<p>Come on people. We were just joking around.
Of course, we were happy with 780.</p>
<p>BTaverage, you are ever so right about spoiled parents here on CC. Yep, I’m one of them and admit it. Many of us are spoiled just be the fact that we are able to be involved in our children’s college app process. Most of us are sending our kids away to college right after high school and paying a ton of money for this. This is not typical of the average college student. Our kids are spoiled as are we.</p>
<p>I’m only spoiled now because my 1st son prepared me! He was my bright, intelligent, barely-graduated from high school kid. Tested high, got bored, very funny… He piddled around in college barely staying in for 3 years. Then without any warning, he started getting straight A’s, got into an engineering program, and graduated with a great job. We knew he had it in him but to tell the truth had almost given up. However at no time did we ever tell him what we were thinking. We just kept encouraging him and praised his accomplishments. Our 2 daughters got thru fairly uneventfully. Now I feel so spoiled because our youngest son is in top 1% of his high school class and I haven’t done a thing to push him. We have done nothing different with him. He is self-driven; if anything we wonder if we did something wrong because he puts way too much pressure on himself. I want him to enjoy himself while he is in high school, which he seems to do. Very funny though- I have to laugh when I read these posts where parents want their kids to retake SAT’s because they got a 2300. Except it’s not funny- it’s really sad. These kids are going to be on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds before they are out of college.</p>
<p>My wife and I have this problem, or at least our kids would tell you we do, and they would probably be right.</p>
<p>We try – honest, we do – to communicate to our kids all the time that we are proud of who they are, and we don’t need grades or scores to tell us what to think of them. We tell them that what we care about is that they are learning and trying their hardest, not how they are graded. But they know, or have figured out, that neither of us would need all of his or her fingers to count the Bs we received from middle school through college, that we were both junior Phi Beta Kappas and summa graduates, that we went to tippy-top professional schools and graduated with honors there, too. In our own lives, we dealt very infrequently with any kind of lack of academic success: I used to gets Cs in penmanship in grade school, and I got one C first semester in law school. My wife thought everyone at college knew more than she did, so she worked twice as hard as anyone.</p>
<p>Our kids just aren’t like that. They are smart, and intellectual, and hardworking, but both of them have mixed success when they step out of their comfort zones. They know perfectly well that we wince a little when they get a C here or there, before we come out with the line about not caring what their grades are. It’s all part of the dynamic.</p>
<p>JHS, it must be harder on your kids than on you or your wife. Very hard to have parents who graduated top of their class from Yale or Harvard (I don’t know where you went but am guessing) and then have high powered careers after that. </p>
<p>My son often told me what unrealistic expectations we had on him. I grew up in India and although I did not go to an Ivy league school here, I did go to a good engineering school in India and graduated second in my class. I’ve gotten better as my son grew older. I think I am tolerable now that my son is planning on grad school.</p>
<p>Another parable: my son’s friend’s brother was told to go to medical school from the time he was in grade school. He did go - and to just spite his parents he joined the military so that they would pay for med school. He graduated and was deployed to Iraq. Around mid-August last year, he was caught with a very minor amount of marijuana in his possession and was dishonorably discharged from the military. He subsequently tried for an internship in the US hiding his dishonorable discharge and was thrown out of that. He’s currently at home doing nothing and hiding the fact from his parents. Very sad.</p>
<p>I’m reminded of President Bartlet on The West Wing, who told his doctor he got 1590 both times he took the SAT. Doctor said: “You got 1590 on the SAT, and took it again?”</p>
<p>I must admit that I was like that a couple years ago. How foolish that was - giving the horrible “nothing is good enough” impression to our kids. The truth is that we love them and want them to achieve the best they could. Sometime we just don’t communicate that well.</p>
<p>On the grades part, however, we would do everything we could to help our kids. If 93 is an A, we would set up meeting with a teacher if any of the quarter grade was below 92. Because we know our kids are both smart and hard working to be the best students in the classes. For example, one of them struggled in one of the science classes. We found out that the teacher did not know there was a transfered student in the class. So, the class moved forward assuming everyone had the pre-class last year. </p>
<p>between our two kids, from 1st grade to HS graduation, I think there was one B from an AP class in DS’s 10th grade. DS and us tried our best in that case. He was put in a class full of seniors some of whom are taking the class the second time. </p>
<p>The only thing I ask both kids in terms of college is: “graduate in 4 years”.</p>
<p>S: Dad, I am not going to apply to MIT. I heard that people have to study all the time.
