Why are people here so averse to pushing their kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My parents pushed me. And pushed. And pushed. I’m very successful now. Got the A’s, then h the fancy degrees, and now a fancy job title. And almost no relationship with my parents, who drilled it in to me that I would never, ever be good enough, because there was always another accomplishment to be gotten.

Man would they be pissed that you are farting around and wasting your time on an anonymous forum for suburban wine moms to humble brag on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I pushed my kid into sports (golf and soccer) and music (guitar and piano) when he was five years old, and he absolutely hated it when he turned twelve years old. Around that time, I hired a D1 soccer athlete to live at my house and trained my kid into an athlete in the summer of 7th and 8th grade. My kid trained everyday with the D1 athlete from 6:30am until 1pm and he practiced music from 3pm until 6pm everyday during the summer. The D1 athlete also taught him social skills and how to talk to girls. He also showed my kid how to have a healthy diet if his goal is to play D1 college. My kid ended up as a four years starter in varsity in golf (spring) and soccer (spring). He played for a Power-5 school and met his trust fund wife at the school (she actually asked him out on a date). Men and women want to hang out with people who have talents, especially college athletes who actually graduated from college with a useful degrees. Nobody wants to hang out with unmotivated losers.

Did that trust fund wife insist on a pre-nup? What happens if she dies unexpectedly, does that trust fund go to him? To the kids? Going to college to marry well is something women did up until the 1950's because they had no rights. It doesn't exactly scream "WINNER"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My parents pushed me. And pushed. And pushed. I’m very successful now. Got the A’s, then h the fancy degrees, and now a fancy job title. And almost no relationship with my parents, who drilled it in to me that I would never, ever be good enough, because there was always another accomplishment to be gotten.

Man would they be pissed that you are farting around and wasting your time on an anonymous forum for suburban wine moms to humble brag on.

Ha! You quoted me, and you’re right! (In my defense I’m home sick today, probably because I’ve been working too many long hours without enough sleep).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been trying hard to ignore this thread but people need to hear another good why. I don’t push my kids in the way OP suggests is healthy because last year one of my friends died by suicide. He had a perfect life on paper and had always achieved and pushed for the next level. His father, even in his adulthood, pushed him relentlessly and made clear that he should always be achieving more. Nothing was good enough unless he exceeded the father’s accomplishments, which are too public and well-known to write about here. In our modern competitive world, it would be nearly impossible to pull that off two generations in a row.

We all loved my friend but now he is gone, because he got the message from the time he was a child that he was only his accomplishments and nothing would ever be enough.

I support my kids. I encourage them. I don’t push them because I want them to know they are enough and they are loved for who they are.

Thanks for posting this.

So sorry about your friend. But normally, people who are mentally ill enough to commit suicide would’ve done it no matter how hard their parents pushed. I have a feeling even if your friend had “gentle parents” they still would’ve died.

I disagree. So much of life begins with nature (genetic predisposition) but is then influenced by nurture (environmental influences). I believe we may be pointed in certain directions biologically, but our experiences and influences along the way certainly are influential, as well.

For some kids (and adults), external pressure by their parents will have marginal impact, either because they're not particularly sensitive to (natural temprament) it or because their mental health is just not that close to the "edge". Other kids (and adults) are far more sensitive to parental input and pressure, some of whom are naturally very tightly wound, anxious, or depressed already.

Those are the high-risk kids (and adults) - the ones whose internal voice + environmental influences both tell them a story of "not good enough". Again, most fall far short of suicide, of course. But even so, there's a lot of avoidable suffering due to anxiety and depression . . . .

Okay. So what do you do when you have a kid predisposed to anxiety or depression? Not push them at all?

The fact is, we all need to do some amount of pushing if we don't want failure to launch kids. Everyone (except for the trust funders) needs to hold down a relatively well-paying job to support themselves. So we need to push our kids to develop the work ethic, discipline, and habits necessary to build up to that. Being predisposed to mental illness doesn't change that.

