Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s just the dc area. Move to the south or Midwest

I moved from DC to a northern suburb of Chicago. It’s just as or maybe worse than the competitive scene in the DC area.

Kids go to multiple activities in a day, basically no change of making a sport unless you’ve been playing since early elementary and the extreme pressure to get perfect grades. Parents know their kids are burnt out but they’re all convinced they’re kids going to be a pro athlete and a genius someday.

Parents blame social media for so many mental health problems but i believe the over scheduling and competing attitude is far more impactful

I don’t think most parents think their kids are going to be pro athletes or geniuses. I think most parents recognize that the middle class in this country is rapidly disappearing. If you want your child to own a home one day, have health insurance or be able to afford a child or two, then there is tremendous pressure to get into a good school that will lead to better job prospects.

The suburb that I live in is not even remotely middle class, mostly from generational wealth. The goal to be middle class doesn’t exist here but the need to brag about your kids achievements and where they attend school is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s just the dc area. Move to the south or Midwest

I moved from DC to a northern suburb of Chicago. It’s just as or maybe worse than the competitive scene in the DC area.

Kids go to multiple activities in a day, basically no change of making a sport unless you’ve been playing since early elementary and the extreme pressure to get perfect grades. Parents know their kids are burnt out but they’re all convinced they’re kids going to be a pro athlete and a genius someday.

Parents blame social media for so many mental health problems but i believe the over scheduling and competing attitude is far more impactful

I don’t think most parents think their kids are going to be pro athletes or geniuses. I think most parents recognize that the middle class in this country is rapidly disappearing. If you want your child to own a home one day, have health insurance or be able to afford a child or two, then there is tremendous pressure to get into a good school that will lead to better job prospects.

Parents who feel this way end up with kids who fall short. This is America. Tell your kids they can and guess what?! They will!

Anonymous wrote:It was always competitive, OP. Many countries have had ultra competitive college admissions for generations. Here in America you just didn't realize it because you were part of the privileged. As PP said, in your generation many of the US poor or the US non-whites didn't make it to college. Now it's opened up a lot more, and you're feeling the heat.

It’s not because of US poor or non whites it’s mostly because of foreign elites coming here

Anonymous wrote:

For all of us who belong in one or more categories - non-White, non-Christian, different national origin - life and world has always been competitive and hard.

As an immigrant I disagree. Life was pretty chill in my hometown (until it wasn’t but it was due to a clear external circumstance) and even then most people opted to stay there, go to a local school, get a job and raise kids and die in the same town.
The only mobile people were some of the elites and hungry, competitive poor kids like me. I was an outlier, it was my choice to compete and excel.
My own kid is not like that at all and I feel bad for him.

Anonymous wrote:You guys are crazy if you think this is just the DMV. Every rich suburban area in the US is like this any more. My cousins in ~Tulsa OK~ are living the country club, travel sport, Euro vacay lifestyle.

+1 It's like this in any university town where tenure line professors and admins are well-paid and property values are higher than the state average, even in flyover. Upper middle class university admins who are young enough to have school aged kids put their kids in private lessons for everything and anything. Tenure line professors too. Then factor in all the doctors' and lawyers' kids living in the area. The Tulsa example does not surprise me at all.

Anonymous wrote:You guys are crazy if you think this is just the DMV. Every rich suburban area in the US is like this any more. My cousins in ~Tulsa OK~ are living the country club, travel sport, Euro vacay lifestyle.

Well yeah but they are doing that while living in 4 bedroom updated or newly built home that cost less than 500k. Possibly way less -- you can get houses in the Jenks school district (one of the best public school districts in the Tulsa area) for 350-400k that are over 2k square feet and have fully updated kitchens and baths.

Even making Tulsa salaries that's going to leave tons of money for kid activities and vacations. You're talking about having a nice house with great schools while paying a mortgage of less than 2k per month. Is there ANYWHERE in the DC area you could do that -- no. You can live a very upper middle class lifestyle in Tulsa for less than 150k in HHI. So white collar professionals like lawyers and doctors have more money than know what to do with. You get a sahm plus the country club and the travel sports and the foreign travel with one of those jobs. But even people with jobs that require a lot less education can live really comfortably. With two incomes you are golden.

That's why this area is so much more competitive. You have to work so hard and make so much money just to live half as well as a construction foreman married to a nurse in a suburb of Tulsa. Sure there are nice things about living here that will always trump Tulsa -- blah blah blah the museums and the job opportuntiies and all the smart people and living in the seat of government etc. But all that stuff comes with a cost. All things being equal I'd rather live in DC than Tulsa. But all things are not equal. DC is way way way more competitive in every way whether it's professionally or socially or the housing market or education. It's harder to live here.

Anonymous wrote:
Yeah, it is far worse here than in the rest of the country. This is simply a fact.

The people trying to argue the local level of competitiveness is “normal” have likely never lived anywhere else.

As a personal example, my kids were on an area swim team where one of the youth broke one of Mark Phelp’s youth swimming records. The kids who made the “A” meets at our club all did winter swim, practiced year-round, plus the parents put their kids in extra training camps like Machine, etc.

That level of group competitiveness is not normal.

Mark Phelps? Never heard of him.

I’m from ny and find the dmv refreshing. It is MUCH more competitive I academically in NY. CA, FL and TX are going to be much more competitive sports wise. I don’t know about other geographic areas. I assume places in Iowa or Arizona may not be too competitive.

Anonymous wrote:It’s just the dc area. Move to the south or Midwest

I moved from DC to a northern suburb of Chicago. It’s just as or maybe worse than the competitive scene in the DC area.

Kids go to multiple activities in a day, basically no change of making a sport unless you’ve been playing since early elementary and the extreme pressure to get perfect grades. Parents know their kids are burnt out but they’re all convinced they’re kids going to be a pro athlete and a genius someday.

Parents blame social media for so many mental health problems but i believe the over scheduling and competing attitude is far more impactful

You guys are crazy if you think this is just the DMV. Every rich suburban area in the US is like this any more. My cousins in ~Tulsa OK~ are living the country club, travel sport, Euro vacay lifestyle.

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, it is far worse here than in the rest of the country. This is simply a fact.

The people trying to argue the local level of competitiveness is “normal” have likely never lived anywhere else.

As a personal example, my kids were on an area swim team where one of the youth broke one of Mark Phelp’s youth swimming records. The kids who made the “A” meets at our club all did winter swim, practiced year-round, plus the parents put their kids in extra training camps like Machine, etc.

That level of group competitiveness is not normal.

It is just as competitive in the DMV as in places like Orange County, California. We moved from Orange County, California to Langley, Virginia, and DD made the varsity squad. She said that the competition here is just as fierce as her old school in Orange County, California. People here have just as much $$$ as people in Orange County, and because of that, kids have private lessons, thus making it extremely competitive to make varsity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is waaay worse in DC or in any highly affluent well educated area.

+1

My kid wants to play high school varsity golf in 2024, and he missed the cut in '23 as a freshman. Over the summer, he had been practicing every day at the golf course that would be used for the upcoming tryouts from 7am-11am and again from 5pm until 8pm, including Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine. A week prior to the tryout, I saw another kid and his mother at the golf course and the kid complained about why he had to practice. After the tryout, that kid got cut and my kid was ranked #2 in the tryout and made the team. The #1 kid is just a bit better than my kid because he started golf at the age of five and my kid started at the age of ten, which is OK because that kid works really hard and is also very talented.

Yes, it is very competitive in this area, especially if you live in wealthy areas like Langley, McLean, Great Falls, Oakton. It is because everyone has money for their kids to take private lessons in sports and academics. Probably less competitive in schools like Justice, Annandale, Falls Church, etc...

Yeah, it is far worse here than in the rest of the country. This is simply a fact.

The people trying to argue the local level of competitiveness is “normal” have likely never lived anywhere else.

As a personal example, my kids were on an area swim team where one of the youth broke one of Mark Phelp’s youth swimming records. The kids who made the “A” meets at our club all did winter swim, practiced year-round, plus the parents put their kids in extra training camps like Machine, etc.

That level of group competitiveness is not normal.

Anonymous wrote:This is waaay worse in DC or in any highly affluent well educated area.

+1

My kid wants to play high school varsity golf in 2024, and he missed the cut in '23 as a freshman. Over the summer, he had been practicing every day at the golf course that would be used for the upcoming tryouts from 7am-11am and again from 5pm until 8pm, including Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine. A week prior to the tryout, I saw another kid and his mother at the golf course and the kid complained about why he had to practice. After the tryout, that kid got cut and my kid was ranked #2 in the tryout and made the team. The #1 kid is just a bit better than my kid because he started golf at the age of five and my kid started at the age of ten, which is OK because that kid works really hard and is also very talented.

Yes, it is very competitive in this area, especially if you live in wealthy areas like Langley, McLean, Great Falls, Oakton. It is because everyone has money for their kids to take private lessons in sports and academics. Probably less competitive in schools like Justice, Annandale, Falls Church, etc...

This is waaay worse in DC or in any highly affluent well educated area.