H: Okay, then try Caltech.</p>
<p>In reality, we encourage him to find some LACs due to his age and laid back personality.</p>
<p>Kids should be allowed to fail on occasion. There is no way we can see our kids’ daily grades even if we wanted. Kids school sets it up so kids learn to balance heavy loads of work having to pick and chose how to get it all done the best they can. Some break their necks, some parents step in (ridiculous) and some aren’t cut out for the amount of work. All good things to know BEFORE a kid gets to college. </p>
<p>We are now on the last of three kids… and I have learned more and more to step back and let them fly or flounder. And more often than not, even if one quiz grade takes a hit, they know how to make it up on the next test, paper, whatever. You can’t give 100% to everything every single day and sometimes you might have a huge exam and a paper due so the reading quiz might take a hit. This is good prep.</p>
<p>However, one does not become bi-polar because of parental involvement, zealousness or anything else. I am offended that any mental illness could be blamed on the parents except in a purely genetic sense. That her family may have continuously pulled her out of the fire is most likely because she showed early signs of the illness they ignored. I think you should be glad your “friend” has a source of income to depend on instead of thinking her parents sent her to the mental ward. Bi-polar is NOT the same as becoming situationally depressed.</p>
<p>@ Modadunn - I think the fact that my friend was pushed into things she did not want caused her illness to debilitate her. She went to law school because her parents insisted and then into corporate law because that’s where her dad pulled strings and got her a job. She would have been happy being a public defender, which is where she worked one summer and loved it. She would go into the inner city and take depositions and thought nothing of it. I don’t dispute there is mental illness, but I think her parents coddled her too much and when she hit the real world she was not prepared. </p>
<p>I am a spoiled parent, as D1 is a self-motivated student that pushes herself and sets the bar high for herself. (the one who panicked at the last minute and didn’t take the Chem SAT2 despite taking AP Chem). She’s not happy she didn’t get a 5 on BC Calc, but I told her to realize this will give her a ‘relatively’ easy class Freshman year so she can focus on tougher stuff. </p>
<p>My tough kid is S1 - a middle schooler who get higher scores on standardize tests than his sister, but whose report card I lovingly refer to as ‘alphabet soup’. He has different priorities in life, so I tell him while I don’t expect A’s but since he has shown he can pull straight B’s one quarter, I don’t expect Ds & Fs the next quarter because he forgot to hand his homework in. </p>
<p>Each kid is different and presents their own challenges…</p>
<p>S1 spoiled us somewhat. Not spoiled in the sense of thinking he could not, should not do poorly or anything but more in the sense of never having to worry because we knew he would do whatever was required of him and generally do a good job. He made some B’s in h.s. AP’s but neither he nor we were upset about it. Why would we be? He mostly sailed through not wanting or needing any assitance fr. us. It was great.</p>
<p>S2 made up for every bit of that spoilage. Most days of his academic life was like a trip to the dentist… dreaded going, unexpected problems were always turning up and by the time it was over, we were numb. </p>
<p>It’s easy to take for granted what a gift it is to have a kid who glides through unless you’ve also had one who had one who traveled a very bumpy road and took you along for the ride.</p>
<p>I had an interesting experience as a student. My parents had been spoiled a bit by my older siblings (Harvard and UChicago), and I was a strong though not perfect student. They did occasionally make jokes like, “What, only a 97%?” but only because they knew that I had that sense of humor. When my GPA dropped several points in a semester, they were still concerned (despite the fact that it was still above 4.0 weighted).
I believe that they largely expected me to get very high grades because I had shown I could earn near-perfect grades without too much work. For them, it was about performing well and not wasting my ability with laziness and disorganization.
Also, my mindset was seriously influenced simply by who my parents were. Both were top students at what I consider the best university in the country, and it was clear what their path to success had been.</p>
<p>“Spoiled Parents on CC are college professors (mostly), psychiatrists, lawyers, engineers or medical doctors”</p>
<p>Hey I’m a psychiatrist ( which are also medical doctors BTW), but me and my kids, and my community are NOTHING like that! I’m not sure if OP thinks s/he is spoiled as well, but I certainly had a similar wake up call when I came here. As I’ve mentioned many times here, I found CC because my husband suggested my D take an SAT prep class and I couldn’t believe people did that. I hadn’t even HEARD of subject tests, and they are required for our public “flagship”. He also suggested she might take the SAT more than once, and she thought that was pretty crazy too. Her GC felt the same way ( while he lasted, which was not through her junior year…three years later and the school still doesn’t really have one.) Almost nobody passes AP tests.There are about five AP classes. </p>
<p>Oh, and good and bad, win and lose, not really part of my vocabulary with my kids. Well, okay, “win” is.</p>
<p>But this is funnier than some other threads…</p>
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<p>Agreed!! I have three kids and I think I have somewhat of the three bears thing going on without one of them being “just right.” Neighbor has three kids and while her oldest is now entering his senior year, she has the attitude that she knows everything about parenting to which I told her just the other day. My oldest is 25 and I am STILL figuring it out!!</p>
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Bingo.</p>
<p>If I know you can do “A” work, and you bring home a “B” or “C”, and I know you slacked off on that test or paper, then something will be said, and if it gets out of hand, measures will be taken.</p>
<p>If I know you worked your butt off, and got a “B”… I might ask, is there anything we can do to help you, do you think tutoring would help you, etc; I am going to sympathize, I am not going to castigate you.</p>
<p>I asked my S in all seriousness if he wanted to retake the SATs (780/770/670=2220) because I know he could have pulled up the writing score, but he was happy with it and didn’t feel it was worth the time, so that was that. No pressure from me to retake.</p>
<p>Am I spoiled? I don’t know.</p>
<p>I had the opposite type of “humor” from the OP. D was hard on herself, and myself and her grandmother would always joke to her telling her "GADAUGHTER2012, some day you WILL get a “B.” She would moan that no way was that happening. Well she did get a B+ junior year in AP Chem, and I knew she had put forth her best effort. I was nonchalant to difuse her disappointment. I’m glad she got that out of the way, and after 2 years at Amherst, she is now to the point where some of her proudest grades have been “B’s.” What once to her was a tragedy is now a triumph!</p>
<p>I know I spoiled my parents. I basically do everything on my own, so my parents don’t really have to worry. My mom was on top of me when I started to get C’s in middle school, though.</p>
<p>We are not allowed to post links to Youtube but if you do a google search for “youtube poor A level results” you will find a hilarious video featuring a hopelessly spoiled parent.</p>
<p>vicariousparent-very funny!</p>
<p>That was hysterical, thanks vicarious.</p>