I’ve known a young man, now 30, since he was a preteen. His dad was the manager of a fast food chain. His siblings normal, but this man shone bright. Eccentric. Not as strange as Young Sheldon. His dad drove him to local colleges to attend advanced classes (along with my son). He went to a top,tech college on full aid, then grad school. He lived in his office for years cuz rents n the area were so high. He flew back for a local wedding, he bought his suit at a thrift store, and it hung loosely. Plus, it was black, and we are in SE Fl. I have many memories of this fine young man, but he got were he did based on his intellect and character.
To “get into highly selective colleges” you need to apply to highly selective colleges. Applying has a strong SES dependence. For example, the study at http://www.nber.org/papers/w18586.pdf concludes:
Some members of my family grew up in a small, low SES, rural community where the vast majority did not attend college, and a large portion of students did not complete HS. Instead most stayed in the community after graduating, often working on the family farm. I’m told that the oldest sibling in the family was the first person from the HS to ever apply to a highly selective college. Her siblings also attended highly selective colleges. I doubt any of them would have applied without pressure from their mother and perhaps having seen that their older sister did it.
I think that’s it a bunch of factors. For my girls probably the fact that their great grandmother graduated from Radcliffe and their grandmother from Northwesten (and their parents too) that sewed the seeds of a family legacy of elite schools ( though they didn’t attend those schools themselves)
Not sure this link will come through, but this is a fun story about 4 sisters who all went to MIT (one is still there, I think):
Above all else, in my opinion, is the value placed on education and being the best you can be. From a very early age, we have fostered the importance of college, a great education and always doing your best work. Our kids don’t see that as a burden, but know it is the expectation.
They never got to miss school because they were tired or didn’t “feel good”. Never missed a day so we could go on a long weekend or any of that stuff. Didn’t plan trips outside of normal school vacations (you’d be surprised how many families we know would pull kids out of school for a week to go skiing a week or two after XMAS break ( they got a better deal or something). Have always encouraged reading.
So just setting the environment.
^ Should have mentioned - wife is an elementary school teacher so it’s kind of in our blood. She took several years off until youngest was in junior high (yes we are fortunate we could afford her to do that). However, from the day they were in Kindergarten, she was always volunteering at school, so much so that some thought she worked there. Not just the regular home room mom stuff but tutoring kids in the library, helping in the office, etc. My kids saw that and just interpreted it as school is the place to be. I did my part by coaching several sports for many years (and always instilling education first in my messages to the players).
“They never got to miss school because they were tired or didn’t “feel good”. Never missed a day so we could go on a long weekend or any of that stuff. Didn’t plan trips outside of normal school vacations (you’d be surprised how many families we know would pull kids out of school for a week to go skiing a week or two after XMAS break ( they got a better deal or something). Have always encouraged reading.”
We always encouraged reading, too, but we’ve taken the opposite approach to attendance. As an entrepreneur and business owner, I like to hire people that are focused on results not butt time in the chair. There are times when I - or my employees - need to stay late or come in on a weekend to solve issues and other times when everything is on track and we leave early. Our success is much more dependent on making sure we are results oriented than that someone worked their scheduled 8 - 5 and that’s what I want my kids to learn.
Nobody is admitted to college based on their attendance record. Colleges make admission decisions based on grades and that’s what we focus on, too. Does that mean we take a ski trip in the middle of school? No. But that does mean in situations like last week where he was a finalist in a national math modeling competition and the organization flies the finalists to New York to present their projects we take an extra two days off before the presentation to explore the city and have fun as a family. Does that mean if my son who is a senior, who has straight As right now, who also works and does outside projects wants to take a non-test day off school I let him? Yep. Because our goal isn’t that he have the government mandated “butt time”, it’s about the results. And he’s getting good results.
I was guilty of taking my kids out of school to travel. I took kids all over the world when they were little. I liked their private school because they were always accommodating with kids taking time off for ECs (competitions) and family travel. My kids always did their work and took make up tests.
In my extended family we have 6 nephews and nieces, my siblings each had 2 kids. My brother’s 2 kids and my kids all went to Cornell. My sister’s 2 kids went to JHU and Chapel Hill. We didn’t live in the same region, we were spread out at West coast, South and NE. What’s the chance of that? The one that went to Chapel Hill felt she was a bit of a black sheep.
We raised our kids differently. My sister was more about do whatever you want. My brother was more heavy handed about what his kids had to do. I was more of in-between. I think our common thread was we all viewed education as very important. The kids were expected to do well in school and were expected to go to college (not just any college). We were also lucky that our kids didn’t have any LD. There is hard work and there is luck too.
