Do I really have to start planning before preschool?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
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Speaking of being neurotic and freaking out unnecessarily, check out this post from @Calliemomofgirls talking me off the ledge. You can ignore the part about me, but she does a great job explaining essentially that once you have the “good enough” box checked for academics, unless you are truly off the charts gifted different degrees of academic success and potential don’t matter.

This is a longish post, but I don’t want to just summarize because I think she does a great job explaining it.

ETA everything here applies equally to selective colleges even though she is talking about boarding schools.

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@YnJvd24

Making sure that your kid is attending a good school is always important, no matter where they end up. However, happiness in life is not determined by whether you kids ends up attending an Ivy a some time in the future.

There seems to be this thought process among many parents of:

  • “If my kids doesn’t attend one of the Very Most Elite Colleges In The Country, they will end up living a miserable life, eking out a barely tolerable existence at the edges of society.”
  • “If my kids don’t attend one of the Very Most Elite Private Prep Schools, they will never be able to attend one of the Very Most Elite Colleges In The Country”
  • “If my kids don’t attend one of the Very Most Elite Private Primary Schools, they will never be able to attend one of the Very Most Elite Private Prep Schools In The Country”
  • “If my kids don’t attend one of the Very Most Elite Private Preschools, they will never be able to attend one of the Very Most Elite Private Primary Schools”

Ergo: “OMG, the only way that my kid will ever be happy is if I manage to get them into an top elite private preschool”.

It’s easy to see how parents and kids get to the point that they come here and post one of the myriad threads on the topic of “I/they worked so hard and I/they wasn’t/weren’t accepted to a single “elite” school, so my/their life until now is wasted, and it’s over!!!”.

Parents should stop trying to make “attending an Ivy” into a life goal for their kids. It is not productive and it is not healthy. Make sure that your kid is attending a school where they will be supported and educated, where the focus is on mental, emotional, and social development, not on test scores and the percent that are sent onto the next stage in the “elite pathway”.

The point of school and college that a kid attends are not to be parents’ status symbols. If a parents cares more about the prestige of the college that their kid will attend than about their kid’s mental and physical health, their priorities are seriously messed up. I’m only using “messed” because profanity is prohibited here.

We chose where we decided to raise our child because we believed that the area provided the best education and support for kids. We did not even start thinking about which college she would attend until she started figuring out what she wanted and needed from a college.

We think, though, that our kid did well, even though she went through standard public K-12, and, while the high school is known for many things (it really is), it is not known for the number of graduates who go on to attend “elite” colleges. She’s not attending an Ivy, Stanford, or MIT, though, so maybe we just didn’t make the right school choices.

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Short answer is no. My kids ran amok as children and still ended up at two great boarding schools.

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Also read:

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I couldn’t love this comment any more. I’m not sure when our society went off the rails so much that people start worrying about their kiddos chances at the Ivy League (which, unless you are a standout athlete, legacy or child of a major donor, are vanishingly small) when they are toddlers. If you have a kid that wants BS (mine didn’t) make that the goal in and of itself. A great HS education has its own value. For what it is worth, I have many friends who attended the Ivy League, MIT or Stanford - they don’t have better jobs or a better life than my friends that attended regular colleges (and some don’t have as good jobs, frankly).

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I hope that you sometimes still let them run amok.

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LOL. I grew up in the 70s/80s. The other (white) moms in the local meet up groups reacted as though I was feeding my child to wolves for sending the kid to the nearest public school. The elementary school had a truly horrible rating, but when it came time for my kid to take the NYSED 3rd grade tests… 99th percentile.

The two other public schools my kid went to had higher ratings but were… just ugh. I saw my wonderful child losing her spark, and becoming a drone, laboring only for high grades. Learning was secondary; follow the grading matrix to get an A+. Then came the districts various scandals, and the realization that the values my child was learning at school were diametrically opposed to mine.

I wanted more for my child. I questioned my decision to let my child apply to BS every step of the way, and at every crossroad the universe sent me messages reassuring me that I was on the right track.

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Planning before preschool?

First, I don’t personally think it’s a parent’s responsibility to plan their kids lives. Their live unfold and we provide support and guidance along the way. We can offer help with planning for specific goals, because we have experience and wisdom that can be useful; but there is a good argument for only doing so if our kids ask. And if they don’t ask and make mistakes…great!

