This is what uninvolved parents think the motive is for involved parents. Not saying some people don’t abuse the relationship, though.
By the way, if kids are having a problem with over-competitive activities, Scouting is a great option. There are usually multiple troops available, and in most, it’s not about competition at all.
“It is also not realistic to believe all children require the same level of involvement or even the exact same parenting. Kids are individuals and have individual needs.”
My daughter, who is very driven, needs some down time every day. She has to have that 30 minutes to an hour every day to just be, i.e., reading manga, watching anime, snapchatting etc… We were leaving a speech event last Wednesday that was supposed to end at 9, but finished up 30 minutes early. My daughter’s comment on the way home was that she was very happy because now she wouldn’t miss out on her downtime as she stayed at school up until the event started. She is in bed almost every night by 10:30. I remind my daughter when it is 10 because she needs her sleep. Normally, she practices the violin about one hour a day. When there are special events, that goes by the wayside. Could I be draconian and insist? Probably. However, I don’t see what purpose that serves. Better a focused one hour practice the next day than an hour practice with total lack of focus. She isn’t trying to be the next Midori. She enjoys the violin and playing in the Young Artists Orchestra. That is enough.
My son, OTOH, was never in bed before 12:30 or 1 in middle school or high school. I didn’t make him go to bed even though I am sure that he could have used more sleep. He is a total night owl and that was when he was his most creative. He never burned the midnight oil doing homework. He was usually writing music or poetry. Now that my son is in college, I think his bedtime has shifted to 3 or 4 a.m…
What came very naturally to my son requires a little bit more work on my daughter’s part.
I packed food boxes with one of my kids at the local free pantry. It was the least glamorous volunteer job provided by a local multi-site agency- the “good jobs” were reserved for kids who needed the hours for various “required” service commitments, and for adults who were serving out a judicially mandated sentence. (Imagine the irony that my kid who had never been in trouble a day had to take backseat to the drunk driving/petty theft grownups in the community).
But I digress. Here’s what was bad about the job- needed tetanus booster shot, up to date TB test, flu shot (for a job that did not interact with the public, go figure). Also tossing out donations that were past their expiration date-- it seemed criminal to throw out a bottle of shelf stable/no refrigeration needed salad dressing that was a week past due, knowing it was likely perfectly good for another two years… Here’s what was good about the job- my kid seeing a form filled out by a social worker for an address three blocks from our house and realizing that “need” is everywhere.
I agree that it is sometimes hard to find a good volunteer role but even the “bad” ones are worthwhile in some way.
It is not that easy to tell beyond anecdotes who is getting into state schools with what stats. Most of the big flagships are very numbers driven and kids who apply early and have an SAT and GPA combined that meets their standards are accepted, regardless of essay or ECs. Many are rolling, so the kid with a 3.3 and 1800 SAT may get accepted in November, but denied in late December.
Yes, most decent students in most states can go to the Flaghship or near flagship. However, not every kid wants to go to a large flagship or to a directional state U, especially as the residential experience at non-flagships are less satisfactory.
To me, the pressure comes from kids who want to get into a very good, but not necessarily super elite college , seeing what the GPA and SAT requirements are for those and hearing info sessions in which getting As in a challenging curriculum is offered as what they look for, even at a school that takes kids with Bs. When schools ranked in the National U list in the 40s have acceptance rates of 28 to 35%, that typically means a kid with high stats and decent ECs. It is not always easy for the A- kid or the kid that is top 15%, but not top 10%, to find a good fit that is not a large state U. For many, going full pay to a super elite is one thing, paying around $60K for a good, but not outstanding, college is not as desirable. As the desirable, but not super elite, schools raise their student profiles, the pressure pushes down to the high schoolers.
None of this is a tragedy, none of it means a kid that goes to school that is not top 20, 30 or even 75 is a failure or will not be successful. But the desire to get in somewhere good (even if good means top 50) is pushing kids to do more, be more, and study more.
Some kids are super-driven. I know parents who have tried hard to get their kids (mostly daughters) to drop back a level from AP or honors to college prep, but the kids refused or accused the parents of not believing in them. What does a parent do in that situation? Some of the kids promise they will get more sleep, participate in the family, etc, but the reality is school takes over. Those are not my kids, by the way. No all-nighters in house. Definitely Type B kids who went to non-elite, but excellent to good colleges.
I don’t understand what many of these posts have to do with the topic. Are we still in the phase where we’re rationalizing away helicoptering behavior?
It is actually quite easy to tell who is getting into state schools with what stats, Mom2and. Your HS naviance isn’t going to be good telling you who is a legacy who got into Dartmouth, and who was a champion Bluegrass banjo player who got into JHU… but telling you who gets into the numbers driven schools is exactly the way to use your HS data.
Parents WANT to believe that their kid needs to be an all-state athlete to have a shot at U Mass Lowell- that’s their prerogative. But it ain’t the fault of the U Mass system which has all of a sudden adopted a holistic admissions policy thereby shutting out the solid students who live within commuting range who are forced to pay for a private when their own state system has failed them.