What does "relatively well-paying" mean to you though? There are lots of places in this country where you can live a nice life, own a home, save money, and take vacations while making less than 100k a year. If you marry someone with a similar job, even better. That's a stable and respectable middle class life. There are lots of jobs that do not require you to get straight As, go to an elite college, do internships starting at age 16, play varsity sports and be the class president in order to get them and even excel in them. In fact, this is most jobs. You have to go to school and get a bachelors degree in something and then show up to work and get along with people and not make any glaring mistakes. That's it. It's actually a pretty achievable goal, does not require parents who push you and force you into multiple activities and demand more and more from you every day. You can be a C student, get a degree from a non-selective state school, and then go get a job.

And yes, you can do this and make 50 or 60, marry someone making similar, buy a house for 200k in some exurb or secondary market, and send your kids to mediocre public schools and vacation at Disney install a nice deck that you can grill on and have the neighbors over for burgers and beers. It's totally okay. It might not be a life you would enjoy because you are more ambitious than that (I wouldn't enjoy it either for the same reason) but it's actually probably every bit as worthwhile. Most of us with "well paying" jobs aren't curing cancer or whatever. I do corporate BS to help one companies make more money. I spend my days in meetings and I make a lot of power point decks. I'm a very smart, accomplished, well-read person who speaks three languages and plays the piano but other than making a very impressive salary and being a pretty good mom, I don't think there is anything special about my life. I look at cousins who did succeed like I did academically and make a lot less money, but live in places like Indianapolis or Cincinnati and have really nice lives and seem very happy and are also parents, and I realize that all my work got me to about the same place as them, albeit with a much more expensive home, more foreign travel, and more intellectual friends and colleagues.

I think we could push our kids a lot less than you think and they'd be fine, the problem is making them think a lifestyle like mine (very expensive city, nice house and clothes, lots of high end travel) is essential in the first place. It's not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been trying hard to ignore this thread but people need to hear another good why. I don’t push my kids in the way OP suggests is healthy because last year one of my friends died by suicide. He had a perfect life on paper and had always achieved and pushed for the next level. His father, even in his adulthood, pushed him relentlessly and made clear that he should always be achieving more. Nothing was good enough unless he exceeded the father’s accomplishments, which are too public and well-known to write about here. In our modern competitive world, it would be nearly impossible to pull that off two generations in a row.

We all loved my friend but now he is gone, because he got the message from the time he was a child that he was only his accomplishments and nothing would ever be enough.

I support my kids. I encourage them. I don’t push them because I want them to know they are enough and they are loved for who they are.

Thanks for posting this.

So sorry about your friend. But normally, people who are mentally ill enough to commit suicide would’ve done it no matter how hard their parents pushed. I have a feeling even if your friend had “gentle parents” they still would’ve died.

I disagree. So much of life begins with nature (genetic predisposition) but is then influenced by nurture (environmental influences). I believe we may be pointed in certain directions biologically, but our experiences and influences along the way certainly are influential, as well.

For some kids (and adults), external pressure by their parents will have marginal impact, either because they're not particularly sensitive to (natural temprament) it or because their mental health is just not that close to the "edge". Other kids (and adults) are far more sensitive to parental input and pressure, some of whom are naturally very tightly wound, anxious, or depressed already.

Those are the high-risk kids (and adults) - the ones whose internal voice + environmental influences both tell them a story of "not good enough". Again, most fall far short of suicide, of course. But even so, there's a lot of avoidable suffering due to anxiety and depression . . . .

Okay. So what do you do when you have a kid predisposed to anxiety or depression? Not push them at all?

The fact is, we all need to do some amount of pushing if we don't want failure to launch kids. Everyone (except for the trust funders) needs to hold down a relatively well-paying job to support themselves. So we need to push our kids to develop the work ethic, discipline, and habits necessary to build up to that. Being predisposed to mental illness doesn't change that.

