Your advice is ridiculous. The family dynamics are a-ok. Unfortunately, I see the difference. The kids have no problems with where they are. |
That;s your opinion and prerogative.. in many cases it makes complete sense if the eldest gets into AAP and moving to the center is the best option. There are a lot of families that have kids in public and private since each child has different needs (and they can afford it). I went to the same schools as my sister and it made no difference- it's not like we walked to classes together or hung out at that age. It was actually worse since the teachers would always compare siblings - I wouldn't put the children in different schools just because of this though. |
| You may think there's no difference, but we have found a difference for our DC and are happy with it. |
It probably depends on how close the siblings are. Kids over 4 years apart are going to be at different schools anyway. |
| My kids are two years apart. I know others with the same age difference who have one aap and one not. We raise our kids to do their best and walk their own course in life. My children going to different schools is not a problem. The base school being substantially less effective than the aap school ( even if we're only talking about the base part of the aap school)...that is the "problem." |
| To get an idea of the quality of base vs. center schools, you can look at some of the co-curricular activities to see which schools participate, and how they perform in tournaments. Maybe co-curricular activities are not important to everyone, but a lot of kids in AAP derive social and intellectual benefits from these programs. It is hard to start teams in the base schools because it's hard to find enough parents to run them. |
Do whatever's best for you, but my kids know that they have unique talents and needs. I have a Gen Ed kid, a Level III kid, and a center kid. No one feels shortchanged or slighted. In fact, the Gen Ed kid has a unique talent that takes up quite a bit of the extracurricular driving time, and the others are OK with that, too. Everyone is met where they are. If any one of them missed out on good opportunities because it would make the others "feel bad," well, THAT would be bad for family dynamics. |