I think the paradigm shift needs to be that Harvard is not the end all and be all. And I know a lot of high achieving though not necessarily amazing/spectacular, who are going to Cornell, Dartmouth, Middlebury, Tufts, etc. Their parents probably had to drive them places before they had their driver’s license, but besides that, I did not see abundant helicoptering from their parents. They did what good parents do; they encouraged their kids to read, explored museums, and yes, probably drove them to practice. In many cases I know, both mom and dad work, so not a lot of spare time to helicopter.
I would also encourage anyone looking at colleges to look at the Parents of 2015 forum. I was really impressed with the array of schools kids were looking at, applying to, and attending. Many parents were chasing merit and FA and had to be realistic. I think everyone ended up at good schools. It’s a helpful and knowledgeable group.
Even if we could all agree on where the line is between appropriate parenting and helicopter parenting, I think we’d still have the problem of figuring out how much of a “trend” helicopter parenting really is. If college personnel are seeing 10 egregious examples a year instead of 5, is that a trend? It’s hard to measure–I don’t think use of mental health services on campus is a good way to measure this at all (or was that in a separate discussion of “resilience?” These kind of flow together for me).
I also have a theory that some of the things that look like helicoptering are just a particular manifestation of a larger social change, which is the availability of cheap instantaneous communication.
@Hunt I’m sure that plays a part. However, there is the question of what the underlying problem is.
As an example, I’ll mention the “old days” where a service technician would have to stop somewhere and drop a dime to call either you or his company office, who would then relay to you that the tech was delayed and couldn’t make the appointment. And, we expected it. Today, the communication can happen while on the run with the tap of a finger, yet it doesn’t.
I suspect the 2008 down turn created helicopter parents, both through unemployment and worry about the economic future.
There is one way to get out of the Harvard arms race, which is not to compete. Families need to determine whether entering this arms is something that’s right for their student or not - is he/she one of the top 2 or 3 students in their class? Could they reasonably be considered in the top 6% of students in their county, in their state, in the entire United States? If so, and there’s some compelling reason to be at Harvard University for four years, then dive in, roll up your sleeves and do the crazy intense work that’s needed to be a viable candidate for admissions.
But if he/she is not a top 6%er, or if they might ultimately be as happy or even happier at a school in a different location, or of a different size, or with a different emphasis, then just opt out of the madness.
““Honey, we cannot afford the money/time to drive you 30-50 miles one way to the dive center for lessons.” Parents have to consider the impact of one child’s activities on the whole family. If the money isn’t there, I don’t think it just magically appears because your child wants it (unless you know how that works).”
This is a conversation that I had with my daughter in the car two days ago.
Daughter - Mom, you just need to put away $200 - $300 every month and then you will have enough to pay for my semester abroad in Japan. You used to pay $300 a month for my brother’s piano lessons, so just take that money and put it toward my semester in Japan.
Me - I also used to work 3 jobs so that I could pay for those piano lessons.
I am now only working one job.
Daughter - You need to get a second job again.
Me - You need to get a scholarship and/or work a full-time job in the summer so that you can pay for your semester in Japan. I am not working three jobs again.
Gfg, you seem to live in an area with a mega problem. That’s just one example. If what you want is advice, you’d need to provide more info about where this is. Many of us know how competitive some areas are- but know what kids are still able to do.
It’s tough to hear, but: if you want to play in in the ‘big leagues,’ you have to play according to their expectations. There is rarely allowance for, “But he really, really wants to play soccer” (and isn’t good enough, doesn’t want to practice, or we can’t get him there, or it means sleepless nights, etc,) or, “He really, really wants to go to this college,” but isn’t competitive (in all respects) and can’t bridge the gap.
And, when those kids who are most resilient do hit a a pothole (the hospital doesn’t need vols, they didn’t make the team cut,) they freaking pick themselves up and keep trying.
What changes do you want to see the colleges make? Thousands of very competitive kids apply, kids who stretched and succeeded…but shouldn’t be desired? You cant believe those kids can be normal, you think it’s unfair they exist, you think it’s parents pushing or paying or complaining, sewing the costumes, whatever?
Also, for heaven’s sake, other than a local public that admits solely based on stats, make sure your ideas about what makes a kid competitive aren’t just some assumptions or some ideas from CC. (First cellist, national awards.)Take a deeper look. It may be that hands-on packing food boxes represents a whole lot more of the right stuff than racking up a few hours mowing the church lawn or getting to be on the pep rally committee.)
Gfg, is this your first kid who will apply to colleges?
For the millionth time, I am not looking for my child to go to HYPS et al. or the next tier down, or even the tier below that. She isn’t qualified, in part because her volunteer activity IS doing laundry and nothing more earth-shattering! But as mom2and pointed out, the high level qualifications are being asked for at the mid- tiers too. At several info. sessions we attended, the admissions officers gave examples of the sort of progression during high school they wanted to see in their applicants. Athletics was a common model used to show development and then outreach. 1. Join team and work hard. 2. Advance from freshman / JV to varsity status 3. Become team captain, and 4. share your talent in some way, eg. coach little kids in the sport. Similar models were given for other types of EC’s. That may sound pedestrian and manageable to some of you, except that even doing 2 and 3 can take an exceptional amount in certain competitive environments.