“They never got to miss school because they were tired or didn’t “feel good”. Never missed a day so we could go on a long weekend or any of that stuff. Didn’t plan trips outside of normal school vacations. Have always encouraged reading.”
Well I failed on ALL of those and yet both of mine attended elite schools.
In addition to a family history of elite school attendance and an attitude that college was expected as naturally as kindergarten, there was a fair amount of luck involved too.
We didn’t plan family vacations outside of school after grade school though because frankly in grade school my early good readers ( pure genetic luck) and natural mathematicians weren’t missing much by missing school then and did t have to do anything to catch up. Later it would have been too hard.
Also once they started high school I left it up to them whether they needed a day off because they were tired or slightly under the weather. This really allowed them to take charge of their own education in ways that were surprising to my husband whose parents never let him stay home from school. It was sometimes me saying, “ that’s really a bad cold, don’t you want to stay home” and them looking at me like I was nuts and saying “ I cannot miss school. I’ll keep my distance from people.”
It would be interesting to study the impact of the approach to attendance and later achievement. I’ve always allowed my kids to stay home whenever they wanted to - and have planned family vacations during school. But, I’ve also expected them to get good grades and always do their best work. As a result, they’ve learned they can only do their best work if they actually go to school;)
One is at an ivy, almost always attends class and is doing well. Another is at a top prep school, also doing well, and has yet to miss a class…
We were more like poster #44. School has always been a fun and positive place for my daughter where she wanted to be. Fevers, vomiting - yep, stay home. Runny nose and tickle, go to school. As she got older, we let her make the call but she hasn’t missed a day of school since a funeral in 7th grade. There were plenty of days where I thought her cough was bad enough to stay home, but she felt it was more stressful to miss a day of work. I think there could have been better balance for us. That said, she got her summer job because of her perfect attendance record as the owner told her he was sick of kids calling off all the time, and wanted someone who would honor their commitment. This worked out great for her as she ended up getting extra hours when people called off because she was the boss’ first call.
But I’m guessing even the job analogy supports my point. For minimum wage, union and most government jobs - the key factor for “success” is showing up and putting your butt in the seat when you’re scheduled to be there. And that’s fine for those jobs. But those jobs aren’t going to be a good fit for my son and aren’t what he would be interested in anyway, so training him for that isn’t helpful.
My son who doesn’t have nearly a perfect attendance record instead got a job because of the recommendation from his calc professor who talked about how DS can understand and use advanced concepts like few other people can. So instead of getting a minimum wage job, DS has a part time job where they value his skill and creativity - he can work from home, he can make his own schedule, he can decide how many hours to work - because it’s all based on his output or work product. It pays more than minimum wage but that’s not the best part - I’m pretty sure the recommendation his boss (owner of an investment firm) sent in was what got him into UChicago which was his top choice school.
There’s no one best answer. Some kids may need a parent that makes them attend school no matter what, some don’t. It’s also important to think about where your kid is going to fit and achieve and give him/her the skills to do that. Attendance isn’t even going to be on the radar for the stuff DS is going to do, so not a hill for us to die on teaching him.
We get wrapped up in doing things because we “should” or because others will judge us if we don’t… I think attendance at school is one of those things for a high achieving student. Different story for a student who is struggling or in need of learning certain skills. But there is no inherent benefit in perfect attendance for a student that’s doing well and handling his/her responsibilities.
I’ll never forget the time at an elementary awards ceremony–they called one of the kids for the perfect attendance award. He sneezed on the way up to the stage, and he sneezed on the stage. The moms groaned.
I don’t have a pov on attendance one way or the other- my parents were teachers and so they were pretty insistent on us going to school unless we were deathly ill; I was a little more chill with my own kids than they were.
But I will point out that now that I’m “old” and still working in corporate America, there is a definite generational shift in how younger folks (all college grads, many with Master’s degrees, all quite successful academically) view things like showing up on time, filling forms in accurately and before the deadline, etc.
Whether this is a by-product of upbringing, schooling, “everyone gets a trophy” thinking or what have you, I don’t know. I’m neither a psychologist nor a sociologist, so how the trend came about and what it means is above my pay scale. But the current crop of 20 year olds seems to have great difficulty with dumb and boring and routine administrative tasks and it is really irritating as a manager.
You file your taxes by April 15 (or 17, or 18, depending on the year and when Sunday falls out) because that’s what the IRS requires. Or you file an extension. Does it make sense? No. Is there an" inherent benefit" to use Milee’s words? Well sure- you avoid a penalty by filing and paying on time.