What does "relatively well-paying" mean to you though? There are lots of places in this country where you can live a nice life, own a home, save money, and take vacations while making less than 100k a year. If you marry someone with a similar job, even better. That's a stable and respectable middle class life. There are lots of jobs that do not require you to get straight As, go to an elite college, do internships starting at age 16, play varsity sports and be the class president in order to get them and even excel in them. In fact, this is most jobs. You have to go to school and get a bachelors degree in something and then show up to work and get along with people and not make any glaring mistakes. That's it. It's actually a pretty achievable goal, does not require parents who push you and force you into multiple activities and demand more and more from you every day. You can be a C student, get a degree from a non-selective state school, and then go get a job.

And yes, you can do this and make 50 or 60, marry someone making similar, buy a house for 200k in some exurb or secondary market, and send your kids to mediocre public schools and vacation at Disney install a nice deck that you can grill on and have the neighbors over for burgers and beers. It's totally okay. It might not be a life you would enjoy because you are more ambitious than that (I wouldn't enjoy it either for the same reason) but it's actually probably every bit as worthwhile. Most of us with "well paying" jobs aren't curing cancer or whatever. I do corporate BS to help one companies make more money. I spend my days in meetings and I make a lot of power point decks. I'm a very smart, accomplished, well-read person who speaks three languages and plays the piano but other than making a very impressive salary and being a pretty good mom, I don't think there is anything special about my life. I look at cousins who did succeed like I did academically and make a lot less money, but live in places like Indianapolis or Cincinnati and have really nice lives and seem very happy and are also parents, and I realize that all my work got me to about the same place as them, albeit with a much more expensive home, more foreign travel, and more intellectual friends and colleagues.

I think we could push our kids a lot less than you think and they'd be fine, the problem is making them think a lifestyle like mine (very expensive city, nice house and clothes, lots of high end travel) is essential in the first place. It's not.

Do you think kids can go backwards? Your kids would be happy with life Cincinnati? I wonder if that’s my first mistake - moving out of my version of Indianapolis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been trying hard to ignore this thread but people need to hear another good why. I don’t push my kids in the way OP suggests is healthy because last year one of my friends died by suicide. He had a perfect life on paper and had always achieved and pushed for the next level. His father, even in his adulthood, pushed him relentlessly and made clear that he should always be achieving more. Nothing was good enough unless he exceeded the father’s accomplishments, which are too public and well-known to write about here. In our modern competitive world, it would be nearly impossible to pull that off two generations in a row.

We all loved my friend but now he is gone, because he got the message from the time he was a child that he was only his accomplishments and nothing would ever be enough.

I support my kids. I encourage them. I don’t push them because I want them to know they are enough and they are loved for who they are.

Thanks for posting this.

So sorry about your friend. But normally, people who are mentally ill enough to commit suicide would’ve done it no matter how hard their parents pushed. I have a feeling even if your friend had “gentle parents” they still would’ve died.

I disagree. So much of life begins with nature (genetic predisposition) but is then influenced by nurture (environmental influences). I believe we may be pointed in certain directions biologically, but our experiences and influences along the way certainly are influential, as well.

For some kids (and adults), external pressure by their parents will have marginal impact, either because they're not particularly sensitive to (natural temprament) it or because their mental health is just not that close to the "edge". Other kids (and adults) are far more sensitive to parental input and pressure, some of whom are naturally very tightly wound, anxious, or depressed already.

Those are the high-risk kids (and adults) - the ones whose internal voice + environmental influences both tell them a story of "not good enough". Again, most fall far short of suicide, of course. But even so, there's a lot of avoidable suffering due to anxiety and depression . . . .

Okay. So what do you do when you have a kid predisposed to anxiety or depression? Not push them at all?

The fact is, we all need to do some amount of pushing if we don't want failure to launch kids. Everyone (except for the trust funders) needs to hold down a relatively well-paying job to support themselves. So we need to push our kids to develop the work ethic, discipline, and habits necessary to build up to that. Being predisposed to mental illness doesn't change that.

