As I’m reading this thread, I’m also listening to the news of the shooting at UCLA. I can’t imagine the parents of the two who were killed there are going to remember them by what grades they got or which test scores…
Am I the only one that didn’t read “academics” in the original post? My original thought went to behaviors, not academics. And yes, this thread is all over the place, very judgmental by many posters, and pretty humorous lol. I’m going to pretend I didn’t read the replies so that I can type my first thoughts:
In rare cases, I’m a bit shocked by the LOW expectations that some of my friends have for their children. The comments like “its impossible for him to have a part time job because he hates to get up early on the weekends” or “boys will be boys” get under my skin.
More on target though is that I know for a fact my friends judge me because they think I am too strict and inflexible. Not all of it, or even most of it, has anything to do with academics though. Unlike the majority of parents I know, it is TOTALLY unacceptable to talk back, mumble, be rude in any way to me or any other adult, etc. and I dealt with behaviors like this firmly and quickly. I expected that my kids would do what I asked, when I asked, without question, especially during the younger years. I did not (and still do not) believe that our house is a democracy. I respected my kids enough that we could discuss things they thought were unfair but in the end, I made the decisions, because I’m the parent with the life experience. My friends might think my parenting was rigid,but the results…well, lets just say its best not to compare the outcomes. And, again, I’m not speaking about who graduated Ivy, I’m talking about being successful in life and productive citizens.
I actually partly agree with the OP but I was puzzled _ though not triggered _ by the church-going thing. I know lots of rich people who send their kids to fancy colleges and very few of them ever go to church.
I admit that I am judgmental and I do judge people who don’t seem to prioritize their children’s education. I expected my daughter to excel in school and she did. If I had gotten the kind of kid who just doesn’t get A’s easily I guess I would have adjusted my expectations.
Hi - lar -ious! I love all the twists and turns of this thread. To be human is to be judger and judgee and sometimes both at once!
There is a mother of two at our school who is renown for holding her kids in the car every morning to berate them for every wrong they have committed. She demands they take rigorous courses and if the grades are not to her liking, she lets them have it. She was so unhappy with the 95s in AP classes of one child that she refused to pay for the AP tests and made the child pay the fees for six tests. I used to find her expectations shocking but now I find them to be very sad. When her kids are recognized at awards ceremonies, I find it hard to applaud knowing the hell they suffered to get there.
I also know a parent whose kids dropped out of high school not because of learning disabilities but because their mother was too busy with her own personal issues. When the kid refused to go to school, the parent shrugged it off as if she had done all she could do. We might not like to admit it, but there are parents out there like this and yes, they sometimes shock me. And I have known the mother her whole life and there is no issue there except she is too self centered to have been a parent.
I know parents who would love for their kids to get As but there is no way to make that happen. The kids have jobs, friends, play sports, do everything everyone else does but they do not try that hard at school. You cannot make a kid try. You can take them to the building everyday but what they do inside is up to them.
I’m intrigued that the OP “requires” athletic activity. I certainly see wanting one’s children to get physical activity as a means of living a healthful lifestyle and/or socialization. But “requiring” participation on an athletic team is another story entirely. I had one who played a varsity sport - which none of us, including her, imbued with any kind of seriousness - and another who got his exercise through riding bikes, skateboarding, etc. Why would I have “required” a healthy physically active kid to participate in athletic competition? Sounds like parental ego to me.
I’m also intrigued that the OP “requires” a music EC. Music is a great EC, but it’s not so much inherently better than any other activity that it needs to be forced.
Lastly, it astounds me that the OP can’t distinguish between Cs from a student who works hard but that’s all he will ever be capable of, and Cs from a student who is capable of more but can’t be bothered to turn in homework, etc. Why both would be classified as “slackers” is crazy.
@NEPatsGirl for a minute I had to see if I wrote your response, lol. My friends all think Im too strict as well. I will admit I judge parents who say things like, "my kid wont return my calls/text, or “I cant get him to clean his room”.
“I’m intrigued that the OP “requires” athletic activity. I certainly see wanting one’s children to get physical activity as a means of living a healthful lifestyle and/or socialization. But “requiring” participation on an athletic team is another story entirely.”
Some private high schools require this as well. It isn’t necessarily a interscholastic team (could be intramurals) but some degree of involvement in a sport is required. Some colleges require PE.
My son never played an organized sport after 2nd grade. We did not attempt to force him to. He did play a musical instrument – by his own choice – but gave it up in 9th grade. His only EC after that was paid work (by his own choice – he wanted the money).
Today, as an adult, he has a fine career and he is an avid cyclist who also belongs to a gym and exercises regularly. He does not seem to have been harmed by our family’s slacker attitude toward music and sports. But then, what do I know? I’m not a churchgoer.
Perhaps they realize that, as long as the kid can become self-supporting, and not through something criminal or otherwise undesirable, all is well.
Was Amy Chua her parenting role model?
Assuming healthy and no LD, there is no such thing as a “hard working” C student. At an average school, non-honors students get B’s for showing up.
What does this mean? And if its true, what does it mean in the context of the OP? If we all go to church, wouldn’t that make us all church going? And if that’s true, what does saying the family in the OP is church going add? Might as well have said they are air breathing, no?
Have you met @MiamiDAP yet? You have some interesting views in common.
What I meant by different kinds of churches is that I go to one that encourages education, while my relative goes to one that views education with suspicion. Thus I am siding with the responders that think that the church going comment of the OP is confusing and irrelevant.
I too am confused by the we all go to church comment.
We’re all moral-less heathens in my family 
Indeed. D’s school requires 1 semester of PE in each of grade 9 & 10. Requirement can be replaced by participation in two sports (at this school they must be interscholastic sports) within a school year with one sport needing to have an aspect of aerobic and/or weight training.
IDK where you live but your experience is not what my kids’ has been. “Just showing up” won’t even get you a D.
Some of the nicest people I know are moral-less heathens. :">
(Sorry for the confusion. I meant we in the family all go to church, not we as in everyone posting on this thread.)
This varies not only by the denomination of the church, but also individual families. Among the parents of the Catholic School parents in my area, some parents took education extremely seriously to the point of advising us on what colleges to consider and which ones to avoid(including local Catholic Colleges they regarded as subpar academically) unless one was on full-scholarship and had not received acceptances to better SUNYs/colleges as early as 5th grade.
Others…not so much to the point they allowed/weren’t able to stop their teens from dropping out. One who was an older mentor as an 8th grader handpicked by the Catholic school Principal while my class was in second grade not only ended up dropping out later on in HS, but ended up becoming a teen parent and struggling heavily as her teen husband and her weren’t able to land decent-paying jobs with the limited educational credentials/skills they had.
Also, regarding churches which view education with suspicion…that sounds very much like the fundamentalist evangelical denomination a group of relatives belong to along with the southern baptist church popular with most of the neighbors of relatives living in a rural part of Mississippi. With the latter, attitudes among most such neighbors regarding education was so negative that my aunts/uncles regarded them as a “negative influence” on their own kids while they were teens.