<p>Thnak you, Ladies and Gentlemen. These last seven posts have been a surprise performance dedicated to the memory of Abbot and Costello and in honor of their classic "Who's on First?" routine. You will now be returned to your regular programming.</p>
<p>It appears that my sometimes bizarre sense of humor has killed this thread. I will blame my lapse on my almost nightly fight with my ^%& blood sugar levels and painfully swollen feet. If I unintentionally "stepped on any toes" , I apologize.BTW thnak is hillbilly for thank.</p>
<p>Morgantruce, I like the shorthand. With 9 kids, I find it easier to use D, S1, S2, S_ ,H when referring to the kids and hubby. I have skipped the D prefix as they are too often not so darling to me.</p>
<p>Nine children? You don't need shorthand; you need Excel! :)</p>
<p>I'm just a bit slow on the uptake. When I'm reading something, the information makes much more sense to me when I don't have to pause often to try and figure out what some arcane shorthand means in this context. I keep a dictionary handy for the occassional new word----a big fat dictionary. But if I have to resort to Googling everyone's idea of "shorthand", I lose track of whatever it was that the writer was trying to communicate.</p>
<p>I look at such shorthand as a subliminal message: "I DARE you to understand the point I am trying to make!"</p>
<p>Curmudgeon: I felt the same way about my last post on "Moment of Clarity'! Did I offend someone? Looks like I did! Please read my thoughts about kids not being able to "wing it". I poured out my heart and got no responses! Anyway, I do enjoy your sense of humor and your posts!!! You brighten my day with your acknowledgment of our sometime humdrum existence as parents (of gifted kids, I might add) and the humor you find in it! I try to do the same..but alas! I appear to be considered inane.....perhaps.</p>
<p>Nah, no subliminal message from me. I am pretty direct, I think, if you search my posts, I say it as I see it. With so much going on, I can't keep track of lies or subliminal stuff. I HAVE to be direct. Curmudgeon and sgiovinc, don't worry about offending anyone unless you intend to do so. Then you've got to worry about whether it is worth doing so. Blossom's post here is pretty direct about not posting if you don't want input or feedback, and many times you will get someone who disagrees with your viewpoint. They may have some excellent info and opinions to share, they may be total jerks and trolls. But you have to expect you will get some of them as responses. It has been my experience that most trolls have a short lifespan on this forum-the experienced posters and moderators take care of them very quickly when they get too nasty.</p>
<p>Sgiovinc:</p>
<p>We had a similar conversation in our home just yesterday. My H said there was no incentive for our kids to do things for themselves since we (mostly I) were all too ready to do it for them. But then, I had a colleague who kept bringing up the Great Depression to tell us younger folks how easy things were for us!</p>
<p>Marite and Sgiovinc- I can't tell you how many people I have run into lately who have tales of how their offspring are only in college because the parents did the app aside from writing the essay. One Mom even had to scavenge her son's binder for any writing assignment that could be used as an essay.<br>
Marite- my husband would 100% agree with your husband.</p>
<p>Mom60:</p>
<p>Except that my H, too, is an enabler. :) I must say, though, that my kids do so many things that I or my H did not do when we were their age.</p>
<p>Things have changed a lot since I went to college. I know that we ate at the cafeteria most of the time not because any of us liked the food but it was paid for and the cheapest alternative. The area around campus did not have all of the eateries that have popped up since. It seemed to me that most of us were always short on cash and the "rich" kid with the big bucks was relatively rare. At my kids schools-and I have spanned the range from highly selective, expensive, privates schools, to state schools and catholic colleges, it seems that there are quite a few kids with deep pockets. I'm sure that puts more stress on those kids who do have to watch the budget. Just the number of kids who have cars on campus is an indicator to me as it is expensive to fund that. </p>
<p>Also, I didn't know anyone whose parents did their apps. It was always the student's job, and help was limited. Sadly, this is no longer the case. A friend of mine just told me that she did all of her D's transfer apps for her, essays and all, successfully, because the student had no time to do them and was so unhappy at the school she had picked. </p>
<p>When I have worked with kids from high risk schools and backgrounds, I bring a stack of job applicatins and watch them struggle just to fill them out. This is understandable considering the family and academic situation of these kids. But I see kids struggling with the college apps coming from some high faluting high schools. I have had to sit and force my sons to do their apps, not pleasant, but the only way they would get done. But most parents don't have the stomache (and mine is shot by now) to do this.</p>
<p>With D being a junior, I thought it best to pull the common app off the net and the supplements for two or three selective schools. She is working ever so slowly at some trial runs of each app while I go through looking at the Profile and FAFSA. As other parents have already suggested ,I do believe that much more is expected of us as parents than we expected from ours, but it is equally true,at least for me, that more is expected of D. By me and by her. I fight against it constantly.</p>
<p>I have zero willingness to write an application essay , but I will read them. I will check over the forms but I really can't see me filling them out for her.This is not a very independent generation and I hope that they do learn to wing it,and live to fight another day, and triage. As I posted on another thread, parenting appears to be the Law of Unintended Consequences. By being as proactive with our children as we have , have we unintentionally made them less resilient? Less able to handle the stressors of college life? Well,we are all about to find out. Sure hope I did it right.(Sgiovinc,see. I did read your insightful post.)</p>
<p>Enabling is the word!!! I did not do any of my children's apps. I did not write their essays for fear "I" would be accepted (or not!) into the school of their choice and not them! I really do believe and I have conveyed this to all of my kids who were disappointed in the schools that rejected them that "Water seeks its own level." A very good match school will accept them and they will be happy there as long as the application is "theirs" and not "their parents." Sometimes I believe that we live too vicariously through our children..and while we may revel in their accomplishments we equally feel dismayed when they fail. I know I have to rethink my priorities with my children now...am I looking out for their best interests or am I caught up in the need to celebrate their talents as an extension of myself? I oftentimes worry about that. As an example, my Harvard grad S who is barely coping with life has a new "gal" he is seeing. He is also seeing an old "gal." (Let me explain, for my S "seeing" is you take them out to a restaurant or a movie or watch a video together on the couch. No touchy-feely.) The old "gal" is his current roommate who is a barely a college graduate and has no future to speak of. I think she works as a cashier. The other new "gal" is a Harvard grad now attending medical school...He is trying to decide who to pursue for some "touchy feelies," I suppose. I could have bit my tongue!!!!! "Keep your mouth shut!" I heard a little voice say in the back of my head. I wanted to scream! But again, I also believe "Water seeks its own level." If the new "gal" is the one, it will be the one without any interference from me. While I did offer advice on colleges for my kids, I always allowed them to come to their own decision regarding them so as not to exert any undue influence which might come back to haunt me in the future if they were either not happy or not successful there. The only thing I did in reference to apps was remind them of deadlines!!! Each college was different way back then and there was no common application to speak of.</p>
<p>Whoa! Deep breath all! :)</p>
<p>'Tough Situations' post was referring to previous post:</p>
<p>Cheers, hats off to you for handling tough situations.</p>
<p>Nothing subliminal about it! DS-2 Darling S number 2, (not automobile). </p>
<p>Crikey! Why so twitchy in the NH?</p>