What does "relatively well-paying" mean to you though? There are lots of places in this country where you can live a nice life, own a home, save money, and take vacations while making less than 100k a year. If you marry someone with a similar job, even better. That's a stable and respectable middle class life. There are lots of jobs that do not require you to get straight As, go to an elite college, do internships starting at age 16, play varsity sports and be the class president in order to get them and even excel in them. In fact, this is most jobs. You have to go to school and get a bachelors degree in something and then show up to work and get along with people and not make any glaring mistakes. That's it. It's actually a pretty achievable goal, does not require parents who push you and force you into multiple activities and demand more and more from you every day. You can be a C student, get a degree from a non-selective state school, and then go get a job.

And yes, you can do this and make 50 or 60, marry someone making similar, buy a house for 200k in some exurb or secondary market, and send your kids to mediocre public schools and vacation at Disney install a nice deck that you can grill on and have the neighbors over for burgers and beers. It's totally okay. It might not be a life you would enjoy because you are more ambitious than that (I wouldn't enjoy it either for the same reason) but it's actually probably every bit as worthwhile. Most of us with "well paying" jobs aren't curing cancer or whatever. I do corporate BS to help one companies make more money. I spend my days in meetings and I make a lot of power point decks. I'm a very smart, accomplished, well-read person who speaks three languages and plays the piano but other than making a very impressive salary and being a pretty good mom, I don't think there is anything special about my life. I look at cousins who did succeed like I did academically and make a lot less money, but live in places like Indianapolis or Cincinnati and have really nice lives and seem very happy and are also parents, and I realize that all my work got me to about the same place as them, albeit with a much more expensive home, more foreign travel, and more intellectual friends and colleagues.

I think we could push our kids a lot less than you think and they'd be fine, the problem is making them think a lifestyle like mine (very expensive city, nice house and clothes, lots of high end travel) is essential in the first place. It's not.

Do you think kids can go backwards? Your kids would be happy with life Cincinnati? I wonder if that’s my first mistake - moving out of my version of Indianapolis.

I think the first step is not to think of it as going "backwards". When I talk to my peers in DC, I encounter people who crave a slower pace of life, less competition, more ease. I absolutely encounter people who are like "maybe Indianapolis?"

Yes, I also know lots of people who can't imagine living in the midwest or giving up big careers. But these tend to be people who "made it." I know lots of other people who work in professional jobs, went to law school or business school or just pretty elite undergrads, but who have just never found the professional success they were looking for in DC or NY. Some of them have already moved, to places like Denver, Minneapolis, or one of the Portlands. Smaller markets with more affordable housing where they can be a big fish. They don't think of it as going backwards but as choosing mental health and a more appealing lifestyle over the rat race. I might join them one of these days, to be honest.

When people talk about pushing their kids, I think there is a fixation on certain kinds of success -- getting into certain colleges (which, because of the sheer number of applicants and test optional, have become a crap shoot for even very accomplished students anyway) and going into certain fields (law, medicine, finance -- all fields that are very high stress and often require long hours and years of education that will also require enormous debt). As thought this is the only path to financial stability. It's not. It's increasingly a risky proposition due to how these fields are shifting and how global the marketplace is these days.

Most of us would probably be better off focusing on getting our kids to a baseline level of professional competence (educated enough to pull a B average at a middling public college) and instead focused on ensuring they have very strong mental wellness, know how to take care of their health, and are personable people who make friends (and eventually, find partners) relatively easily. If you really want your child to be stable and happy in the long run, you should stop pushing beyond just making sure they do their homework, spend time socializing with peers, and get some exercise and eat right. Normal parenting stuff. Not tutors and private schools and elite specialty camps and pulling strings to get them unique internships, etc. There is just very little evidence that the latter is going to make them better off, and plenty of evidence it will make them miserable.

The truly ambitious kids will push themselves. We should let the rest of them just be average. I think it would be a relief for them.

[Anonymous]

I don’t really care too much about what other parents are doing. I have parent friends who run the full gamut from not pushing at all to the other extreme.

Some kids like being pushed and having high expectations. Some kids react poorly. Some kids were made for school and sports, others aren’t.

