AP French and remember having to compare the two love affairs in a book I had only read about 1/3 of. Why it never occurred to me to at least read it in English I have no idea. The B I got was a pure gift. Some how I ended up at Harvard where I wrote at least one paper about Nietzsche having only read a half dozen pages. Got the exact same grade as I had on other papers for the course where I’d actually done the reading. Did not do drugs in high school, the only drinking I did was because my uncle said one needed to learn to drink cocktails - so at 16 I learned about daiquiris. And it’s true they made at least one college visit more fun!
To my surprise my kids won’t drink at all and I’m pretty sure neither has tried drugs either. The oldest blew off one English assignment freshman year discovering that a zero is much, much worse than spitting something out. The youngest was a bit of slacker, though I’ve only recently learned about some of the shenanigans he and his friends got up to when they are hanging around together. I’m glad I didn’t know at the time.
Was studious but not a grind. school came easy to me and I mostly liked it. Did a few weird risky things but they mostly didnt’ involve sex or drugs (rock n roll, though, yes.) My kids were pretty much the same. We each discovered expanded possibilities in college.
Studious Angel? - hardly. I was pretty much a B+/A- student all through school. All my old report cards had some version of “SyrAlum is a lovely girl with a lot of potential if only she would apply herself a little more”. I was one of those students who tested well and was put in honors classes but did the minimum or maybe a little more to get my grades. In high school my friends and I made a game of getting our homework done at lunch and in other classes so we didn’t have to do it at home. Looking back, I realize I didn’t work nearly as hard as my kids did in high school.
I spent high school in NYC in the mid to late seventies and the drinking age in NY at that time was 18. Every parent was petrified of drugs but alcohol produced an “eh” kind of attitude. By junior year we were all a year to a year and a half away from our 18th birthdays and most adults (parents, bartenders, law enforcement) had a more “relaxed” attitude towards teenage drinking. And of course, by end of senior year we were all of legal age to drink.
