<p>There's a lot of discussion about "tiger moms" lately so I wanted to ask about your personal stories about dealing with your family's expectations. Do they expect you to go to Ivies and pressure you to become a lawyer/doctor? Do they helicopter parent? Or do they have no idea what classes you're even in?</p>
<p>My parents actually will not allow me to do homework until I finish all my chores. Which gets kinda frustrating because my brother gets rewarded with no chores for doing his homework, and I’m taking a boatload of APs.</p>
<p>My Father is basically the “tiger parent” in my family - he is acutely aware of the classes I’m in, my schedule, my grades, etc. He knows when I’m doing my homework, he knows what I’m learning in Calculus, and he knows what dates my tests are.</p>
<p>He has also drilled into my head from the age of 4 that I am to become a lawyer.</p>
<p>Nothing comes before academics. I had to miss a Bob Dylan concert that I had been waiting to go to for 7 months because I hadn’t made enough progress on my AP World History project which was due four days after the concert. It was kind of my fault for not doing more work when I had the time, and I don’t hold anything against my dad - it just shows how super-duper serious he is about school.</p>
<p>Lol I would hate to be @preamble1776. How do you enjoy life? </p>
<p>My parents don’t have any idea what I’m doing. They just know I’m pretty good at school. They have a general idea of what I’m doing but they check my grades maybe once or twice a year and usually it’s unintentional or something. Either way, I’m on my own and it’s super sweet.</p>
<p>Ouch. That’s harsh. @preamble</p>
<p>I feel like my dad expects kids to stay at 10 years old and never grow up. My parents would probably stare at me like I was crazy if I asked to go to a concert. Hence the magic of youtube.</p>
<p>Academically, my dad cares about what he can brag about to his co workers. But he doesn’t pressure me at least.</p>
<p>@chiclanda - Believe it or not, I’m not miserable. I don’t have much of a social life - correction, I do not have a social life, period, but I don’t see my lot as restrictive and abysmal, but rather as a support system. </p>
<p>…but thanks for the whole “I would hate to be me” thing…</p>
<p>@sg12909 - LOL, my Dad loves being able to call up his friends at work and the first thing you hear him say is “Guess whose daughter got all 5’s on her AP exams?!”</p>
<p>@preamble I am a huge Bob Dylan, I’m so sorry you had to miss that!</p>
<p>@preamble
lol I don’t have a social life either, but that’s mostly thanks to my online schooling. At least my counselor said I don’t act like a “normal homeschooler” (I’m hoping that was a compliment). I am socially awkward at times, but I have a feeling most of us CCers are.</p>
<p>Sucks that you had to miss the concert. I’m not a big Dylan fan, but I would have loved to see Lady Gaga when she came to town (although it would be understandable if, had I asked, they didn’t allow me).</p>
<p>Wow, I feel bad for most of you guys. Honestly, my parents just expect me to keep up good grades. They don’t really hound me about them, they know that I’m tougher on myself than they could ever be on me. As long as I can handle what my workload (including EC’s), they don’t really care.</p>
<p>@nickb14 - I’ve always loved Bob Dylan’s music my entire life. I remember learning all the words to “Its Alright Ma” during recess in Preschool, lol.</p>
<p>My parents are pretty chill; they’re the “as long as you try your hardest that’s good and we’re proud” parents and only see my grades when my report card comes in the mail. We talk about my day at school and my classes a few times a week, so they aren’t completely clueless (though they don’t know what are considered good SAT/ACT scores and that kind of thing). </p>
<p>As far as colleges go, they’re also the “we’ll support you in whatever you want to do” parents (apparently not if I decide to be a criminal though :rolleyes:), so they’d be fine if I wanted to just go to community college, though, yeah, they’d be proud if I went to a T20 school.</p>
<p>As far as my social life goes, they really like all my friends and are really laid back when it comes to letting me go somewhere or having friends over. I don’t think they’ve ever said no to asking if I could have friends over/go out actually.</p>
<p>Regarding my social life, my mom got mad when I texted a guy. (A classmate and just a friend, honestly. We were texting, of all things, about school.)</p>
