Would You / Have You Ever.....

Parent Cafe
21

The one time I probably crossed the line was when we were flying home from Mexico after spring break. DS was REALLY stressed about getting everything done for the first day of class (and yes, he had worked his tail off during vacation, even taking his AP Bio book onto a dive boat).

When we got to Houston, they announced they were looking for volunteers to get bumped. The people would get large airfare vouchers, stay in a hotel overnight, and fly to Boston first class the next day. I took it on myself to volunteer DS and me. He studied hard at the hotel and felt much better the next day. I told the school we’d gotten bumped, which was true, but I probably shouldn’t have done it.

22

I did once…when a long term substitute refused to recommend my A English student for honors English the following year. I tried the GC with no success…so proceeded to the housemaster who settled the issue in my kid’s favor. Believe me, I was prepared to go to the Board of Ed if needed.

23

@abasket Many questionable instances have already been revealed, just not on this thread. When people have no self-awareness (hint: look for uncontrolled bragging), they spill a lot of beans ;:wink:

24

With kid’s knowledge: All the online geneaology research for the 7th grade social studies project about immigrants in your family. Also most of the formatting for the print-out. 10 generations back on my dad’s father’s side to a ship that arrived from England in 1647, and all her classmates cared about was that she is an immigrant herself (US citizen bi-national born abroad). I still have the file from the research though ?

Without kid’s or hubby’s official knowledge: All the junk mail addressed to them gets binned. Is it or isn’t it junk gets opened and then binned or filed or occasionally fessed up to if they need to know whatever it was.

25

Ok, I remember something I did, which may be kind of illegal and without D1’s knowledge (until I told her). I was up late at night reading a post on CC with a link to a school’s previous year acceptance portal. I clicked on it and used D1’s credential to log in. To my surprise, I got on the site and saw D1’s acceptance letter with previous year’s information. It was few days before the decision day for that school. I realized the school had loaded up accepted student’s information and was still working on the website. So I found out D1 was accepted to one of her top choices ahead of the actual decision day.

26

When S was in 8th grade and preparing for high school, those desiring placement in TAG (talented and gifted) classes were to write essays answering 3 questions. He was not a verbal or English oriented kid, though advanced in math and a leader in many ways. His essays were horrible!. He had been a reasonable writer in 5th grade and I realized that our lightweight middle school had barely given him a challenging writing assignment in those 3 years. Regardless, he turned in the essays, as they were his current uncoached effort (I think he had to go to his dad’s before I could offer much of an opinion) and he was placed in ordinary level classes where the teachers were just trying to maintain a modicum of interest in the subject. The high school realized the inappropriate placement, and advanced him in time to higher level classes.

Years later, when telling this story, another parent said to me, aghast, “What, you didn’t write the essay for him? Most of us did that.” I was and am appalled. Coaching, asking creative questions to bring out better skills and more depth is one thing, but doing the work is beyond the pale.

27

DH and I were definitely support staff rather than management throughout our sons’ educational careers. They didn’t really want guidance but wanted to hear things along the lines of editorial interpretation – i.e. “This paragraph in your essay makes the situation sound [adjective adjective], is that what you’re trying to say?” My greatest contribution was probably the reminder to close on a strong note. Most of the time I just quoted Elements of Style.

Both kids also liked having one of us quietly around. I don’t know if it was for reassurance or standby or whatever, but we jumped at the chance to be available to them. We have a stool that I’d bring in to their respective rooms and sit nearby with my book / needlework / whatever while they filled out the Common App. We call it College Stool to this day. It has also served as Grad School Stool, Job Application Stool, REU Stool, and Apartment Hunting Stool.

@happymomof1 LOL about the junk mail, I actually obtained blanket permission to make executive decisions about certain types of mail for all three of them. If I could have gotten signed releases I would have!

28

@oldfort You naughty person! LOL! If I could have done that, I would have :))

@MaineLonghorn I would have done that as well; in fact, I may have (I don’t remember) I do know my kids might have had a couple of ‘sick’ days when deadlines were crunching

So many tame parents here! :smiley:

29

Senior year of a High School I told my kids it was up,to them whether they went to school or not. If they needed a day off I would call and say they were sick. i did feel this just helped them make decisions in college about when to go. But that’s not why I did it.

