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[quote=Anonymous]To the previous poster - can you please share info on how much homework your children have per night, on average? If they went to MS at Newport Mill then for MS and HS. I'm guessing it varied due to their different programs and I'd love to get a sense for both.

My ambitions for my son are for him to have a well-rounded, balanced childhood, be happy, and receive a solid education, which I know all MCPS schools will provide. From there I want him to pursue whatever he wants. I hope he chooses to go to college and I imagine he probably would but I won't force it and instead let him find his own path as long as he's not freeloading in my basement doing nothing. If he desires more challenge at the expense of higher workload, then it's great that there are options. If not, it doesn't mean he's a slacker. He might just not care if he's not challenged and instead be fine just getting through his classes without too much stress and overworking himself, still get a solid education that sets him up for college if that's his path (I don't care which college and think state colleges are wonderful and I went to a small liberal arts state school and I wouldn't trade it for a top college). C's get degrees. Not every child has to achieve to their full potential. If you try to force a child to be a high achiever when they don't want to be, just because you think they can be, there will be a constant battle and they will hate you. I'm not going to let him fail if he can pass, but I'm not going to push him to always give his all in everything he does all the time. As a child and adolescent psychologist, I know "Always do your best" is unhealthy. I did not clean my house the best today (not at all). I did not do my best at self-care today. I was not the best mom I could be today. I'm not going to pressure myself in my adult life to do everything to the best of my ability. Because that doesn't sound pleasant or attainable. This mentality breeds mental breakdowns when for some reason they can't be at their best but they have a personal rule to always be at their best. And I frankly don't care if the student sitting next to my child can barely speak English or doesn't care about the class. My child will be self-motivated or I'll need to stay on top of him to make sure he's meeting minimum requirements. And both of those will be true regardless of who he sits next to in class. I don't believe that a truly intrinsically motivated, high achieving child is all that likely to decide to forget about school because the kid next to them isn't fluent in English. And if he later realizes it would've benefited him to care more, he can go to a tech school to give it another go and then transfer if he desires. His entire future is not wrapped up in those 4 years. There are many definitions of success and many ways to get there.

Like I said before, I have a PhD. I went to a high school ranked 1/10 on greatschools.org. I sat in classes with kids with learning disabilities and who skipped a lot of class (like I did on occasion), kids who got pregnant in HS (lots of them!), kids who cared, kids who didn't, kids who were like me, kids who weren't. My classes were easy. My AP classes were easy. I was smart. I did an entire year of college my senior year, never going to my high school at all. And those classes were easy. At no point did I wish someone was making things harder for me and did I desire to spend hours per night doing homework to have a better application. No one ever talked to me about going to college. I didn't even know scholarships were a thing I could apply for. I got a brochure in the mail with a horse on the cover and I said, "Cool, I'm going there." I applied nowhere else. The school was a tiny little agricultural-focused liberal arts college where I planned to join the college rodeo. Required 19 on ACT. Amazing education. Amazing teachers. I worked in the dept. I later taught as an adjunct there while I was in my postdoc. I'm friends with almost all of my former psychology professors on Facebook and one's son played violin at my wedding. I became a McNair scholar there, which really helped my grad school application. I didn't even know what the GRE was when I got there. When I defended my thesis, my parents didn't know to congratulate me because they didn't know what a thesis was. Neither went to college. I was a big fish in a little pond all the way through. I didn't go to a top grad school, I went to Southern Miss because people were so warm and friendly there. It was a good fit. And where did I wind up doing my postdoc? Mayo Clinic. Not that I needed it, I own my own practice and don't need prestige to do that.

So no, my uneducated surroundings, my easy classes, my lack of rigor in school, my low homework load, my slacker classmates, my lower ranking universities, they didn't negatively influence me. I was at the top of all my classes. Summa Cum Laude. And it got me a postdoc I could only have dreamed of. I almost didn't apply because I didn't think I was special enough. But the decision to accept me was unanimous. I'm glad I can look back on my childhood years and only remember the cool (and delinquent) stuff I did and have no memories of long hard nights of studying. I didn't need that. I didn't need any of it. Apparently my 1/10 easy education built me the foundation necessary to work at Mayo Clinic. Because of my personal traits, because of my ability to REALLY get to know my teachers. Had I only gone to top schools, I'm not sure I would've looked as special or gotten the types of recommendation letters I did where I came from. [/quote]

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