Reply to “I’d rather have a happy kid at UMD than a miserable one at Harvard”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

This is absolutely false. When a parent withholds love from a child early on and only grants it when the child is achieving, the child will do anything for the love. Period. To assume they would rebel is naive.

By the time they are an adult, they will feel resentment.[/quote]

+1. I know lots of my peers have lots of issues with their overbearing parents but don't have the energy or boldness to confront them.[/quote]

-1

OP here. I’ve never met these poor tortured tiger cubs you’re mentioning. I was pushed, and so were most of my high school friends, by immigrant tiger parents. We are grateful. None of us are resentful. You’re making up a figure in your mind. [/quote]
NP here. OP - you are coming at this from your experience. Maybe your social circle really are all happy. Or maybe some of you friends are really good at hiding their thoughts from you, or themselves even. But I’m a high school teacher in a magnet program and see a whole lot more kids than you, and I can assure you that not everyone belongs or is thriving in the magnet environment and they are very conflicted about college and the major that has been chosen for them by their parents. Every year out of ~100 11th graders I have 2-3 of them literally crying in my office over not earning a perfect 4.0 due to my class. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the stress story to come out. Other teachers relate similar experiences. I’d estimate 10-15% of the magnet kids are truly unhappy due to being pushed too hard (not including the general 50% of them who are pretty stressed with high workload.) On the adult side, in our department of 15 there are 2 teachers who were career changers who switched to teaching after a few years because they didn’t like the field chosen by their tiger parents and didn’t enjoy their elite college experience.

Your experience is not the same as everyone’s OP. [b]I agree with the nuanced premise from the other post (big fish, small pond is equally successful and less stressed/happier).[/b]
[/quote]

You are wrong! Just plain wrong. Totally wrong. If someone goes to Towson or another middling college and then Harvard for grad school, they will be crushed because they are not used to being the big fish in the small pond anymore. They will be crushed because they never learned how to deal with the intensity and stress of a pressure-cooker environment (which, BTW, every successful job requires). I would much rather have my kids learn how to handle being in a stressful, pressure-cooker environment in high school or college than grad school. [/quote]

Thank God I'm not your kid!!!!!  [b]It is possible to be successful without being in a pressure cooker environment.  Your poor kids![/b][/quote]

You are wrong. For the vast majority of high-paying careers, there is a point of high stress, intensity, and a pressure cooker environment. Often it’s in your twenties. Law, medicine, tech, finance, and consulting are all pressure cooker environments at some point or another (for tech it’s during college rather than after, whereas for the other four fields it is the opposite). To make money, you need to find ways to deal with stress and pressure. And being in that type of environment for high school and college is crucial to learning how to handle such environments. [/quote]

Oh I get it. You’re the one who gets to define a good job, and a good job is law/medicine/tech/finance/consulting, and those are stressful in your 20s, so therefore all children must learn to endure the stress.

What an immature, zero-sum way to look at the world.

Let’s hope your child becomes something you see as a useless failure. [/quote]

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