Reply to Multi-generation Princeton double-legacy. DC doesn't want to go there...help

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP have you not been taking your son to reunions? Have him tour a week on prospect street. Seriously, that will set most kids straight -- not having to eat in a dining hall or cook as an upper classman but eating in a friggin mansion and then partying hard right after. [/quote]

Of course we have, ever since he was a baby. He actually likes the school and personality-wise he would fit in very well. His resistance comes from the fact that he is too proud and independent. He wants to strike out on his own. Plus this is probably a pushback on the years of expectation and pressure the family has put on him regarding Princeton. I am proud of him for thinking this way, but the whole situation has created a lot of friction within the family.

As another poster said above, Princeton really is a cult. Most Princeton alumni are insanely loyal and rabid when it comes to their alma mater. Our family admittedly takes it to the extreme. [b]It is hard for non-tigers to understand[/b]. [/quote]

OP, new poster here.

Whether "non-tigers" understand here on this board or not doesn't matter.

What matters is that YOU are there in the thick of this mess, and YOU see your son being treated badly (by adults who should have his interests at heart!) for being a thinking, independent human being and yet...you come back and seem to be waffling about where you are in all this. You say you're "proud of him for thinking this way." Yet you characterize his resistance as "rebellion" earlier on, and "pushback" above--and you then claim he would "fit in very well." You [i]want[/i] him to want to fit in, but what you really want most is for the arguing to stop.

OP, can you see how maybe you're harboring a feeling that it would end if he would just come around and try, and fit in, and do what he is told?

Please have his back. You don't, not the way you're writing about this so far; yes, you're frustrated with DH and FIL but you also don't truly seem to be saying clearly and firmly to them, or anyone, "Leave him alone, drop this topic, and if you persist I will back him and not you." That is what needs to happen--IF you want your son not to resent the hell out of you, dad, and everyone else who is shoving Princeton down his throat and telling him "if you only try, you'll fit in!"

Even if his one and only reason for not going there is that everyone else in the family did go -- that is enough reason, to be blunt. If the adults pull any dramatic ultimatums like saying they won't fund college unless he goes to Princeton (assuming he gets in, which isn't a given), he would be well within his rights to see all of you as manipulative and self-centered. He is the one going to college, the one attending classes and doing the actual work, the one spending four years of his life in a place; he needs to be the one choosing it. But you, mom, don't back him up.

Your focus is on this, from your first post: "My husband and father in-law are furious, every day is a battle between them and DC." You want the battles to end, but it would be better for him if you engage and take a stand that there are many colleges, and your son gets to pick as he is the one who must do the work once he's there. Unless Princeton were the only place in the country that did his particular major, there is no reason he must go there other than expectations that were formed before he was even born. You're scared of your DH and FIL and others in the family and won't just step up. He has no one in his corner, despite how you talk about it here.

You and dad and FIL are setting yourselves up for son to spend the rest of his life remembering the many months when everyone treated him like a child who couldn't make one of the biggest choices of his life his own way. Of course parents have huge input into college decisions. But he's getting no input  of his own. Is this what you and DH want him to think about for four years while he's somewhere he told you clearly he did not want to be?

Consider hiring a private college consultant and saying that the adults will let that consultant help guide the process, and will give son and the consultant the final say --with son's being the deciding vote. Sell the idea to your DH and FIL as a way to end the hostility by having a neutral third party involved. Tell son that he can talk with the consultant all he wants about other options and should absolutely look into other colleges so he can decide for or against Princeton based on a lot of research about other possible colleges. That might be one way to reduce friction if everyone sees a third party professional is there as a buffer. But this would only help if DH and FIL can get their antique "do what I did" notions and tempers in check, and can see son as an individual and not an extension of themselves.

I went to college with a guy who was like your son in that his parents told him he had only one choice of college, period. He was also told what his major would be. He desperately wanted to be at another university altogether but hadn't been able to convince his family; they told him, once he was accepted at our university, that he had to go there or they would not pay for college at all. He was miserable academically, socially, in every way possible. He was a nice guy, did his work well, and did try to "fit in," find some friends and make the best of the hand his parents dealt him. He knew that our college's name on his diploma was an objectively good thing to have. But he also said he would never forget how his parents treated him about college, and would never forgive them for not giving his wishes (and, he felt, his needs) the deciding vote. After all, he was the one spending four years in a place not of his choosing.[/quote]

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