Ask the (former) DC Urban child!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The worst?

Different poster, but this is a flat out weird place to grow up. I had, at various times, Joe Lieberman, Sonny Bono, Kitty Kelley, and various ambassadors as neighbors. Cool, right? But also, just... not normal. Also, we are surrounded by an enormous amount of wealth and variety in DC, to such an extent that it's really easy to feel a kind of culture shock when you move outside of DC (or just your quadrant). PP is so right about a skewed idea of normal and it goes for everything, but especially socioeconomic stuff. I grew up thinking my family was middle class and they SO were upper middle, which sounds like a dumb thing, but it's really not, especially since it's important for kids (especially teenagers) to understand that stuff as they prepare to move about in the world.

Another native poster here. I agree that it is a weird place to grow up for all of these reasons you mention and similarly because everyone here is so much more educated than the rest of the country. I grew up thinking that people were simply uneducated if they didn't have a graduate degree. It seemed that all of our neighbors had Ph.Ds, JDs, MDs, or some other advanced degree. I can't tell you the number of secretaries or assistants I've met who have an M.A. in something or another. When I first visited my Midwestern husband's hometown, where he is considered to be "high-falutin" for having a B.A., I suffered from major culture shock.

[Anonymous]

"Different poster, but this is a flat out weird place to grow up. I had, at various times, Joe Lieberman, Sonny Bono, Kitty Kelley, and various ambassadors as neighbors. Cool, right? But also, just... not normal. Also, we are surrounded by an enormous amount of wealth and variety in DC, to such an extent that it's really easy to feel a kind of culture shock when you move outside of DC (or just your quadrant). PP is so right about a skewed idea of normal and it goes for everything, but especially socioeconomic stuff. I grew up thinking my family was middle class and they SO were upper middle, which sounds like a dumb thing, but it's really not, especially since it's important for kids (especially teenagers) to understand that stuff as they prepare to move about in the world."

This is the Upper NW, metro elite DC experience and I am very conscious of my DS is living it, though we have not gone the private school route yet because he is in a JKLM. DH is a clergy person, but he's never led a church in which the auction pulls in $100,000 in a single evening. I keep wondering how this is going to affect my DS and actually, I have plans to send him to a summer camp with a greater SES diversity and not wait until college. I do think it weird that he has his picture taken with the President by age 7 - and that journalists and others we see on TV show up at our local playground from time to time. He also asked why we weren't lawyers when he was younger...