Most of our kids will likely end up in jobs which have regular staff or project management meetings. You get your agenda items to the meeting leader by a certain time or you don’t get your item discussed. Why? Because it’s unfair to the meeting leader to be revising an agenda midway through a meeting, and because other people need time to prepare if they’re going to be giving an update on your item. You fill out your expense report by XYZ date because the controller requires it in order to get your check the following week. You complete your enrollment for the benefits package you want by November 30th or your default is the plan you were on last year. You designate your investment options for your retirement plan by a certain date or you get the standard “no load diversified fund”. And if you really wanted the higher risk/return fund, you needed to fill out the darn form which takes all of 2 minutes.
These are routine tasks that many young people find very, very hard to do. I had someone in my office upset because he wanted to make an additional contribution to his retirement plan but the “company” screwed it up. Took a few days to investigate but it turned out he never filled out the form. OK. But now he’s aggravated because I won’t backdate the form for him. And the fund manager wouldn’t accept the backdated form anyway, even if I was willing to lie for this guy (which I’m not willing to do) because the IRS has rules on when you can contribute (hint- it’s too late for 2017). And my guess is that the heavily regulated funds industry has bigger things to worry about than people who can’t check off a box on a pre-printed form and email it to their company’s benefits department.
This is a ridiculous thing to be arguing about with an otherwise intelligent and successful professional. So from my perspective- teach your kids to get things done on time. Their boss, and bosses boss, will thank you some day. If that means also teaching them to go to school unless they are ill- hey, why not?
Since it is officially “Teacher Appreciation Week,” as a veteran classroom teacher I will weigh in on the idea of taking your kids on a ski vacation or trip to Ireland or cruise the week AFTER the two-week winter vacation: we would appreciate it if you DIDN’T do that. I mean really? Your snowflake may be able to bounce back just fine, but it sure signals your beliefs about the value of their classroom experience. It doesn’t really respect the teacher’s time or their classmates’ time, as accommodating your child’s special schedule involves some extra efforts before and/or after your family’s trip.
Most teachers are very understanding about weddings, funerals, illnesses, but the optional trips…we may “act nice” but we are really gritting our teeth.
Probably doesn’t affect your Harvard admission, but …
This could be about my wife’s family.
M&D graduates of Duquesne with D an elementary school teacher, M a substitute at the HS.
Children attended Stanford, CMU, Oberlin Conservatory, Philly Institute of Art, Cornell, Air Force Academy and SUNY New Paltz.
Parents valued education. Money was NOT an influence (7 kids on a teachers salary).
My best friend’s brother always seemed to get sick on Friday’s and Monday’s, like clockwork, giving him 3 and 4 day weekends! He was a smart kid but had little desire to try hard in high school, ended up at San Diego State (late 80’s when if you had a heartbeat and 2.5 GPA they accepted you). Contrast that with my best friend who always attended school and went to UCB in engineering. He did it all himself, parents never pushed him to go to college but his x-factor was he is the most competitive person I know and nothing was going to stop him from attending his dream school he wanted to attend since middle school.
The irony is the brother now has a net worth (tchotchke business) that is multiples of my best friend’s net worth.
First, if I could like @blossom 's last post a thousand times, I would.
We took kids out of school for a few days of Thanksgiving week, once, when they werre in 2nd and 6th grades, because it was the only time we could travel, and the first time we had a cent to do so. Teachers were in on the planning, and assured us it was okay. No time ever again. Learning to do things when you don’t want to is really important.
I teach college–i have had students miss a week of the semester for trips to Italy, Disneyworld, Iceland, etc etc. It is not a good look, believe me.
I’m so glad their horizons were widened. Good on them for making that choice. EVERY single time, it resulted in a lower semester grade. Also a choice.
My kids never ended with lower grades, and they took time off while in college too. We regularly took a week off in Thanksgiving, 2 weeks around xmas and 2 weeks in June. At work, my few trips a year, parent/teacher conferences, dance recitals were not negotiable, but they could have all of my other time. I’ve worked while on vacation, got on conference calls 2-4am with Asia, but my time with my kids were important to me. My performance at work and pay never suffered. D1 models after me at work now. She does what she needs to do to get her work done, which includes getting to work at 3am to do an Euro deal, but her weekends are hers and she takes her vacation.
I can’t stand it when people send their sick kids to school dosed with Tylenol to keep the fever down.
24 hours fever free. You are not doing anyone any favors, and your kid won’t get much out of it when their head wants to be on the desk. I have run into a Mom at drop-off who said her son was in the ER for IV fluids (bad stomach bug!) but “he’s fine now” and she was “off to Yoga, thank God!”
My friends son was coughing so hard he was barking. Pneumonia was going thru the school, they were taking temps when kids got off the buses…he had the end-of-season soccer party at his house, so his mom kept giving him DayQuil and sending him to school…double pneumonia. How many kids got sick because he “didn’t miss a day”?