Second, does a parent even know the teenager that their child is going to be before preschool? My kids loved subjects and activities at 5 years old that they laugh at doing now. And that is great.

Third, planning so far ahead is most likely to result in a sense of failure. What if a kid just isn’t that academically talented? Should they be pushed along the planned course until they finally fail miserably and feel like a failure to themselves and their parents…even though the only thing they failed was “the plan”? What if a child experiences emotional or cognitive difficulties? Does the plan account for that? Does the plan account for them wanting to go to design or film school, instead of an ivy college?

And what is the probability for rebellion for a kid who feels they are living out someone else’s plan?

My 2 cents - just love and support them as their life unfolds, according to their plan.

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Imagine if we shaped their futures around their passions at 5!

The glut of paleontologists!

And I’m not sure where “My Little Pony” would lead to, career wise. I suppose we could extrapolate, based on the cutie mark of their favorite character…

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My son wanted to be a taxi driver at 5 because he liked cars so much.

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I would now be an airline pilot. :smile:

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The pandemic has taught me many things about what really matters in life. The biggest lesson is that there’s so much more to life than prestige. Money and career security are two things rarely seen together. Our focus is just teaching our daughter that we live in a big diverse economy with abundant jobs, if she’s willing to put the effort into gaining the skills she needs. I’m a second generation non-prestigious college graduate :slight_smile: We all live comfortable lives, bordering on cushy.

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The only planning- such as it is - that I see as useful at 5 is to keep as many options open for as long as possible.

Ps Kiddo would be a gardener if decided at 5 yo.

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@coolguy40 - It seems like you want to engage with someone about the merits of bs. Perhaps you should start a thread of your own?

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There are many threads in the archives you might want to read before starting another one. This one, for instance:

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We chose to live in a good public school district and have not regretted it. Our kids have had good educations and good friendships with the neighborhood kids. We are in the Midwest, so the pressure has not been too bad even though the school is filled with high achievers. There seems to be a live and let live mentality. We have saved money on private tuition and put it into 529 plans. Not that this was our goal, but both kids did really well and one is at Caltech and the other will be going to Stanford next year. ($300K + each, ouch, do not qualify for FA) The one at Caltech felt that her public high school education prepared her well for the rigorous core at Caltech. We would have been very happy as well had they gone to the state flagship where kids also do well. BTW, comparing college acceptances with our public high schools and the nearby selective privates, there really is not much of a difference if you compare the top 50% of the class at the public with the private students.

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There is no such thing!! We need more paleontologists, and more paleontologists, and even more paleontologists!!!

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Just because you live in a “good” public school district does not mean that it will serve all children equally well. Please reread @dadof4kids posts in this thread alone, his “good” public school district was fine for his first 3, but not for his 4th.

Education is not “one size fits all”.

And there is more to life than getting into a “good” university.

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I couldn’t agree more. I go to a top rated public school, but it just isn’t the right fit.

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My point was not at all that it doesn’t work to be in a good public school, as @stalecookies said my first 3 did that. 2 ended up at what I would call elites (an Ivy and Amherst), the 3rd at a state flagship but one that is not really difficult to get into. He is there by choice though, he always tolerated school and did fine but never really liked it. This college is probably the best feeder for the job he wants in the location he wants, even though neither the univeristy or his program within it are necessarily prestigious. But if you offered him a free transfer to Stanford (or really anywhere) he would refuse. He is where he wants to be.

I do agree that living in a good district gives you options that you wouldn’t otherwise have. And probably for the vast majority of kids that is a great plan. I have said elsewhere that our LPS is great for probably 25% of kids (my #2 and #3) and “fine” for 50% of kids (my #1). But for 25% of them they don’t do great, and I think that is where #4 will fall. All 3 of her siblings, even the 2 who had great experiences, think she will fall through the cracks and we should send her elsewhere.

Don’t get me wrong, I think she will have a good college outcome if she stays. But I don’t think she will be happy, and I don’t think she will be as successful in college or in life as she would be if she transferred. It doesn’t have to be an expensive boarding school, but in our case that’s probably the most realistic option. I could move, which is probably the second best choice, but that presents a lot of difficulties because in my case it isn’t just changing neighborhoods, we would need to probably move several hours away to solve the problems I am trying to solve.

So I agree that living in a good district does solve a lot of problems, but you still need to know your kid and make sure it is the best for them.

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