I also edited my kids notes where they request a recommendation or wrote a than you note. I’m pretty good at it and have actually edited or helped write tons of these notes for their friends and friends of friends. Indeed I was part of a conversation where a mom I know was talking about how kid did everything on their own. I did not mention that I’d helped her kid write all of his interview thank you notes?

30

I did helicopter and gave the HS send in S’s HS transcript to the safety OOS school. I wanted him to have one acceptance we could afford in case the other Us didn’t accept him or didn’t offer any Merit Aid. I don’t feel that was unreasonable and the HS didn’t either. S had already sent in the app and he was an auto admit with significant merit.

S didn’t attend that U but as the person paying the bill, I wanted to be sure we had this financial safety.

I also went to bat for D so she wouldn’t have to take the same math class with the same book for the 3rd year in a row. I was willing to talk to all the faculty at her middle school but didn’t have to — the were satisfied that she got a B from the private school known for good math and science and decided to allow her to progress.

31

Wait, there was one report I wrote for that same daughter.

It was during the time my husband was in the ICU for 11 days. He received Last Rights from a priest, I had black clothes and the insurance policies lined up.

She had to do a report for Earth Science, comparing two different tornados.

I would add that we live on Long Island, not Tornado Alley. The concern of an imminent tornado was far, far less than the fear of an imminent funeral.

My husband went to the hospital by ambulance at 9 pm Friday night. The paper was due Monday morning. On Sunday night, my daughter planned to get home from the hospital – at about 10 pm-- and start the paper.

She hadn’t slept all weekend. I sent her to bed, in tears, sure that she would fail Earth Science because the teacher hadn’t yet heard about her dad and wouldn’t get an extension. No amount of convincing would reassure her that it would be OK to hand it in late… that his “No Excuses” speech wouldn’t apply to a situation like ours. Her newly diagnosed anxiety was already in overdrive because of her dad, and this was adding to her stress and mine.

So I wrote the paper. I’m a huge weather geek and a good writer; it took me less than half an hour. She handed it in and did well on it.

Then, when summer came and things had calmed down, I made her watch two episodes of Tornado 360 (Is that the title? I watch it all the time and am drawing a blank right now) on the weather channel. So she did learn about the Moore and El Reno tornados, just a few months later.

It wasn’t what the teacher wanted. But I’m still OK with my actions. Oh, and my husband recovered fully.

32

I allow my boys one “mental health day” per school year where I will call in and say they have a stomach bug so they can stay home. I figured that in college they would need to decide for themselves when they will go to class. They knew they couldn’t abuse it so they would think carefully about whether this was “the day.”

33

Big sayings in my house are, “Figure it out” and “You get what you get”. That last one comes in handy all the time as D procrastinates (or is quite busy with other things), so the homework falls behind. I explain to her that life is about making choices, and based on those choices, “You get what you get.”

34

I just remembered another incident in which one might say I “meddled.” But I don’t think so.

Between 8th and 9th grade, S2 took Geometry in summer school. I knew it wouldn’t be difficult for him. He’s very mathy and he wanted to accelerate a year. He did extremely well in it – got an A+.

A few years later, in reviewing his transcript and his GPA, I realized the A+ hadn’t been included in his GPA. Apparently the program the HS used to calculate GPA only included courses starting with 9th grade. I had to push and push and push to get that A+ included in his transcript, and then I had to push to get the corrected transcript sent to his ED school in time for it to be considered.

He was accepted to his ED school. I doubt that those few hundredths or tenths of a point really mattered, but it mattered to me.

35

I’m not sure if it’s tame (aka ethical) parents or lack of creativity parents. There’s no way in the world I’d have assumed I could pay someone to take someone else’s SAT/ACT or coach them as they took it. Ditto with pretending they were a stunning athlete.

I wouldn’t have done it even if I had been that creative because it goes solidly against my ethical values, but even if I were writing a novel and wanted something similar in it, I wouldn’t have thought of those options. Who would believe it?

I suppose the “worst” I did was tell my high school lad that if he needed anything signed by me (permission forms) to go ahead and sign it - just be sure to let me know in case anyone asked about it or so I knew he was going on a field trip or something. I firmly believe by high school kids can decide if they can watch an R movie about a war in history class or go on a school field trip. I don’t care to be bothered signing (dumb) forms.