<p>My Dad flips out when I talk to guys - I was talking to a male friend of mine on gchat about an upcoming test and my Dad walked by and saw the name “Eric” and flipped.</p>
<p>Both my parents went to Harvard, so you can see the expectations for me… No matter what I’ll do it’s not good enough. They don’t understand how much more competitive things are now, and they don’t listen when I tell them. You could say I have tiger parents I guess, I started playing the violin and piano at 2 1/2 and it was not of my own accord…</p>
<p>NiteLite, order a copy of The GateKeepers, I think you can get it really cheap, even paperback now, they will find it a really good read, very well written, and it will open their eyes to the current competitive admissions scene. It is quite an education about a year in the life of an admissions officer at a premier college. There is tons of admissions data given, tt is actually more competitive since that book was written though, and it’s not old. (Pardon my interrupting the HS forum) They also follow about 6 or so kids who are applying to Wesleyan, Brown, Stanford, Yale, Cornell etc.</p>
<p>[The</a> Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College: Jacques Steinberg: 9780142003084: Amazon.com: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/The-Gatekeepers-Admissions-Process-Premier/dp/0142003085]The”>http://www.amazon.com/The-Gatekeepers-Admissions-Process-Premier/dp/0142003085)</p>
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<p>There’s no pressure to go to any specific college. </p>
<p>My dad wants me to get a law degree (just the degree…he doesn’t expect me to work as a lawyer) because he believes the entire population should get a law degree so they can “fight back against the system.” :rolleyes:
He says I can “pick it up along the way” as if you can just pick up graduate degrees. My father, of course, doesn’t have a law degree.</p>
<p>My mother doesn’t care what I do. She supports everything that I want to do, within reason, but she doesn’t push me into things. I jokingly asked her if I could live in her basement when I’m thirty years old, and she said, “Why wouldn’t you just live upstairs?” </p>
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<p>Lol, I think my parents would be thrilled if anything romantic ever happened to me. Unfortunately I can’t blame my lack of a social life on them.</p>
<p>My parents nag me about doing too much homework. If I want to take AP classes, I can’t take too many at a time, and I can’t let it consume my life. I wish they’d just let me figure things out on my own.</p>
<p>@preamble1776</p>
<p>The bad thing about not having a social life and just focusing on grades is that few people actually care how you do academically. Once you graduate from high school, nobody at all will care, and if you go to an ivy, you’ll be just like everyone else, but you won’t be able to properly communicate with people or solve conflicts because you never dealt with them in high school. I just couldn’t imagine my happiness in life being dependent on top scores. Id rather enjoy what limited time I have by making friends and having fun while ensuring I can go to a respectable uni.</p>
<p>My theory is that people who aren’t good at socializing are more likely to care about grades. Focusing exclusively on school gives us something to do and it’s a socially acceptable excuse for why we don’t have great social lives. I wouldn’t suddenly gain friends if I stopped focusing on school so much…I’d just be a loser with bad grades.</p>
<p>I definitely have higher expectations for myself than my mom has for me. My mom is happy as long as I pass my classes, and go to college. </p>
<p>I’m definitely the outlier in my family. Only a handful have gone to college, and they all went to juco or state schools. Most graduate with 2.something or low 3.something GPA’s in relatively easy majors (psychology, physical education, etc). So the fact that I am an AP student, got an ACT score significantly higher than my state school’s minimum (21), will get academic scholarships, and will pursue a difficult major (Engineering is top choice now, Economics is my backup) is pretty much new territory for my family. So yeah, no great expectations from them.</p>
<p>My family doesn’t really understand, sometimes. My mom gets mad if I can’t watch our tv shows the minute they come on because I need to finish an assignment, and my family thinks I don’t skip school enough. Definitely the opposite of what most CCers experience!</p>