Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Same. Also kids being given the opportunity to hang around and be bored isn't some new concept... Kids have been left alone to amuse themselves for decades. And they certainly will when they get older too, it just won't be in ways you like. I'd prefer mine are involved in productive activities. I taught high school for a few years and the kids that weren't involved in things were either depressed or getting into things they should not have- often both.
Not all kids are like that though, or will be like that.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Same. Also kids being given the opportunity to hang around and be bored isn't some new concept... Kids have been left alone to amuse themselves for decades. And they certainly will when they get older too, it just won't be in ways you like. I'd prefer mine are involved in productive activities. I taught high school for a few years and the kids that weren't involved in things were either depressed or getting into things they should not have- often both.
Not all kids are like that though, or will be like that.
Are like what? What are the uninvolved high school kids doing with all their free time- studying? Hanging out with other uninvolved friends doing...?
Anonymous wrote:I didn't read all of this - but what a big, dangerous generalization. I have seen firsthand a lot of pain and mental illness as the result of helicopter parenting - the result being depressed, anxious and unable-to-function and support themselves adults living at home, in therapy and unable to hold a job in their 20s. Parents terrified to push any longer because of their mental states You see what you want to see. What I am describing is common outcome even among the most well-meaning parents.
There is a big difference between pushing a kid who doesn’t have the build or brains to excel and getting the kid some extra lessons to make an upper level orchestra or swim team in college. Getting to that next level may have had the same college outcome but the OP feels remorse at not have tried.
DH and I are average build but both test well, did well academically and attended ivy schools. Our kids do well academically with very slight pushing from us. Yes, I will kick my kid off fort nite when he has homework or a test the next day.
My one son LOVES basketball. Dh and I don’t know much about basketball but we do know that our kid won’t be making the high school basketball team with just rec basketball. He is currently trying out for AAU teams. If I didn’t know better, DS could have just played on his rec team, continued playing basketball at the school playground and not made the high school team. I don’t think any of this is helicopter parenting. It is providing kids with the right supports to do their best.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Do more than what though? Achieve more than who? Is that something you can even define or is it abstract that you're just pushing for the sake of pushing? What is enough before the lack of balance is detrimental to the child?
I don't believe in kids sitting on their butts looking at a screen all day, but what "more" are you pushing them towards that they can't have down time from structured activities? God forbid, a kid gets to relax on a weekend.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Same. Also kids being given the opportunity to hang around and be bored isn't some new concept... Kids have been left alone to amuse themselves for decades. And they certainly will when they get older too, it just won't be in ways you like. I'd prefer mine are involved in productive activities. I taught high school for a few years and the kids that weren't involved in things were either depressed or getting into things they should not have- often both.
Not all kids are like that though, or will be like that.
Are like what? What are the uninvolved high school kids doing with all their free time- studying? Hanging out with other uninvolved friends doing...?
Not all kids will be couch potatoes or trouble makers. Which seems to be the general consensus on kids/teens who aren't involved in a bunch of activities
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Same. Also kids being given the opportunity to hang around and be bored isn't some new concept... Kids have been left alone to amuse themselves for decades. And they certainly will when they get older too, it just won't be in ways you like. I'd prefer mine are involved in productive activities. I taught high school for a few years and the kids that weren't involved in things were either depressed or getting into things they should not have- often both.
Not all kids are like that though, or will be like that.
Are like what? What are the uninvolved high school kids doing with all their free time- studying? Hanging out with other uninvolved friends doing...?
Not all kids will be couch potatoes or trouble makers. Which seems to be the general consensus on kids/teens who aren't involved in a bunch of activities
But again the question is what are they doing with all of this free time if they're not on screens, out getting into trouble, or sitting around their house depressed?
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Same. Also kids being given the opportunity to hang around and be bored isn't some new concept... Kids have been left alone to amuse themselves for decades. And they certainly will when they get older too, it just won't be in ways you like. I'd prefer mine are involved in productive activities. I taught high school for a few years and the kids that weren't involved in things were either depressed or getting into things they should not have- often both.
Not all kids are like that though, or will be like that.
Are like what? What are the uninvolved high school kids doing with all their free time- studying? Hanging out with other uninvolved friends doing...?