In other words, the merely average or slightly above average kids at our school would be among the 75 bodies who never made the team in the first place! So when mid-tiers want the varsity player turned captain, or the club member who becomes club treasurer, they are not going to get the pretty good but not exceptional kid that you’d think belongs at a mid-tier place like that. Some of our high school clubs have 150 + kids. You can’t be a little above average and get elected officer.
Well, I am not an admission’s officer and my opinion probably means squat, but I think volunteering to fold laundry shows a lot of character. Seriously. It precisely bc it isn’t glamorous or up front/in your face but behind the scenes and pitching in where real needs exist that makes it so important. I love Blessed Mother Teresa’s philosophy. The first objective is meeting real physical needs. Only then can other needs be approached. Having clean laundry is is a primary physical need. Don’t downplay its value! 
I don’t know what that college is. And I am not disputing you. But that’s crazy to say- how many kids can be captain? Adcoms know it’s few. And that at many hs it’s about popularity or which kid the coach likes. So what kids do (and the includes successful applicants) is find what they can join and stick with. And have some impact at- not just show up. And then concentrate on how to build the rest of their story.
So you’re not on the team. Then what?
Sorry that I am not all the way through the posts, yet, but I don’t believe that the posts #246-#255 really responded to the comments that TheGFG made in #245. Perhaps that is coming up.
Our area has the same intensity of all of the EC’s that were typical a generation ago: e.g., sports, music, debate, or volunteering. In swimming and water polo, two-a-day practices are common, with the first starting about 6:30 and the second after school, plus travel to events, plus team fund-raising, plus . . . The future looks worse: A relative of mine has started his two-year-old on swim lessons. The two-year-old’s grandfather still swims competitively at a national level, and wins in his age group. The two-year-old’s mother was featured in Sports Illustrated–just a Face in the Crowd, but still. The two-year-old is not the only swimmer of his age group.
At our high school, a teacher started a new team sport (really a pre-existing sport, just one that was not played in the area before), which offered students who did not have the U4-type of experience an opportunity to play something. But one can’t exactly count on that, plus the sports would keep getting more exotic, requiring more travel time, and more team fund-raising.
I already mentioned QMP as 17th or so cello, vs. my spouse as the whole cello section in his high school orchestra–and his was and is still a good school.
On other threads, I’ve mentioned my high-school debate experience vs. the current day. My high-school debate team met once a week for an hour after school, and traveled only on Saturdays, except for the state tournament when we made that (which was just once, as I recall). I read a little on the topic to supplement the pre-printed evidence cards that we were actually just handed. We could fit them in a small file box. One of our JV debaters carried a single “evidence” card, that actually just said “Smile.” Fast-forward to the present: The debate team meets for multiple hours a week. They frequently leave for tournaments Thursday nights, and the tournaments run multiple days. Instead of a file box, they have a filing cabinet on wheels full of evidence.
I volunteered for the Red Cross as a 14 year-old. Can’t do that anymore–must be at least 16. I volunteered as a Teacher’s Aide for Head Start. Probably can’t do that at all in high school anymore, in our area. Those are among the most-coveted volunteer slots for the college students.
I don’t know what the process for starting a new volunteer club at the local school is/was. I don’t believe it was restrictive. But most of the logical topics were already covered. I know: Pie Club hasn’t been set up!
If the EC your child really, really wants requires a group, and the groups is intense . . .
What I would like to see is more activity offered at the MIT softball “Kentucky-Fried” level. Perhaps in retirement, I could volunteer to start such a club locally, as long as I don’t mind being finger-printed and regarded with extreme suspicion, if I can do it at all. (At the local school, parent volunteers cannot run any activity that the teachers can be paid to run.)
The suggestion to “drop down” presumes that it’s the intensity of the AP’s that requires the time commitment. This is no doubt true in a great number of schools. However, in the specific schools that TheGFG’s children and mine attended, the other classes were no less time consuming–it was just more posters and crafts projects, and less academically justifiable work.
mathmom mentioned her son doing 10 minutes a day of AP Calc homework. That’s all it would take, with the right homework (and the right student). The local Calc BC teacher pre-advertised 2 hours a day of homework. At least the student in Calc BC was not making a poster on the topic of “My Favorite Number,” or “A Famous Woman in Mathematics.” And at least the latter was something of a challenge, not to cover the same 2 or 3 women!
As I think about it, the language clubs at QMP’s school tended to be relatively Kentucky-Fried, if one had the spare time for them, and did not mind that they didn’t “compete” at anything.
These were not totally issue-free, though. Due to budget cuts, the school board eliminated all non-sports clubs at the school when QMP was starting 9th grade. The head guidance counselor announced to an open session for parents that the clubs could restart, if parents or community groups sponsored them (read, provided the money). He further suggested that if your child was slated to become President of Latin Club, it might be worth paying for Latin Club to restart, so that “your child could have some leadership.” I am sure this would be extremely impressive to admissions committees! It also illustrated to me that he was not quite clear on the concept of leadership.