Anonymous wrote:Certainly if we react dramatically, it will affect them
Anonymous wrote:Watching the grandfather he was extremely close to die from a terminal cancer was pretty bad.
He's had many rejections/demotions in sports (some where a coach told him he was getting moved up; only to have a higher up TD block it because of a butt kisser); he's had some coaches ghost the team, he's seen really, really bad parent behavior and had a few injuries that caused him to miss a season, etc. The sports world was pretty brutal to him, much, much more so than anything related to school. This is why I think sports can be so beneficial for kids. It's a place where they deal with difficult people, learn to work together and to overcome disappointment, they experience their first rejections, see there are better alternatives, watch what they thought was a bad thing end up opening so many other doors and opportunities. And, they learned sometimes all the hard work and RESULTS won't make a difference. Somethings are not under your control.
Things with school have been very merit-based for him so far which is such a welcome change.
Anonymous wrote:We try to provide a safe, comfortable childhood then boom! At the end of it all, the devastating rejection. Will it make them stronger and more resilient or bitter?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:My kids grew up in NW DC where every extracurricular resource is overabundant
FIFY
Maybe. But the pool of competent/impressive kids is larger.
My friends who have kids elsewhere (in middle America) don't have to fight 50 kids for a single spot on the travel basketball team. Or 100 kids to make it to the
semifinals of the spelling bee. Or whatnot.
They have a reasonably smart and/or reasonably athletic kid and the kid rises to the top of the local cohort.
Here you can have a talented kid and it's like "take a number". I'm sure it's similar in other urban areas.
Anyway--my point is not that the area is competitive OR heavily resourced. It's that my kids have been REJECTED A LOT.
And their response to college rejections was like, "shrug. Okay. Moving on".
Anonymous wrote:We try to provide a safe, comfortable childhood then boom! At the end of it all, the devastating rejection. Will it make them stronger and more resilient or bitter?