Not all kids will be couch potatoes or trouble makers. Which seems to be the general consensus on kids/teens who aren't involved in a bunch of activities
But again the question is what are they doing with all of this free time if they're not on screens, out getting into trouble, or sitting around their house depressed?
Neither one unless their are already mental health issues or there are no other kids around.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
who gives a crap about anything? we are all going to DIE. our planet is going to disappear, even our galaxy.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Do more than what though? Achieve more than who? Is that something you can even define or is it abstract that you're just pushing for the sake of pushing? What is enough before the lack of balance is detrimental to the child?
I don't believe in kids sitting on their butts looking at a screen all day, but what "more" are you pushing them towards that they can't have down time from structured activities? God forbid, a kid gets to relax on a weekend.
My kids can swim, ski, golf, dance, fish, sail, play tennis, soccer, basketball, volleyball, run track, play multiple instruments, compete in science tournaments, etc. Maybe we will go hiking or to a museum or out to eat as a family but I do not like sitting at home all weekend. We also travel 8-10 times per year. Getting ready to go away for the long weekend.
I spent my childhood sitting at home often bored, watching tv and reading.
I am also aware that we are on the the upper end of doing a lot. We have the resources both time and money to do more than most people.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Same. Also kids being given the opportunity to hang around and be bored isn't some new concept... Kids have been left alone to amuse themselves for decades. And they certainly will when they get older too, it just won't be in ways you like. I'd prefer mine are involved in productive activities. I taught high school for a few years and the kids that weren't involved in things were either depressed or getting into things they should not have- often both.
Not all kids are like that though, or will be like that.
Are like what? What are the uninvolved high school kids doing with all their free time- studying? Hanging out with other uninvolved friends doing...?
Not all kids will be couch potatoes or trouble makers. Which seems to be the general consensus on kids/teens who aren't involved in a bunch of activities
But again the question is what are they doing with all of this free time if they're not on screens, out getting into trouble, or sitting around their house depressed?
Reading, drawing, listening to music (for the sake of listening, not to practice), talking with friends about boys/girls, actually playing pickup games/sports (if parents hadn't ruined that by forcing kids to only play "travel" sports), going to the movies (even though it's a screen, it's different), hobbies of their own choosing, yardwork/chores around the house, thinking quietly, thinking loudly, age-appropriate dates, age-appropriate outings with other kids/teens, neighborhood swimming pool to just hang out and not run laps, running errands with parents, annoying parents, playing games with parents, and yes, a reasonable amount of screen time (video games, tv shows, YouTube) to just not have to do something.
Logistics of transporting kids aside, it's actually easier to parent kids by filling each moment with structured activities instead of being available and willing to help foster their creativity, freedom, and personal responsibility.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
No one is arguing that kids should be couch potatoes. Kids should excel in school and participate in activities. That is not the same as curating a kids’ life so that they end up in an elite school. It cracks me up when DCUMers get so defensive about “achieving” and yet have minimal reading comprehension/critical thinking skills.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Same. Also kids being given the opportunity to hang around and be bored isn't some new concept... Kids have been left alone to amuse themselves for decades. And they certainly will when they get older too, it just won't be in ways you like. I'd prefer mine are involved in productive activities. I taught high school for a few years and the kids that weren't involved in things were either depressed or getting into things they should not have- often both.
Not all kids are like that though, or will be like that.
Are like what? What are the uninvolved high school kids doing with all their free time- studying? Hanging out with other uninvolved friends doing...?
Not all kids will be couch potatoes or trouble makers. Which seems to be the general consensus on kids/teens who aren't involved in a bunch of activities
The whole point of the thread is that if a parent may have pushed a bit harder, the kid may have achieved more. More is relative. I don’t necessarily think a kid who isn’t involved in a lot of activities of sports is going to be depressed or a troublemaker. Some parents will think it is perfectly fine to be an average student, not excel at anything and go to an average college. OP and many others would prefer our kids do the best they can.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
Do more than what though? Achieve more than who? Is that something you can even define or is it abstract that you're just pushing for the sake of pushing? What is enough before the lack of balance is detrimental to the child?
I don't believe in kids sitting on their butts looking at a screen all day, but what "more" are you pushing them towards that they can't have down time from structured activities? God forbid, a kid gets to relax on a weekend.
My kids can swim, ski, golf, dance, fish, sail, play tennis, soccer, basketball, volleyball, run track, play multiple instruments, compete in science tournaments, etc. Maybe we will go hiking or to a museum or out to eat as a family but I do not like sitting at home all weekend. We also travel 8-10 times per year. Getting ready to go away for the long weekend.
I spent my childhood sitting at home often bored, watching tv and reading.
I am also aware that we are on the the upper end of doing a lot. We have the resources both time and money to do more than most people.
Sounds wonderful. Hopefully you're not just overcorrecting from your childhood and the resources/money spent is beneficial for your kids' overall development.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
No one is arguing that kids should be couch potatoes. Kids should excel in school and participate in activities. That is not the same as curating a kids’ life so that they end up in an elite school. It cracks me up when DCUMers get so defensive about “achieving” and yet have minimal reading comprehension/critical thinking skills.
Eh. Several posters seem to be arguing that not participating in activities is perfectly healthy and normal.
Anonymous wrote:But my kids weren't a breath away from an anxiety disorder and are happy people. I think that's worth more than going to a higher-ranked college.
OP here. I don’t think that was the choice. My kids were probably going to be happy either way.
The realization that I have come to is that I traded opportunities to improve my kids chances for easier weekends and less hectic weeknights.
At the time I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing - but that’s what I did.
If we had pushed math more would they have had a better chance at UVA and Michigan- almost certainly.
If we had done travel sports I don’t know if they would have played in college but they would’ve almost certainly made the highschool baseball team.
In the plus side I did have a lot more in the 529s than I would have if I pursued additional opportunities.
What gets me is I thought we were already doing a lot. We sat with them while they did their homework., they were always on a team I even coached a couple of their teams early on.
For the posters, who were saying that life’s a marathon, and not a sprint. I think you’re missing the point. A parent’s strategy is open as many doors as possible. It’s up to them to choose the door. I think the net results of not pushing harder in sports and academically was there fewer doors for them to go through
The doors are not exclusively located on college campuses, is the thing.
But those doors are always available. At what point are those other doors not open?
You are mistaken. Those doors are not always available.
There are finite opportunities to enter service academies, skilled trades programs (alone or as an adjunct to high-test liberal arts education), and particular niche institutions of higher education that may be better fits for a given person than the most elite colleges.
There are finite opportunities to prevent stress-mediated mental health problems that can last a lifetime (or end in death).
There are finite opportunities to be fully present in the life one is leading today, vs simply striving for a specific future outcome. This moment will be gone when that future arrives; it can’t be gotten back.
These are all doors that can and often do close while the focus is single-mindedly on college admissions.
You can't open all the doors all the time but you can't argue that pushing your kids to do their best and fulfill their potential closes any doors. And doing that doesn't close the door to service academies or trade organizations. Explain how after a parent doing their best means a kid can't go to a trade school? This makes zero sense. Sitting on the couch at home vs participating in sports, clubs, music, theater doesn't close any doors. Being a couch potato will certainly limit opportunities.
Such black and white thinking. Why are the options being a couch potato or being in travel sports/being over scheduled? It’s a continuum.
The black and white thinking is coming from the other direction with people claiming that unless kids are totally self motivated and seek out every opportunity on their own, even in 2nd grade, their parents are forcing them and are mentally unwell. Then the people come on claiming they did absolutely nothing for their kids and then went to an Ivy (decades ago). Get real. Lots and lots of people are doing the utmost to help their kids along the way and OP can see it. People are delusional pretending this isn't actually happening.
Help your child to help them maximize their potential. The problem is "helping" your child for the sole purpose of reaching some elite threshold and anything less then that is failure. Life isn't D1 scholarship+ Ivies or bust.
But without helping your kid, you'll never know what their limits will be. Point is, you definitely won't get there if you don't even try.
Y’all seem to have so much difficulty understanding this. The kid may do better, in the net, without your “help” if the “help”
is what OP is describing. Yes, you will know what their limits will be. It will be what they achieve—and it may be more than they would have achieved if you had tried to stage-manage like this.
