Competitive academics - what to tell the smart, hard-working kid who isn't "the best"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I still don't know what OP or her kid are upset about!

that she is not considered the very top student at her school. yes, it sounds crazy, but it still requires managing.

Wow you need to reset her expectations. There will always be someone better. Nobody is perfect.

I don't think it was the OP who provided the above explanation ("that she is not considered the very top student"). I think that was just someone's take. Because the actual OP has said in a previous posts that her DD is NOT actually upset about not being at the tippy top. She just sort of wants more recognition for her particular strengths, or something. Or she is disgruntled that the same kids win multiple awards? . . . Again, I'm confused!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I still don't know what OP or her kid are upset about!

that she is not considered the very top student at her school. yes, it sounds crazy, but it still requires managing.

Wow you need to reset her expectations. There will always be someone better. Nobody is perfect.

easier said than done. hence OP.

Come on now. You created this mess. Start unraveling it and stop being so scared of your daughter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I still don't know what OP or her kid are upset about!

that she is not considered the very top student at her school. yes, it sounds crazy, but it still requires managing.

Wow you need to reset her expectations. There will always be someone better. Nobody is perfect.

I don't think it was the OP who provided the above explanation ("that she is not considered the very top student"). I think that was just someone's take. Because the actual OP has said in a previous posts that her DD is NOT actually upset about not being at the tippy top. She just sort of wants more recognition for her particular strengths, or something. Or she is disgruntled that the same kids win multiple awards? . . . Again, I'm confused!

If not OP that person isn’t helping and is causing confusion speaking for her.

[Anonymous]

The thread is overrun with psychos.

All OP is saying is that her daughter gets discouraged because her interests and talent aren't in the specific "contestable" areas that specific awards are given for. Furthermore, a lot of these awards are poorly structured because they reward being the best in narrow measurable areas instead of cultivating a more valuable society where people fan out to each excel in different areas.

I see myself where the prestige academic contests are for memorizing an extremely specific bit of curriculum, driving kids to waste their time drilling and drilling on a small piece of curriculum, while ignoring all the other areas and actual creative productivity, because there is no trophy for those. We are doing our kids a disservice by rewarding the wrong things.

It's similar to how you might feel if someone is an all around capable athlete who can run and swim and lift and stretch, but the school award goes to best basketball player, who peaks in high school because 99% of best basketball players aren't good enough for college let alone pro, so why are we rewarding kids for overspecializating in oddly specifically talents whose value expires immediately after school ends?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's a disconnect for me here. Your DD is not actively gunning to be at the tippy top, yet she is upset that she's not at the tippy top?
Ummmmmmmm....

OP here. She isn't mad she's not at the tippy top. She has made a choice to approach school in a different way and is happy with her choice. She just gets down because sometimes it's hard to see classmates honored and awarded for their choices, and not get that same validation.

There is no award for "most well rounded student" or "student synthesizing some themes from Moby Dick into a pretty cool art project" or "read and understood the most unassigned science books." Individual teachers might recognize that stuff (sometimes, sometimes they don't), but there are no trophies for those kinds of things. My kid is on a different path than the more competitive kids who are gunning for Ivy admission and other very visible rewards (though she does have straight As). I think a lot of the time, she just does her thing and it's fine. She's just struggling with the end of the year awards where a kid like her doesn't get much attention, even though she's worked very hard over the course of the year, just in ways that don't result in academic awards. That's it. She's not mad she's not at the tippy top, she's just sad that in not being at the tippy top, she feels kind of invisible at the moment.

1. Green is ugly color on her.

2. People who are obsessed with awards collapse hard when the awards stop coming after age 18 or 22. The awards only exist to motivate kids who lack internal motivation. (Some internally motivated kids mop of the awards anyway.) The people who *want* the awards don't matter. The awards don't matter. Your daughter is ahead of the game if she has an internal compass. Better, in fact, if she's not even playing the game, and living a life instead.
I have a shelf full of high end trophies to arrest to this.

The "awards" don't stop coming after the age 18 or 22. There are pretty well defined metrics of success in most fields, and, if nothing else, you can also compare money.

Unless you are in the NFL or NBA, what your employer and customers pay you for is not for the games schools give trophies for.
Most successful people work at job functions that most high schoolers don't even know are jobs, and have nothing to do with what schools give trophies for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's a disconnect for me here. Your DD is not actively gunning to be at the tippy top, yet she is upset that she's not at the tippy top?
Ummmmmmmm....

OP here. She isn't mad she's not at the tippy top. She has made a choice to approach school in a different way and is happy with her choice. She just gets down because sometimes it's hard to see classmates honored and awarded for their choices, and not get that same validation.

There is no award for "most well rounded student" or "student synthesizing some themes from Moby Dick into a pretty cool art project" or "read and understood the most unassigned science books." Individual teachers might recognize that stuff (sometimes, sometimes they don't), but there are no trophies for those kinds of things. My kid is on a different path than the more competitive kids who are gunning for Ivy admission and other very visible rewards (though she does have straight As). I think a lot of the time, she just does her thing and it's fine. She's just struggling with the end of the year awards where a kid like her doesn't get much attention, even though she's worked very hard over the course of the year, just in ways that don't result in academic awards. That's it. She's not mad she's not at the tippy top, she's just sad that in not being at the tippy top, she feels kind of invisible at the moment.

1. Green is ugly color on her.

2. People who are obsessed with awards collapse hard when the awards stop coming after age 18 or 22. The awards only exist to motivate kids who lack internal motivation. (Some internally motivated kids mop of the awards anyway.) The people who *want* the awards don't matter. The awards don't matter. Your daughter is ahead of the game if she has an internal compass. Better, in fact, if she's not even playing the game, and living a life instead.
I have a shelf full of high end trophies to arrest to this.

The "awards" don't stop coming after the age 18 or 22. There are pretty well defined metrics of success in most fields, and, if nothing else, you can also compare money.

What are the metrics of success in your field?

In my field it's a broad base of technical talent, communication and leadership, reliability, and maneuvering into position where my talents are needed, and then selling myself for promotion or hire.
My company doesn't give me an award for acing test or making the most widgets.

[Anonymous]

Pick one subject to be competitive in. The kids trying to best at all subjects are miserable. The ones who concentrate on being the best at math or English or history and do reasonably well in the other subjects, seem the happiest.

[Anonymous]

Honey, you will never be able to compete with tiger parented kids who started extra hours of studying before they could walk.

If it gives you solace, your DD will not be that kid with accolades who hysterically falls apart any time they only got 95% on a test and nit 100%, she will not be on anti-anxiety meds since middle school, and will not have an eating disorder.

There is a dark side of this level of perfectionism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She needs a reality check. These kids are putting in way more time and work than she is, and the awards sound well deserved. If she doesn’t want to out in the extra academic work, then she can’t be disappointed when other who are are ahead of her.

+1. The other kids are working harder and putting in more time. OP’s kid is not. Just tell her if she wants those awards then that is what needs to be done.

If she is not interested in doing above, then move on. Honestly, it sounds like she needs a lot of external validation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What accolades are they winning?

The school selects two students from each grade based on GPA with teachers voting for tie breaks, so they'll win that. Mathletes plus there's a math competition in the spring (DD did well but did not win). Each subject teacher will select 1-2 students to win an award for that subject for the year -- DD may get one or maybe two of these, but there will be kids who get it for every single subject. That kind of thing. There is an awards dinner for all the kids who receive an academic award, plus everyone who has a GPA in the top ten percent of the class will get an award for that. This will be DD's second year attending (sophomore) and she sounds unenthusiastic about going because, in her words, "[XYZ students] will win everything again." Not exactly true but I get why this is her perception based on last year's experience.

Wow, this is wonderful. Compare this to schools and school districts where achievement is not honored at all and swept under the rug.
In our school district, for instance, there's zero recognition for academic achievement. The only recognition our child received was an "all A honor roll" certificate that they had put in their report card envelope. When we asked how many students made the all-A honor roll, the school claimed "privacy" and we had to file an FOIA just to get this information.

But what our school does have is a slide show that's run during lunch hours where each week 9 kids are recognized not for academic achievements, but for such traits as "follows instructions" and "meets expectations" (this is not snark, it's literally what it says on the slide show). When asked how these kids are chosen and based on which criteria, no answer from the school. The chosen kids really don't seem all that competitive and their caption of "meets expectations" seem rather on target (I wonder if the teachers that are forced to write these captions take joy in these underhanded insults or if they don't notice them.)

Overall, it is extremely demotivating for kids who do try to excel academically. These kids will need to get their recognition in outside of school events: state and national competitions which still recognize achievement unlike their home school. Kudos to your child's school for recognizing academic achievement - it's become really rare these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What accolades are they winning?

The school selects two students from each grade based on GPA with teachers voting for tie breaks, so they'll win that. Mathletes plus there's a math competition in the spring (DD did well but did not win). Each subject teacher will select 1-2 students to win an award for that subject for the year -- DD may get one or maybe two of these, but there will be kids who get it for every single subject. That kind of thing. There is an awards dinner for all the kids who receive an academic award, plus everyone who has a GPA in the top ten percent of the class will get an award for that. This will be DD's second year attending (sophomore) and she sounds unenthusiastic about going because, in her words, "[XYZ students] will win everything again." Not exactly true but I get why this is her perception based on last year's experience.

Wow, this is wonderful. Compare this to schools and school districts where achievement is not honored at all and swept under the rug.
In our school district, for instance, there's zero recognition for academic achievement. The only recognition our child received was an "all A honor roll" certificate that they had put in their report card envelope. When we asked how many students made the all-A honor roll, the school claimed "privacy" and we had to file an FOIA just to get this information.

But what our school does have is a slide show that's run during lunch hours where each week 9 kids are recognized not for academic achievements, but for such traits as "follows instructions" and "meets expectations" (this is not snark, it's literally what it says on the slide show). When asked how these kids are chosen and based on which criteria, no answer from the school. The chosen kids really don't seem all that competitive and their caption of "meets expectations" seem rather on target (I wonder if the teachers that are forced to write these captions take joy in these underhanded insults or if they don't notice them.)