But then again, where I work I also tell the kids they don’t have to ask for permission to use the bathroom. The answer is yes. (They do have to use the school’s sign out system in case anything “wrong” happens and tracking is needed later.) By high school I assume they know if they have to go or not. If anyone were to abuse the privilege (happens about once per year for me), then I’ll deal with that lad/lass. They whole student body doesn’t have to go ask, “Please sir, can I have some more?” (to use an analogy from Oliver Twist).

36

With our daughter’s knowledge and full buy in, we moved her from public school to private for HS. We were one of the 700+ families that opted to leave (our very large) district when the public school funding was decimated, and the AP and honors curriculum gutted.

We agonized over the decision but after countless meetings with the school board, the superintendent, and director of programing, the message was that the “smart kids” would take care of themselves and that’s not where the money would be spent, even if funding was restored.

We’re fully aware that she had an educational advantage going into the college admissions process because of our ability to send her to a private school. She had ACT/SAT prep integrated into her math and english classes, the school sponsored practice tests starting in freshman year, she had two guidance counselors - one for courses, the other for college who by application time, knew her extremely well, and she had access to courses that prepared her well for the rigors for college. She had labs that rivaled what she is seeing now in college, maker spaces, 3D printers, etc… I’m sure the supports and differences are even more pronounced at expensive boarding schools (this was a parochial STEM school).

I wish everyone had access to this type of high school education. Her school was part of an inner school voucher program so had better diversity than her home public, but the bar for acceptance was very high, with minimum GPA/entrance exam requirements, and zero disciplinary actions. Nearly 20% of DD’s graduating class was 98th percentile or higher on standardized tests, AP scholar+, and honor roll all semesters.

The system is certainly skewed towards families with the income to make these decisions on so many levels.

But, no to mental health days on our end, no doing homework or projects, and no making excuses to make the way easier. Our motto with DD from the time she was very little, was that school and getting an education was her job.

37

“But then again, where I work I also tell the kids they don’t have to ask for permission to use the bathroom. The answer is yes. (They do have to use the school’s sign out system in case anything “wrong” happens and tracking is needed later.) By high school I assume they know if they have to go or not. If anyone were to abuse the privilege (happens about once per year for me), then I’ll deal with that lad/lass. They whole student body doesn’t have to go ask, “Please sir, can I have some more?” (to use an analogy from Oliver Twist).”

The one time I full on mama bear meddled was when the middle school teacher decided it would be a swell idea to give extra credit to kids who didn’t use the bathroom during her class! After she refused to budge and the principal backed her up I went to the school superintendent who had the policy reversed in 7 minutes. The principal was required to write a letter of apology!

38

Oh yeah, when D was asked to leave her private HS after JR year due to excessive absences due to a chronic health condition school was aware of, we gave D 3 options: go to public school in our district, go to online school (she found principal gave off very negative vibes), or pass GED exam and start CC. Her private HS had NO suggestions—NONE! (In fairness, she did miss about 1/2 of her JR year.)

She opted for the 3rd option and got a perfect GED score and thrived at CC and applied as a transfer to her dream U after 1 term of CC. She did transfer and graduate in a major that worked well for her.

I was just glad to have been able to come up with viable options for D so she didn’t abandon her education.

I also helped her in some ungraded art projects that seemed pretty pointless to D and me—crushing eggshells without membranes to be glued onto an outline and making Pom-poms for chicks that would be made of Pom-poms. This freed up D’s time to work on her academic, graded stuff.

39

I did all word searches for my dyslexic kid. He would stare for hours without finding anything otherwise, or circle stuff that wasn’t words.

He has a huge vocabulary, so he already knew what the words meant, and no amount of searching for letters in a jumble was going to make him learn to spell them.

Actually, I don’t see how word searches are a learning tool at all.

I filled out reading logs, too. And guessed on the numbers of pages and sometimes made stuff up at the end of the week because we didn’t remember. My son was “reading” audiobooks like a house afire, but having to document everything would have sucked the joy right out.

40

Ok. Two things.

After visiting Bowdoin and meeting her regional officer and he gave me his business card. I gave the card to her and told her to follow up with an email. She said “that sounds weird, I just met him and don’t know what to say”. I crafted a very short email for her and had her send it.

When she was putting together her resume for her schools and was struggling a bit. I sent her copies of really great, well formatted resumes from some recent grads of the schools in question that had been sent to me for job purposes.

Please don’t tell anyone.