We had a kid who used to rip off pages of her Kumon worksheets and hide them all over the house to get out of doing them. (Like there were twenty pages and she would pull off like six to make her job a little easier.) she is now an adult and occasionally we find another little stash when we get a new entertainment center or something. She turned out fine but in retrospect she was never going to be a mathematician and clearly was very strong willed. There is a limit to how much you can control another person. And we were never able to instill a love of math.
You tried to instill a move of math with kumon?!?!? Lol! I'm a scientist and we instill a love of math by watching birds hunt and explaining the mechanics of their necks, or looking buildings being built and talking about the loads on the cranes. You know, things that are actually interesting to a kid. The math is just the language to describe it. I have 4 kids that love math, physics, and BOOKS. The teens want to be a writer and a doctor, one kid is undecided, and the little one wants to be a ballerina. They all love math and are good at it but don't necessarily want to be mathematicians.
"That mom" here. For the record, neither my husband nor I are math people. We speak a bunch of foreign languages but math is not our thing. I would literally have no idea how to talk about loads on cranes with my kid. So yeah, we tried Kumon. Kid wants a phd in philosophy. no money in that. I would have loved to have had the secret sauce that makes a kid that loves math.
please don't listen to this arrogant fool. tutors can help teach subjects that are taught poorly in school. tutors were the norm, not the exception not so long ago. many great minds and scientists had nothing BUT tutors.
-1. Tutors are not the exception. You just come from a crowded, disadvantaged country, and you think it is the norm.
i said - not so long ago. darwin was tutored. einstein was tutored. von neumann was tutored. they didn't learn their foundations from your run of the mill HS or middle school teacher.
Oh my god, you all seriously think you have little Darwins and Einsteins, don’t you?
so you just realized now you are a neglectful parent? happy to provide that service.
Did Darwin or Einstein make the high school baseball team? Just think of what could have been if their parents had pushed just a little bit harder!
Interestingly Einstein credits his mother forcing him to play violin as critical to his success. Anyone saying that it's all just a highly motivated child has no idea what they are talking about and is oblivious to the world around them.
"It isn’t easy to nurture a genius, let alone raise one. In their case studies, the authors found that every child who went on to be successful had unique stories about how their were raised, but their plots were all the same: They had parents who made very strategic parenting choices."
Ah well, I already let my kid quit the violin and we both agree that we’re much happier for it.
But at least you tried. It's the parents who think the kids are in the driver's seat and must be entirely self motivated who will be left behind.
I signed my kid up for private violin lessons at age 6 and we stuck with it for about 5 years, but it was increasingly become a source of contention, and it was clear it was not really going to be a thing for him. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had never really expressed any interest music at a young age, joined the middle school orchestra, fell in love with playing the cello, and will play at least through high school. I’ve never once had to remind her to practice. She just found something that clicked and ran with it. I’ll take the latter experience any day.
And maybe if your daughter had been encouraged to take instrument lessons at a younger age, she'd have loved it. Starting in middle school with a school level orchestra is pretty low level, and she is now capped at how well she can play.
That is such a sad, sad view of life. Who gives a flying crap if a kid doesn’t end up at the very top of something? Low level? They found something that brings them joy. Fun. Joy. Do you understand the concept of having an interest bc it’s fun and enriches your life vs. just something to add to a CV or college app? You people are pathetic.
These people aren’t raising kids - they’re raising future college students.
We all are doing what we think is best for our kids. Personally I think parents just relaxing on the weekends and letting their kids be on their iPads and other screens is a huge disservice to the children. I grew up watching tv during most of my spare time. There is so much to be done. I know parents think being bored is going to create all this amazing self motivated projects from kids but this isn’t what happens. I want more for my kids. I want them to do more, achieve more.
No one is arguing that kids should be couch potatoes. Kids should excel in school and participate in activities. That is not the same as curating a kids’ life so that they end up in an elite school. It cracks me up when DCUMers get so defensive about “achieving” and yet have minimal reading comprehension/critical thinking skills.
Eh. Several posters seem to be arguing that not participating in activities is perfectly healthy and normal.
Are you making that up or can you quote a single post where someone said that kids shouldn't participate in any activities? I haven't seen that stated once in all of these pages.
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}