Overall, it is extremely demotivating for kids who do try to excel academically. These kids will need to get their recognition in outside of school events: state and national competitions which still recognize achievement unlike their home school. Kudos to your child's school for recognizing academic achievement - it's become really rare these days.

I agree with everything you said and the bolded is a good question. I have often wondered about the backroom politics of deciding who gets these awards. Like your children's school, my children's school also seems to abide by the philosophy of using these awards to motivate potatoesque students rather than rewarding students who demonstrate high ability. It's rare that a child who excels in a subject gets the award in that subject.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What accolades are they winning?

The school selects two students from each grade based on GPA with teachers voting for tie breaks, so they'll win that. Mathletes plus there's a math competition in the spring (DD did well but did not win). Each subject teacher will select 1-2 students to win an award for that subject for the year -- DD may get one or maybe two of these, but there will be kids who get it for every single subject. That kind of thing. There is an awards dinner for all the kids who receive an academic award, plus everyone who has a GPA in the top ten percent of the class will get an award for that. This will be DD's second year attending (sophomore) and she sounds unenthusiastic about going because, in her words, "[XYZ students] will win everything again." Not exactly true but I get why this is her perception based on last year's experience.

Wow, this is wonderful. Compare this to schools and school districts where achievement is not honored at all and swept under the rug.
In our school district, for instance, there's zero recognition for academic achievement. The only recognition our child received was an "all A honor roll" certificate that they had put in their report card envelope. When we asked how many students made the all-A honor roll, the school claimed "privacy" and we had to file an FOIA just to get this information.

But what our school does have is a slide show that's run during lunch hours where each week 9 kids are recognized not for academic achievements, but for such traits as "follows instructions" and "meets expectations" (this is not snark, it's literally what it says on the slide show). When asked how these kids are chosen and based on which criteria, no answer from the school. The chosen kids really don't seem all that competitive and their caption of "meets expectations" seem rather on target (I wonder if the teachers that are forced to write these captions take joy in these underhanded insults or if they don't notice them.)

Overall, it is extremely demotivating for kids who do try to excel academically. These kids will need to get their recognition in outside of school events: state and national competitions which still recognize achievement unlike their home school. Kudos to your child's school for recognizing academic achievement - it's become really rare these days.

I don't think "meeting expectations" is the underhanded insult you perceive it to be (and certainly not "follows instructions").

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You've basically said it yourself, OP. The kids getting the most awards are working their @sses off. That is a choice. Your DD prefers not to work that intensely. She's doing extremely well in light of that. If she wants to make different choices, she's free to. Some of this is under her control.

This. I can't imagine whining when she recognizes, objectively, that they are working harder than she is!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What accolades are they winning?

The school selects two students from each grade based on GPA with teachers voting for tie breaks, so they'll win that. Mathletes plus there's a math competition in the spring (DD did well but did not win). Each subject teacher will select 1-2 students to win an award for that subject for the year -- DD may get one or maybe two of these, but there will be kids who get it for every single subject. That kind of thing. There is an awards dinner for all the kids who receive an academic award, plus everyone who has a GPA in the top ten percent of the class will get an award for that. This will be DD's second year attending (sophomore) and she sounds unenthusiastic about going because, in her words, "[XYZ students] will win everything again." Not exactly true but I get why this is her perception based on last year's experience.

Wow, this is wonderful. Compare this to schools and school districts where achievement is not honored at all and swept under the rug.
In our school district, for instance, there's zero recognition for academic achievement. The only recognition our child received was an "all A honor roll" certificate that they had put in their report card envelope. When we asked how many students made the all-A honor roll, the school claimed "privacy" and we had to file an FOIA just to get this information.

But what our school does have is a slide show that's run during lunch hours where each week 9 kids are recognized not for academic achievements, but for such traits as "follows instructions" and "meets expectations" (this is not snark, it's literally what it says on the slide show). When asked how these kids are chosen and based on which criteria, no answer from the school. The chosen kids really don't seem all that competitive and their caption of "meets expectations" seem rather on target (I wonder if the teachers that are forced to write these captions take joy in these underhanded insults or if they don't notice them.)

Overall, it is extremely demotivating for kids who do try to excel academically. These kids will need to get their recognition in outside of school events: state and national competitions which still recognize achievement unlike their home school. Kudos to your child's school for recognizing academic achievement - it's become really rare these days.

I don't think "meeting expectations" is the underhanded insult you perceive it to be (and certainly not "follows instructions").

For behavior, I suppose it's not too much of an underhanded slight. For academics, it's a dig. My kids take assessments that are graded 1) does not meet expectations, 2) nearly meets expectations, 3) meets expectations, and 4) exceeds expectations. Imagine getting an award for being at least average.

[Anonymous]

This is because every kid from this generation has always gotten a medal or blue ribbon for just showing up. The harm in this is not only teaching entitlement but that the emphasis is on the end game and what you accomplish. The accolades! There is a reason she is having a tough time with this. It’s because somewhere down the line she began to equate personal worthiness with achievement. This is a recipe for disaster! Try having her get a hobby that she enjoys that is more about the process than the end product. Or have her volunteer to help individuals with disabilities to gain some perspective.