HGC crowd is downright frightening!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a single mom, didn't go to college (at all), work a retail job and had my son when I was 24. He was at Barnsley a few years back. I felt like Teen Mom. The other moms were like 50 years old and I was 33-35. You could tell that a lot of the parents "helped" with the long term projects. No way in hell the kids were doing the work. Got even worse at Takoma with the science fair projects. You would need a lab to pull some of that shit off.

"Like 50 years old", meaning: in their late 30s to mid 40s. Ah, youth.

Nope. It means late forties and early fifties. Too old to have a 4th grader IMHO

I think you need to go back in your time machine and head back to 1950. I had my last at 38. No trouble conceiving, healthy baby. That would make me 47 when DC turns 9.

And PP is correct - older women tend to have already established their careers, high income earners. That's why we can pay attention to our kids' education a lot more. We have the time and money to do it.

Do people established in their careers really have more time?

Anyway. There's a point of diminishing returns, which I think is really what we are talking about here. HGC probably isn't that important for the outcomes of loved children in middle class + homes, who are bright and driven. So all the fuss does seem to be, if not for nothing, than not very much. However the child was conceived and however old the mother was at the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I mean it's not like we all work at the same firm, just looking at my larger network of women I graduated with or know socially who also have kids.

Birth control failures aren't a marker of anything except, you know, having a birth control failure. And it makes sense that professional women with high incomes would be less likely to get it "taken care of" and therefore have that happy little accident result in a live birth.

For an individual, a contraceptive failure is only a marker of a contraceptive failure. In contrast, a 50% contraceptive failure rate is a marker of a population that doesn't use effective contraception and/or doesn't use contraception effectively. Not something I would have associated with high-powered DCUMlandia lawyers, but evidently I was wrong.

It doesn't surprise me at all that highly educated women have a similar failure rate as low educated women. They have the same access problems like not being able to get the pill OTC, not remembering to take it regularly (possibly with a more hectic schedule impacting both) maybe being told an IUD isn't suitable for a nulligravida, etc, etc.

That said. I am sure the kinds of ladies who got pregnant on accident are more likely to end up in my social circles, since it happened to me too, and we somehow just end up around people who are like us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a single mom, didn't go to college (at all), work a retail job and had my son when I was 24. He was at Barnsley a few years back. I felt like Teen Mom. The other moms were like 50 years old and I was 33-35. You could tell that a lot of the parents "helped" with the long term projects. No way in hell the kids were doing the work. Got even worse at Takoma with the science fair projects. You would need a lab to pull some of that shit off.

"Like 50 years old", meaning: in their late 30s to mid 40s. Ah, youth.

Nope. It means late forties and early fifties. Too old to have a 4th grader IMHO

I had my kids at 39 & 41. This wasn't something I planned (or "engineered"). Quite frankly, I would have preferred to have kids in my early/mid 30s but life got in the way. I spent ages 27-33 in & out of the hospital while battling a serious illness. By the time I was back on my feet both physically & financially, most of my 30s had passed me by.

Sorry if the fact that I will be in my late 40s & early 50s by the time my kids are in the 4th grade offends your sense of how things "should be".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a single mom, didn't go to college (at all), work a retail job and had my son when I was 24. He was at Barnsley a few years back. I felt like Teen Mom. The other moms were like 50 years old and I was 33-35. You could tell that a lot of the parents "helped" with the long term projects. No way in hell the kids were doing the work. Got even worse at Takoma with the science fair projects. You would need a lab to pull some of that shit off.

"Like 50 years old", meaning: in their late 30s to mid 40s. Ah, youth.

And re: those who really were 50: The horror!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a single mom, didn't go to college (at all), work a retail job and had my son when I was 24. He was at Barnsley a few years back. I felt like Teen Mom. The other moms were like 50 years old and I was 33-35. You could tell that a lot of the parents "helped" with the long term projects. No way in hell the kids were doing the work. Got even worse at Takoma with the science fair projects. You would need a lab to pull some of that shit off.

"Like 50 years old", meaning: in their late 30s to mid 40s. Ah, youth.

LOL, I'm in my late 30s and feel young too at times because many of the parents I meet are in their late 40 and 50s. I think this is common in this area with so many professionals and having kids later. No hate from my end.

Absolutely, just an observation, but in my experience the HGCs do amplify this phenomenon. Which is just to say, people who engineer when they have kids are more likely to engineer their kids lives and who's at the HGC has more to do with parent than child.

Some just don't meet their partners until they are in their 30s. Or 40s. Or have infertility issues. Or want to become tenured, or partner, or finish medical residency before having kids.

So freaking what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a single mom, didn't go to college (at all), work a retail job and had my son when I was 24. He was at Barnsley a few years back. I felt like Teen Mom. The other moms were like 50 years old and I was 33-35. You could tell that a lot of the parents "helped" with the long term projects. No way in hell the kids were doing the work. Got even worse at Takoma with the science fair projects. You would need a lab to pull some of that shit off.

