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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kids are young adults now but I still look back on the 3rd Grade AAP madness with extreme PTSD. Parents go absolutely nuts over this. I was no exception. Did getting into AAP have any lasting ng term impact on my kids? I don’t know. My inclination is that they learned early on that they achieved an academic accolade that was making everyone’s parents crazy. So in a weird way it instilled in my kids some level of confidence in their own smarts. And it did set the trajectory for the type of kids who became their peers—for better or worse.[/quote]

My kid is in therapy unwinding the damage AAP did.  She’s a sensitive, artsy kid and AAP drove her to perfectionism and imposter theory.  She’s clearly not an imposter (at a highly regarded school in a PhD program), but struggles with anxiety that she says was exacerbated by AAP.

Think long and hard about AAP.  It’s a nice trophy for the parents but I’m not sure how much is influences ultimate outcome.  I would argue it’s not worth it for many kids.[/quote]
Are you sure it wasn’t exacerbated by you, the parent? Teachers and schools don’t really put pressure, if anything they mostly  de-emphasize aap these days. [/quote]

Partially, yes.  She says mainly the other students and the competitive atmosphere.  She also thought she was not as smart (especially in math), having no idea that many kids had already seen the material in outside supplemental courses.

There are a lot of factors at play, but she specifically pinpoints AAP as the start of her anxiety.  I think it was not a fit for her.  Academically, she loved the challenge but she hated the emphasis on math competitions, etc.  She is a natural learner and learns because she is curious.  She did not like making learning a competition.[/quote]

Thanks for elaborating and sharing your perspective. Do you think it was AAP generally or something about how it was done at her particular school? I wonder if there's much variation across schools. I have to agree with you that the emphasis on competition seems unnecessary.

She may have been great at math but kids often make self-comparisons with others as well as within themselves (many girls tend to think they are not good at math because they get better grades in LA, for example). [/quote]

It was several years ago as she is in grad school now so maybe the program has softened. She was at Haycock, which at the time was very competitive (a lot to love there, but crazy competitive).  She is actually really good at math, but has ADHD, which I think impacts working memory and computation speed.  She was terrible at memorizing and spitting back the math facts, etc but was one of the best puzzle solver/decider types I’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately, the focus was on memorizing and spitting back early on and that convinced her she was bad at math.  In college she figured out she is good at higher level math but makes simple computational errors.

Anyway, I think AAP can be great for some kids, but it is not great for all.  I would not push my kid in or prep for the cogat (which we did not do—we weee shocked at her scores and that she was in the pool). Your kid will be fine without it.[/quote]

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