Reply to I wish parents could be more supportive and less desperate

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Like everything else, with the passage of time parents realize they made mistakes.  I was obsessed with the test scores at my kids’ public elementary school and my school obsession continued all the way through college admissions.  Now that it’s all behind me, it’s very obvious that how I acted was unhealthy and unnecessary - and that I risked serious damage to my relationship with my kids for no reason whatsoever.  Fortunately, my kids are the forgiving type and that hasn’t actually happened.

What you all will discover soon enough is that there is no correlation between the rank of your kid’s college and their professional success or personal happiness.   Five, ten, fifteen years out of college, when I line up all of my kids and all of their friends first by college rank and then by professional/personal success each line is dramatically different.  It really, truly doesn’t matter.   But there’s no convincing many parents who are currently in the process of this fact.  I understand that, because I’ve been there.

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This should be obvious to people even just looking at their own families and peers they went to school with, but people lose their minds a bit with fear when it comes to their kids.

Like doesn't everyone know someone from high school or college who took an unconventional route and wound up incredibly fulfilled and successful even though they did want the college admissions olympics or have a really impressive resume at 22? I know a bunch of people like this. They were smart people who didn't make bad choices (not talking about drop outs or people who developed drug problems or something) but they didn't succumb to pressure to achieve in a very specific, prescribed way in HS and college or grad school and instead figured out what they really wanted to do, and what would be fulfilling to them, and then found ways to accomplish that goal in a targeted, thoughtful way. Their plan was never "Havard then top law or business school then I'm rich" which it turns out is a really good plan if you want to be miserable and unfulfilled in life.[/quote]

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