"Like 50 years old", meaning: in their late 30s to mid 40s. Ah, youth.

Nope. It means late forties and early fifties. Too old to have a 4th grader IMHO

Fortunately, your HO does not dictate others' reproductive choices or circumstances. FFS.

[Anonymous]

I just find it interesting that this can degenerated into a discussion of planned/unplanned pregnancies yet no one disputes that HGC parents skew older. To me this just confirms HGC attendance has everything to do with who fills out the paperwork, and little to do with the child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I just find it interesting that this can degenerated into a discussion of planned/unplanned pregnancies yet no one disputes that HGC parents skew older. To me this just confirms HGC attendance has everything to do with who fills out the paperwork, and little to do with the child.

Smart people are on the whole more likely to get more education and delay having kids until they've done that stuff, and intelligence is heritable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I just find it interesting that this can degenerated into a discussion of planned/unplanned pregnancies yet no one disputes that HGC parents skew older. To me this just confirms HGC attendance has everything to do with who fills out the paperwork, and little to do with the child.

Older than what or whom?

Not to mention that there are plenty of "old" parents who fill out the paperwork, but their child doesn't get in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I just find it interesting that this can degenerated into a discussion of planned/unplanned pregnancies yet no one disputes that HGC parents skew older. To me this just confirms HGC attendance has everything to do with who fills out the paperwork, and little to do with the child.

Smart people are on the whole more likely to get more education and delay having kids until they've done that stuff, and intelligence is heritable.

This is true, if by "smart", you mean "middle-class".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I just find it interesting that this can degenerated into a discussion of planned/unplanned pregnancies yet no one disputes that HGC parents skew older. To me this just confirms HGC attendance has everything to do with who fills out the paperwork, and little to do with the child.

Smart people are on the whole more likely to get more education and delay having kids until they've done that stuff, and intelligence is heritable.

This is true, if by "smart", you mean "middle-class".

Upper class people have kids young?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I just find it interesting that this can degenerated into a discussion of planned/unplanned pregnancies yet no one disputes that HGC parents skew older. To me this just confirms HGC attendance has everything to do with who fills out the paperwork, and little to do with the child.

Smart people are on the whole more likely to get more education and delay having kids until they've done that stuff, and intelligence is heritable.

This is true, if by "smart", you mean "middle-class".

Upper class people have kids young?

But nobody in America is upper-class. There is only middle-class, upper middle-class (e.g., the DCUMers struggling to make ends meet on $350,000), upper upper middle-class, upper upper upper middle-class...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I just find it interesting that this can degenerated into a discussion of planned/unplanned pregnancies yet no one disputes that HGC parents skew older. To me this just confirms HGC attendance has everything to do with who fills out the paperwork, and little to do with the child.

Older than what or whom?

Not to mention that there are plenty of "old" parents who fill out the paperwork, but their child doesn't get in.

Older than the average MCPS 4th grade parent, older than the average 4th grade parent at the school housing the program, older than the average 4th grade parent at the home school of the HGC student. My guess is all of these are true. And, yes, there are many possible explanations for this and no it does not imply the converse--older parent guarantees admission.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:IMO, one of the best way to learn grammar is by reading quality books. I don't think they teach grammar as a separate subject matter, but I think it's interspersed with LA curriculum through creative writing and such. Diagramming sentences and such is akin to endless math worksheets. Kids start to hate learning it. I don't think we need to continue with the "this is how I learned it and I turned out fine" way of teaching. If we know better, then we ought to do better for our kids.

This article discusses this very thing:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-wrong-way-to-teach-grammar/284014/

"A century of research shows that traditional grammar lessons—those hours spent diagramming sentences and memorizing parts of speech—don’t help and may even hinder students’ efforts to become better writers. Yes, they need to learn grammar, but the old-fashioned way does not work.

This finding—confirmed in 1984, 2007, and 2012 through reviews of over 250 studies—is consistent among students of all ages, from elementary school through college. For example, one well-regarded study followed three groups of students from 9th to 11th grade where one group had traditional rule-bound lessons, a second received an alternative approach to grammar instruction, and a third received no grammar lessons at all, just more literature and creative writing. The result: No significant differences among the three groups—except that both grammar groups emerged with a strong antipathy to English. "

I'm the PP that asked the question about how/when grammar is taught. Thanks for this info, helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I just find it interesting that this can degenerated into a discussion of planned/unplanned pregnancies yet no one disputes that HGC parents skew older. To me this just confirms HGC attendance has everything to do with who fills out the paperwork, and little to do with the child.

I stopped reading 2-3 pages ago when people were arguing about the importance of sentence diagrams. I am not sure why I clicked back... but wow.