Reply to massive disagreement with husband about handling kids who won't deal with college

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are families who are paying for someone to do the applications for their kids, some families are doing the applications for their kids, some are just helping out by starting the application and filling in all the details, some are writing essays for their children, and some students are doing everything all by themselves.

College is such a huge investment and applications can be so overwhelming. I am not sure it means if you do the application all by yourself if you end up doing better in college and life.

My college roommate at Berkeley had parents who reviewed and if needed corrected/edited all of her homework in high school and continued to do so in college. Additionally, her father’s secretary or mother typed many of her papers. Her sorority had files of old tests in many classes.  This helped her to have all A’s.

She’s now partner at a top firm. All of that extra time left her able to socialize and develop really good emotional intelligence/social skills.

I never had any help from my parents. When I had kids I realized that was a huge disadvantage.

Maybe OP your husband realizes this so wants to help.[/quote]

Yeah neither did I, nor my spouse, yet we excelled at our ivies and are successful partners in our careers(MD, JD). We knew many like your college buddy whose parents did tons: most do not end up successful or if they do they have huge procrastination and life management issues, divorce, alcohol, etc. We would never do what your roommate had done for her. We proofread when asked. Guess what ours are both at T10/different ivy from us, and are excelling! The peers there that have struggled most had parents who hovered and micromanaged them in high school and beyond. 
It builds character and pride in oneself to do your own work with parents as sidelines cheerleaders (and tuition payers) only. 
For the OP: your DH is in the wrong, completely. I agree you should set deadline for Oct 1 for drafts of the apps due Oct15. Do not discuss it after that , do not remind at all, and check in on Oct 1. Take the car away if they aren’t done. Let them leave the later apps until xmas break. [/quote]

That hasn’t been my experience. Like my college roommate, classmates with parental help are actually more successful than ones that didn’t get any help. Perhaps it is more due to socio-economics as it was upper middle class and wealthy classmates who were getting help.

The ones getting helped knew how to work the system. My roommate was and still is clever and hard-working. She did do the work, the help she got just made the finished project better so she got A’s. The time she saves also allowed her to study more for the LSAT because her laundry was getting done for her too (she either dropped it off at home which was in a wealthy area within an hour drive or her mom came and picked it up so their maid could wash the clothes and dry cleaning could be taken care of).

So many successful students got help like this. Obviously many didn’t but seeing how helpful other parents were was such a shock. I remember doing a group project at a friend’s house whose parents were from Korea. All evening and into late night her mom made us tea, brought us snacks, her dad went to buy more supplies we needed for the science assignment. Everything was about supporting her education.

Other days studying math with her at her house I realized she had copies of the teacher’s edition of the math books we used at our high school. She did all the homework herself but was able to check to make sure every problem was solved correctly. If not she kept working at it until it was correct. All these things add up. [/quote]

DP.  You stated your experience,  and PP responded with a counter perspective,  but now you need to restate it? And, previously,  you suggested your roommate cheated her way through the tests on file.

I'm with PP.  This is all so extreme and an outlier, unless the "supportive" parents also hooked her up with law school admission and job offers which sounds entirely possible with this scenario.

There is a big difference between support and coddle and between either and cheating. When parents write for students, that is cheating, not support.[/quote]

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