Reply to Lottery season reminder: your kids don't need to hear about DCUM stuff

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The problem is when the kids (mostly because of their parents) portray a school to be much worse than it actually is, causing the kids who will likely go to that school unnecessary anxiety. Reality is fine, exaggeration and rumor are not. [/quote]

I agree that is a problem, but think it happens because parents avoid having direct conversations with their kids. Parents whisper about this stuff to each other and think their kids aren't listening or soaking it up, and kids will read tone, fill in the gaps, and exaggerate things they hear.

This is really critical for us because we live on the Hill, our kids attend a DCPS elementary, and our oldest will be in 4th next year. Which means figuring out what we are going to do about MS and HS, deciding if we will lottery for Latin and Basis (we almost certainly will), deciding what to do if we don't get in (likely stay as we are okay with Stuart-Hobson, our feeder), and what that means for our future (a big old question mark on HS). Gearing up to explain this to your kids in a way that makes sense, won't freak them out our create anxiety, but also won't result in them contributing to the anxiety of other kids/families who are in these are boat at their school, is genuinely daunting. But I know we do in fact have to discuss it with them and provide a narrative for all these choices that doesn't just crap all over schools that (1) many of their kids might wind up attending, or (2) schools they themselves might end up attending.

This is not easy and I would actually welcome advice on how to frame it. I think we know how we'd like to lay it out, but I have trepidation about it. We've already been through this once when we moved our kids from one elementary to another, and I think we handled it well, but yes we received a lot of questions about "is this school better than our old school?" and "what was wrong with our old school?" We talked about fit, after school programs, being able to walk to school and having friends from school who lived nearby, but always emphasized that we had a good experience at the old school and liked the teachers and the students. I feel like this time is harder though.[/quote]

Your kid will hear all about the lottery at school, because you/they are in the same position as the rest of the class. They may already know more about it than you think -- my 3rd grader at a SH feeder already has very firm ideas (BASIS yay), as did/does my 5th grader (BASIS boo). You may be surprised.[/quote]

I mean, my kids know about the lottery because they we lotteried into their current school, so that part they understand. But my 3rd grader definitely doesn't know anything about BASIS or Latin or the fact that some kids will peel off for these charters or will move or may go private starting in 4th/5th. I know, but she doesn't. Your 3rd grader likely knows about it because they have an older sibling who has been through it.

That's part of the challenge. Right now, my kids assume that everyone at their elementary school will go to the feeder middle school (something I know for a fact is not true -- some go, more than used to, but many will not). They have other friends in DC so they know some kids go to charters or to schools like SWS, and they ask us questions sometimes about whether they will ever go to school with those kids (probably not but there is some chance at some point). They just have no frame of reference. And for them, their priority is staying with their friends, something we actually have no control over since their friends families will make their own choices and won't necessarily share them with us. We've also already been through this -- one of the reasons we left our last school is because ever single year we were there, our kids made friends with kids who then left at the end of the year to either move away or lotteried into another school. Our kids no longer remember this experience with any precision, but I remember it and I know when there is an exodus at their current school after 4th, that's going to be more memorable to them than when their "best friends" in PK3, PK4, K and 1st departed for elsewhere. On the other hand maybe they have just acclimated and won't think it's strange? I don't know. My own K-12 experience was so, so different from any of this.[/quote]

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