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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Any tips from parents of seniors or reflections of what you would do differently? I have a h.s. junior and have realized this year that the more selective colleges I imagined are likely not gonna happen for this kid so...I want to back off a bit but also not cause her to miss out on good college opportunities. What did you do, wish you did, regret you did with your senior during this college admission process? Any tips?[/quote]

I think part of backing off has to be accepting that there may be some missed opportunities as a result and making peace with this because your kid will still be okay. I'm not the parent of a senior yet, but I've spent a lot of time with my high-school senior niece over the past year, and her current state of mind is nothing like what people are describing here. I don't know what the difference is, but I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that her parents backed the hell off during the college application process. They offering help when it seemed relevant/appropriate but didn't pressure her to accept it. They accepted the fact that if she didn't take it seriously she might not have the same options she would have otherwise, but decided to let that play out because a kid who doesn't get their act together to get their applications done properly might be better served taking a gap year and trying again than being pushed into something they're not ready for. She dropped the ball on some stuff along the way and maybe she otherwise would have gotten into some schools she didn't, but right now she is happy, relaxed, enjoying the process of visiting the three schools she's choosing between, and proud of herself for accomplishing it (even though she might have had even better schools to choose from if they'd micromanaged her all along).

I think it's also worth thinking about the precedent all of this sets for adult life, for the importance of maximizing achievement at the expense of your mental/emotional well-being. Just look at the relationship forum with all of the people talking about their relationships falling apart and parents hardly ever seeing kids and just being miserable, and how it correlates with high professional achievement. How many of those adults do you think were given the message growing up that it was okay to achieve less than their full academic potential if taking it back a notch would be better for their mental health? How many of those people were allowed as kids to get a B instead of an A because they'd spent what could have been study time instead having a family game night, hanging out with a friend whose parents were going through a divorce and she wanted some company, or volunteering to take care of horses at a local stable in exchange for riding lessons because being around horses made her happy and brought her peace when everything else was getting stressful?[/quote]

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