My kids are self motivated, do very well academically, while struggling more in other areas, and are prone to anxiety snd perfectionism. For that reason, and also because I had a bad experience with being pushed too hard growing up, I am very lax with their school performance. I focus on “reasonable effort” and often discourage my one child from spending too much time on their homework. I do care that they learn. I don’t care about the grades. And I care that they have balance in their lives, and that they are kind, and have life skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

For the people who worry that their kids need certain credentials to get into a good college, and need that good college to have a successful life, add me to the chorus of anecdotal evidence that says that’s simply not true. DH and I both went to state schools — me for financial reasons, him because he’s never been particularly ambitious — and we both got into top 10 law schools from there. Once you were in, which college you went to basically never mattered again. We’ve told our middle schooler that we know she’ll get into college *somewhere* no matter what, and it doesn’t have to be a particular ranking or a particular school unless she chooses to set her sights on that. I’m already glad we made that choice, it’s so much pressure off everyone’s shoulders for the years to come

.

Things are far more competitive now to go to your local state school, and certainly to get into a top 10 law school. And I'm sure that to get into that top ten law school, both you and your spouse had to be top students at your state school. Rankings and hard work and focus and drive still matter--you're deluding yourself if you think otherwise, and misleading your kids..

-- law school professor

OP here. Right?!! That PP makes me so mad. Saying shit like “we’re above it all, the college admissions rat race doesn’t apply to us, DC can go to Podunk State U and still end up at HYSCCN for law school” makes me angry. First, you’re just kicking the can down the road — work ethic, academic excellence, discipline, and prestige still matter to you, but for law school. And then there’s the factor that getting into Big Law out of law school has become infinitely more competitive — so your kids will still be subject to a rat race that’s infinitely more competitive than the one you went through.

You sound nutty, OP. I feel for your poor kids. You are doing everything wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t really care too much about what other parents are doing. I have parent friends who run the full gamut from not pushing at all to the other extreme.

Some kids like being pushed and having high expectations. Some kids react poorly. Some kids were made for school and sports, others aren’t.

My kids are self motivated, do very well academically, while struggling more in other areas, and are prone to anxiety snd perfectionism. For that reason, and also because I had a bad experience with being pushed too hard growing up, I am very lax with their school performance. I focus on “reasonable effort” and often discourage my one child from spending too much time on their homework. I do care that they learn. I don’t care about the grades. And I care that they have balance in their lives, and that they are kind, and have life skills.

+1, parent the kids you have. I also have a perfectionist who is very hard on herself. Sometimes I support her ambition because I do think if you have a child who wants to do very well academically, you owe it to them to provide them with the support and tools to do so. But I don't push -- none of the pressure to perform comes from us. We are the ones reminding her to maintain balance in her life, to spend time with friends and develop social skills, to have ways to relax and have fun. Once I showed her some research that demonstrated that human brains absorb information better when they get proper rest and breaks, and that some of your learning actually probably happens when you are sleeping or doing other non-academic activities, because that's when your brain makes the connections that commits new information to long term memory and synthesizes it with other info. That was really helpful. Now it's easier to get her to stop working on homework or studying for a test.

Other kids might need more encouragement to do their homework and fewer reminders to have fun. It just depends.

I think people "here" push their kids plenty, to be honest.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if all of these parents who say they don't push their kids, have kids who receive Cs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I pushed my kid into sports (golf and soccer) and music (guitar and piano) when he was five years old, and he absolutely hated it when he turned twelve years old. Around that time, I hired a D1 soccer athlete to live at my house and trained my kid into an athlete in the summer of 7th and 8th grade. My kid trained everyday with the D1 athlete from 6:30am until 1pm and he practiced music from 3pm until 6pm everyday during the summer. The D1 athlete also taught him social skills and how to talk to girls. He also showed my kid how to have a healthy diet if his goal is to play D1 college. My kid ended up as a four years starter in varsity in golf (spring) and soccer (spring). He played for a Power-5 school and met his trust fund wife at the school (she actually asked him out on a date). Men and women want to hang out with people who have talents, especially college athletes who actually graduated from college with a useful degrees. Nobody wants to hang out with unmotivated losers.

Did that trust fund wife insist on a pre-nup? What happens if she dies unexpectedly, does that trust fund go to him? To the kids? Going to college to marry well is something women did up until the 1950's because they had no rights. It doesn't exactly scream "WINNER"

That’s an obvious troll. No varsity spring soccer in HS. And the best college soccer players don’t play HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I pushed my kid into sports (golf and soccer) and music (guitar and piano) when he was five years old, and he absolutely hated it when he turned twelve years old. Around that time, I hired a D1 soccer athlete to live at my house and trained my kid into an athlete in the summer of 7th and 8th grade. My kid trained everyday with the D1 athlete from 6:30am until 1pm and he practiced music from 3pm until 6pm everyday during the summer. The D1 athlete also taught him social skills and how to talk to girls. He also showed my kid how to have a healthy diet if his goal is to play D1 college. My kid ended up as a four years starter in varsity in golf (spring) and soccer (spring). He played for a Power-5 school and met his trust fund wife at the school (she actually asked him out on a date). Men and women want to hang out with people who have talents, especially college athletes who actually graduated from college with a useful degrees. Nobody wants to hang out with unmotivated losers.

Did that trust fund wife insist on a pre-nup? What happens if she dies unexpectedly, does that trust fund go to him? To the kids? Going to college to marry well is something women did up until the 1950's because they had no rights. It doesn't exactly scream "WINNER"

That’s an obvious troll. No varsity spring soccer in HS. And the best college soccer players don’t play HS.

Why are there so many idiots out there? Soccer is a spring sport in Fairfax County Public School. Yes, some of the best soccer players play for their school because they can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been trying hard to ignore this thread but people need to hear another good why. I don’t push my kids in the way OP suggests is healthy because last year one of my friends died by suicide. He had a perfect life on paper and had always achieved and pushed for the next level. His father, even in his adulthood, pushed him relentlessly and made clear that he should always be achieving more. Nothing was good enough unless he exceeded the father’s accomplishments, which are too public and well-known to write about here. In our modern competitive world, it would be nearly impossible to pull that off two generations in a row.

We all loved my friend but now he is gone, because he got the message from the time he was a child that he was only his accomplishments and nothing would ever be enough.

I support my kids. I encourage them. I don’t push them because I want them to know they are enough and they are loved for who they are.

Thanks for posting this.

So sorry about your friend. But normally, people who are mentally ill enough to commit suicide would’ve done it no matter how hard their parents pushed. I have a feeling even if your friend had “gentle parents” they still would’ve died.

I disagree. So much of life begins with nature (genetic predisposition) but is then influenced by nurture (environmental influences). I believe we may be pointed in certain directions biologically, but our experiences and influences along the way certainly are influential, as well.

For some kids (and adults), external pressure by their parents will have marginal impact, either because they're not particularly sensitive to (natural temprament) it or because their mental health is just not that close to the "edge". Other kids (and adults) are far more sensitive to parental input and pressure, some of whom are naturally very tightly wound, anxious, or depressed already.

Those are the high-risk kids (and adults) - the ones whose internal voice + environmental influences both tell them a story of "not good enough". Again, most fall far short of suicide, of course. But even so, there's a lot of avoidable suffering due to anxiety and depression . . . .

Okay. So what do you do when you have a kid predisposed to anxiety or depression? Not push them at all?

The fact is, we all need to do some amount of pushing if we don't want failure to launch kids. Everyone (except for the trust funders) needs to hold down a relatively well-paying job to support themselves. So we need to push our kids to develop the work ethic, discipline, and habits necessary to build up to that. Being predisposed to mental illness doesn't change that.

What does "relatively well-paying" mean to you though? There are lots of places in this country where you can live a nice life, own a home, save money, and take vacations while making less than 100k a year. If you marry someone with a similar job, even better. That's a stable and respectable middle class life. There are lots of jobs that do not require you to get straight As, go to an elite college, do internships starting at age 16, play varsity sports and be the class president in order to get them and even excel in them. In fact, this is most jobs. You have to go to school and get a bachelors degree in something and then show up to work and get along with people and not make any glaring mistakes. That's it. It's actually a pretty achievable goal, does not require parents who push you and force you into multiple activities and demand more and more from you every day. You can be a C student, get a degree from a non-selective state school, and then go get a job.

