Reply to DD is extremely disappointed

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "DD is extremely disappointed"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]It's not the failure to send OP's DD to private school that's the problem.  It's instead the implied promise to do so if DD works hard.  I went through a similar situation many years ago.  Parents promised me that if I did well in school, I could go to college wherever I wanted.  After I kept my end of that deal and got in to MIT, my father told me he wouldn't pay for it.  Our finances were similar to OP's, in that it was a stretch, but could be done with some degree of sacrifice.  Thank god for my stepmother, who weighed in and got my father to change his mind.  I thought this over at length, and it wasn't the fact of MIT that was really the problem:  it was my father's willingness to break a promise that really stung.  I had no other way to pay, and I was prepared to never speak to him again.  As unwise as that may have been, that's genuinely how I felt at the time.  He relented; I went.  I adored pretty much every minute I spend there.  And I had a great relationship with my dad until he passed away many years later.  I might well have forgiven him if he had not changed his mind, but I'm not entirely sure of that, even now.

Amusingly, he'd also promised to pay for grad school.  After I got good grades my first year in law school, he yanked the remainder of that promise and told me I could pay for my second and third years myself.  I was furious for exactly 24 hours, until I realized that a) I'd be able to pay back the money in question within five years and b) he was a great dad who had given me all kinds of wonderful experiences and love growing up, not to mention my MIT tuition etc. for four years plus an extra semester.  I had no reasonable right to expect more.

As a parent, I don't have to promise my children private school, a car, a pony, or anything else.  But if I do, I need to abide it.  Not as a matter of contract law or any other legalistic notion, but instead out of love and affection for my DDs.  It seems to me as a parent that one of the best guideposts for my DDs is that I will do what I say I will do; that my words and my promises have meaning.  OP, I don't know if you promised your DD private school or not.  I very definitely know that when I asked my DD to apply to private school, I told her very clearly that doing so was only a way of exploring opportunities and that we would have to have a family discussion about where she would go when we knew what the options were.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics