Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's hard to start Maret in high school, especially if you don't live close in. What can help, though, is playing school sports or doing the play/musical because those kids hang out after school, which helps with friendships, etc. My kids are lifers who don't play school sports because they have an outside sport, but they're fine socially because they've been at the school for 10 years and have well-established friendships. So I would only send my kids to a school like Maret for high school if s/he planned to be super active in the school community. Obviously, this all applies to normal times when kids are at school.

It's the parents who are the problem. Most consider themselves resist warriors and woke, but can't lift a finger to make sure their children have friends outside of Kalorama. It's a real shame and frankly makes them hypocrites.

The school as a whole is performatively woke, as the BlackAt Insta demonstrated.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's hard to start Maret in high school, especially if you don't live close in. What can help, though, is playing school sports or doing the play/musical because those kids hang out after school, which helps with friendships, etc. My kids are lifers who don't play school sports because they have an outside sport, but they're fine socially because they've been at the school for 10 years and have well-established friendships. So I would only send my kids to a school like Maret for high school if s/he planned to be super active in the school community. Obviously, this all applies to normal times when kids are at school.

It's the parents who are the problem. Most consider themselves resist warriors and woke, but can't lift a finger to make sure their children have friends outside of Kalorama. It's a real shame and frankly makes them hypocrites.

I'm not in Kalorama or at Maret but have an 8th grader and a high schooler at an upper NW private. I have zero input into my child's friends. If they ask me for a ride, I'll provide it, although I work 8-5 and my husband works 8-7 so I'm limited by my work hours
and because I only have teenagers I no longer have a nanny or babysitter to delegate this to.
99% of my kids' socialization is with classmates that they walk or bike themselves to see because they're teenagers and they run their own social lives and are independent. The more time they spend with these kids, the deeper their friendships grow.

I get it if you have an elementary school kid and parents are not including your kid. But to guilt people because they are not inserting themselves into their teenagers' social life and leaving their jobs mid day to drive them to Silver Spring or Gaithersburg is just bat sh$%t crazy.
YOU were the one who decided to put your kid in a far-away school. It's insane to then complain that life is hard socially because your kid lives far away. This situation wasn't foisted on you. You chose it!!

Anonymous wrote:I think it's hard to start Maret in high school, especially if you don't live close in. What can help, though, is playing school sports or doing the play/musical because those kids hang out after school, which helps with friendships, etc. My kids are lifers who don't play school sports because they have an outside sport, but they're fine socially because they've been at the school for 10 years and have well-established friendships. So I would only send my kids to a school like Maret for high school if s/he planned to be super active in the school community. Obviously, this all applies to normal times when kids are at school.

It's the parents who are the problem. Most consider themselves resist warriors and woke, but can't lift a finger to make sure their children have friends outside of Kalorama. It's a real shame and frankly makes them hypocrites.

I think it's hard to start Maret in high school, especially if you don't live close in. What can help, though, is playing school sports or doing the play/musical because those kids hang out after school, which helps with friendships, etc. My kids are lifers who don't play school sports because they have an outside sport, but they're fine socially because they've been at the school for 10 years and have well-established friendships. So I would only send my kids to a school like Maret for high school if s/he planned to be super active in the school community. Obviously, this all applies to normal times when kids are at school.

Huh?

Wait, what?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take that to mean that the FA kids aren’t included?

There's certainly that, but a lot of the Far Upper NW/Lower MoCo kids seem to look down on kids from Silver Spring or Virginia.

"far Upper NW" isn't a thing. You're either upper NW, or just NW I guess. The latter group would take pains to point out the actual name of their neighborhood as a point of pride, rather than saying they live "in NW": Logan, Shaw, Woodley, etc.

The Chevy Chase kids would disagree, at least vis-a-vis, say, Cleveland Park.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take that to mean that the FA kids aren’t included?

There's certainly that, but a lot of the Far Upper NW/Lower MoCo kids seem to look down on kids from Silver Spring or Virginia.

"far Upper NW" isn't a thing. You're either upper NW, or just NW I guess. The latter group would take pains to point out the actual name of their neighborhood as a point of pride, rather than saying they live "in NW": Logan, Shaw, Woodley, etc.

What about Chevy Chase MD? As in close in.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take that to mean that the FA kids aren’t included?

There's certainly that, but a lot of the Far Upper NW/Lower MoCo kids seem to look down on kids from Silver Spring or Virginia.

Are all of the NW DC privates like this - e.g., GDS, Sidwell, St Albans/NCS? This has been one of my concerns.

Our experience with NCS/STA is that it is definitely like this for middle/high school (major divide between upper NW and for example, Silver Spring). Some of it is just logistics. The close-in kids
walk or bike to each others' houses. The further out kids are completely out of the loop.
My kid is in 8th grade and we're just off Mass Ave in NW and his/her closest 6 friends are all within biking/distance. They see each other almost every day after school (outside-only while walking or on porches or biking or hanging out in a park). The nicest kid in the world might
live in Silver Spring but I don't have the bandwidth to drive my 8th grader across town every day at 3pm to they can go bike in a parking lot in Silver Spring. Plus kids at these ages plan their own meet-ups. So there is a major social divide between kids who live further out and those who do not.

Not hanging out is one thing; thinking Silver Spring is “poor” or “ghetto” is quite another, and that type of thinking is a little more deeply rooted than not having a sleepover.

One can see this attitude in the previous post where the poster assumes the only place to bike in Silver Spring is a parking lot. Apples don’t fall far.

You are clearly looking for reasons to be offended. My kids bike in parking lots in NW DC. That's why I referenced taking them to a Silver Spring parking lot. Because it's what they do here.

But I agree 100%---no 150%--- that it would be really, really difficult to be a Silver Spring kid at these schools. Both because of the snobbery (there is PLENTY of that--we live in AU Park and at times have been made to feel like we live on the "wrong side of the tracks") and the logistics. Middle and high schoolers
like to spontaneously hang out. it's what they do. If you take that ability away from your kid by sending them to a far-away school you are putting them at massive social disadvantage.