And yes, you can do this and make 50 or 60, marry someone making similar, buy a house for 200k in some exurb or secondary market, and send your kids to mediocre public schools and vacation at Disney install a nice deck that you can grill on and have the neighbors over for burgers and beers. It's totally okay. It might not be a life you would enjoy because you are more ambitious than that (I wouldn't enjoy it either for the same reason) but it's actually probably every bit as worthwhile. Most of us with "well paying" jobs aren't curing cancer or whatever. I do corporate BS to help one companies make more money. I spend my days in meetings and I make a lot of power point decks. I'm a very smart, accomplished, well-read person who speaks three languages and plays the piano but other than making a very impressive salary and being a pretty good mom, I don't think there is anything special about my life. I look at cousins who did succeed like I did academically and make a lot less money, but live in places like Indianapolis or Cincinnati and have really nice lives and seem very happy and are also parents, and I realize that all my work got me to about the same place as them, albeit with a much more expensive home, more foreign travel, and more intellectual friends and colleagues.

I think we could push our kids a lot less than you think and they'd be fine, the problem is making them think a lifestyle like mine (very expensive city, nice house and clothes, lots of high end travel) is essential in the first place. It's not.

Do you think kids can go backwards? Your kids would be happy with life Cincinnati? I wonder if that’s my first mistake - moving out of my version of Indianapolis.

I think the first step is not to think of it as going "backwards". When I talk to my peers in DC, I encounter people who crave a slower pace of life, less competition, more ease. I absolutely encounter people who are like "maybe Indianapolis?"

Yes, I also know lots of people who can't imagine living in the midwest or giving up big careers. But these tend to be people who "made it." I know lots of other people who work in professional jobs, went to law school or business school or just pretty elite undergrads, but who have just never found the professional success they were looking for in DC or NY. Some of them have already moved, to places like Denver, Minneapolis, or one of the Portlands. Smaller markets with more affordable housing where they can be a big fish. They don't think of it as going backwards but as choosing mental health and a more appealing lifestyle over the rat race. I might join them one of these days, to be honest.

When people talk about pushing their kids, I think there is a fixation on certain kinds of success -- getting into certain colleges (which, because of the sheer number of applicants and test optional, have become a crap shoot for even very accomplished students anyway) and going into certain fields (law, medicine, finance -- all fields that are very high stress and often require long hours and years of education that will also require enormous debt). As thought this is the only path to financial stability. It's not. It's increasingly a risky proposition due to how these fields are shifting and how global the marketplace is these days.

Most of us would probably be better off focusing on getting our kids to a baseline level of professional competence (educated enough to pull a B average at a middling public college) and instead focused on ensuring they have very strong mental wellness, know how to take care of their health, and are personable people who make friends (and eventually, find partners) relatively easily. If you really want your child to be stable and happy in the long run, you should stop pushing beyond just making sure they do their homework, spend time socializing with peers, and get some exercise and eat right. Normal parenting stuff. Not tutors and private schools and elite specialty camps and pulling strings to get them unique internships, etc. There is just very little evidence that the latter is going to make them better off, and plenty of evidence it will make them miserable.

The truly ambitious kids will push themselves. We should let the rest of them just be average. I think it would be a relief for them.

OP here. You make some good points, but I think ultimately wealth inequality (and the rising cost of living and stagnating wages) make it so that pushing our kids into one of a few elite careers is becoming more and more necessary.

The examples you gave me -- moving to Denver, MPLS, or Portland -- stand out to me because of their recently rapid rise in housing prices. Bay area transplants have made Denver/Boulder super expensive, and Portland (Oregon, IDK about Maine) has become extremely expensive as well over the past two decades. Getting a modest 3 bedroom house zoned for a good school district in those two cities has become infinitely harder now, and pretty much requires a tech/finance/Big Law/medicine salary (the first two of which don't really require lots of student debt, FWIW).

And I speak from personal experience as well. I'm originally from Columbus (Ohio) and my DH is originally from Richmond (Virginia). Both of these two cities used to be very affordable, but in the past decade, housing prices in those two areas have soared. Many of the lower-achieving students I went to high school with have been priced out of the inner ring suburbs of Columbus and have had to move to a Columbus exurb (which will only get more expensive in the coming years). I wouldn't be surprised if in ten years, Columbus residents were being priced out into undesirable Ohio towns like Toledo or Dayton due to housing costs. A similar dynamic has been happening in Richmond for the past decade. Both Columbus and Richmond are facing soaring housing costs because DMV/East coast transplants are moving to these cities since housing is cheaper than Boston/NYC/DC.

In other words, the economy is coming for your kids. And in order for them to survive, they increasingly have to go into one of a few select professions. I push my kid because I want him to have the best chance of survival in an increasingly Dickens-esque society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

For the people who worry that their kids need certain credentials to get into a good college, and need that good college to have a successful life, add me to the chorus of anecdotal evidence that says that’s simply not true. DH and I both went to state schools — me for financial reasons, him because he’s never been particularly ambitious — and we both got into top 10 law schools from there. Once you were in, which college you went to basically never mattered again. We’ve told our middle schooler that we know she’ll get into college *somewhere* no matter what, and it doesn’t have to be a particular ranking or a particular school unless she chooses to set her sights on that. I’m already glad we made that choice, it’s so much pressure off everyone’s shoulders for the years to come

.

Things are far more competitive now to go to your local state school, and certainly to get into a top 10 law school. And I'm sure that to get into that top ten law school, both you and your spouse had to be top students at your state school. Rankings and hard work and focus and drive still matter--you're deluding yourself if you think otherwise, and misleading your kids..

-- law school professor

OP here. Right?!! That PP makes me so mad. Saying shit like “we’re above it all, the college admissions rat race doesn’t apply to us, DC can go to Podunk State U and still end up at HYSCCN for law school” makes me angry. First, you’re just kicking the can down the road — work ethic, academic excellence, discipline, and prestige still matter to you, but for law school. And then there’s the factor that getting into Big Law out of law school has become infinitely more competitive — so your kids will still be subject to a rat race that’s infinitely more competitive than the one you went through.

You sound nutty, OP. I feel for your poor kids. You are doing everything wrong.

Pointing out someone's T14 law background (and the necessary amounts of discipline and academic excellence to achieve that) isn't nutty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted this as a comment on another thread, but I think it's odd how many posters here are averse to pushing their kid and having them develop an amazing work ethic (the #1 key to success!) all because they're worried that they'll harm their fragile snowflake's "mental health."


I demand that my kid (who is of fairly average intelligence -- 110 IQ) take the most rigorous classes offered at their school (a "W" school), try their best to get straight As (so far successful except for 1 B sophomore year), participate in a sport, play an instrument, work a (crappy, minimum wage) summer job, and be active in community service. DC doesn't want to do any of this (they are naturally very lazy), but I push them academically and extracurricularly because it forms a well-rounded human being. Not for the sake of college admissions, not for the sake of impressing an AO, but for the sake of developing a work ethic that'll launch them into success in college and beyond. Too many Americans these days lack a strong work ethic.

And for some reason, the parents on here think that all of this will destroy my kid's mental health. The best thing you can do for your kid's mental health is to build grit and resilience, as well as normalize failure. That's why I demand that my kid try their best at activities that are naturally outside of their comfort zone. It seems as though this is a common approach to successful and well-rounded kids; the ones who are the healthiest and happiest in DC's friend group are the ones who are pushed by their parents to do things outside of their comfort zone while normalizing failure and not being the best at everything you do. And the ones in DC's friend group with the most mental health issues are the ones with coddling parents who try to shelter their kid from every potential failure while not pushing them to step outside of their comfort zone.

Do you push your spouse/partner the same way? Lovely! How about yourself?