“I would not like one of my sons to be a boyfriend/husband to someone who was accustomed to being waited on hand and foot just because of a big deadline coming up at work.”
This is absolutely what my kids see. Except they see that I do it for my husband and he does it for me. When I’ m about to work on a trial or he has a huge project at work the other takes up all the household work.
We find this a very good way to operate. Nothing wrong with it at all.
This quotation should be in large print at the top of the parents forum.
And this is why I required my kids to get a license while in high school despite being reluctant drivers (and my hating every moment of the teaching them to driver process. Thank goodness they is only one to go)
The reality for many kids is that a college schedule makes it far easier to manage their own lives than the high school schedule. On the other new parent thread I mentioned that on some weekdays D would have to leave high school early to travel to a track meet. That would entail finding time to make up the work for the class or classes she would miss as a result. The round trip commute to the meet would take two hours, and then the meet itself would last 6-7 hours. By the time she got home at night it would be after 10 PM. She’d still need to shower, possibly eat something, and then do all her homework. On regular practice days she would still not be able to start her homework until 7 or so. Thus with 1.5 to 2 hours of work per each class, that didn’t leave time for chores. But if she were in college instead, she’d have had no more than 1 or 2 classes that day with plenty of time in between for laundry, errands and homework.
My concierged kids successfully went off to colleges far away from home and managed their personal lives just fine. (Doing laundry or making a sandwich are not high level skills that require years of practice first.) D1, for example, was a three-season athlete at Stanford and found that her schedule there, while packed, was still easier than it had been in high school because she wasn’t in class for 7 hours each day and knew in advance what her assignments would be. Helping out your kids with trivial tasks doesn’t necessarily make them helpless or selfish.
Parent portal? My kids never had a teacher who kept up with it past October!
I learned to drive at 22, my kids had learner’s permits at 16 or 17 but at 23 and 26 neither of them have a license. The 23 year old does have a road test scheduled! They haven’t needed to drive and frankly I’m happy not paying the extra insurance. The 23 year old took a trip to the Grand Canyon with his girl friend last month. It turns out you can get there on public transportation. They had a good time. I agree though that one is likely to have more time to learn in high school, even if you don’t actually take the driving test.
My kids did chores, but not as many as they could have. It was more efficient for me to do it. But they both figured out what to do in college and the younger one, who is temporarily living with us, does his own now.
Like slackermom, I was too lazy to be much of a helicopter and my kids were much better at keeping track of things than I was. Even in elementary school, I never knew which days they needed to bring their musical instruments to school, but they did!
First -
As someone who has recent and ongoing experience with an overstressed, anxious, at the end of her rope, once “high-achieving” child - I urge you to let your own child know that being “good enough” and having a healthy, balanced life, with plenty of time for sleep, relaxation, and fun, as well as academics, is just as praiseworthy as being a part of “the top”.
My D took the route to get to a very selective university - multiple APs per year, no free time, not enough sleep - and struggled to keep up. This all culminated in her having panic attacks, depression, and recently having to miss school and be treated for it.
The best-laid plans…
We are very happy with where she will end up, a small state university. It’s a place where she can have a balanced life, something she has not had all through high school. It is not where she, or even we, her parents, planned for her to be back in eighth grade. She also was academically advanced, very high test scores, etc.
If I could go back in time, I would force her to only take one or two APs per year and starting in junior year, not freshman… I would urge her to get a part-time job during the summer, instead of taking summer school (so she could have room for more APs , more ECs…) every summer. I would tell her that “good enough” can be the best way, the most balanced way.
I know my own experiences with this subject colors how I view it now; but when i see posts like these, I see my daughter four years ago.
Just remember to encourage your daughter to have some down time, and plenty of sleep, NO MATTER WHAT. Not even college is more important than our childrens’ physical and mental health.
Second, addressing your question -
Most daily household chores don’t really take that much time. My daughter’s job has always been to empty and fill the dishwasher every evening, and do her own laundry. Although, often, I will throw her laundry in with ours, she doesn’t have much. But I wanted to make sure she knows how to do laundry. And laundry is something that can be done while studying…
I’ve also made sure she knows how to cook simple things from scratch, and have occasionally sent her to the corner grocery on her own with a list, and some cash.
We also signed her up for a high school checking account and got her debit card, so she can learn how to manage her money and a bank account.
She’s also been buying most of her own clothing since freshman year (I give her an allowance).
These are all things that require some personal responsibility and help ease them into adulthood…
I have not made her work during high school because of her busy schedule, and summer academics, but I kinda regret that - the part-time job would have been more helpful than the extra academics, I’m thinking, looking back…
Finally -
Realize that many, many universities are not that competitive for admissions. Most state universities require a 3.0 (often lower) and an adequate test score and the required high school curriculum for admission.
Anything over 3.5 and good test scores, starts getting into merit scholarship territory (not a bad thing!) at state schools or lesser-known small private schools.
My own daughter never wanted to go to a prestigious university, and I wish I’d known before that she didn’t have to take many of the advanced classes she did and that she struggled with at times - in order to be admitted to those, or even get merit.
However if a very selective university is the goal - just have her get some regular sleep and fun, too, to avoid burnout.
TG our school did not have portals in those days. (Not sure if they do now – oops, just checked, they DO have a parent portal.) But our use of a portal would have done more harm than good.
@SlackerMomMD Thanks for your kind words. While I TRY to keep my comments neutral, I am not always successful, and you can bet I do my share of nagging–if not about grades, then something else. I call it reminding, the kids (and sometimes, sadly, even my H) call it nagging.
It is easy to get anxious reading CC. Remember CC is not “real.” The folks who post here are a self-select group who, by definition, are very interested in the college admissions process. It is a great resource to acquire useful information, but not everything on this sight is useful and reading all of the fabulous stats and unearthly ECs has been known to freak people out. My advice is to chill out. help your DD or DS with time management skills and knowing what is due when. Everybody ends up in a college. It all works out in the end. It’s easy for me to say - this is our third time around. Believe me, we are a lot less stressed than we were six years ago.
Mine didn’t have a portal, but D1 was the TMI kid- about everything, even her friends’ doings. I was the one who had to explain she might want to set some reasonable line.
I wasn’t worried about laundry; that’s a task. I wanted them to be able to maintain some order and benefit from that. They were in charge of loading the dishes and tidying the kitchen after dinner, not because I needed that or was some taskmaster, but to get them in the habit. We also had what we called a quick Saturday job, something simple like vacuum or dust. It wasn’t perfect. We aren’t obsessive.
They managed school and friends. Not because school was light or that I was on their cases or filled in blanks. More because D1 had learned rudimentary time management in 3rd grade and expanded on that as the years passed. And D2 was so freaking busy but thrived on that, it was “her.”
Thank you all for your input. You all have such good ideas!
My daughter is a very driven and competitive person, and the advanced classes that she’s in and the EC’s that she’s in have all been selected by her. She also has decided she wants to be at the top of her class. She is a very bright student, but struggles with organization, so what might take a typical student an hour to complete, takes her an hour and a half or more. While other kids glide through their homework, my daughter grinds through it. I do admire that she works so diligently, although I recognize that it is a big contributor to her lack of free time.
I am fine with whatever educational path my daughter wants to take after high school…she just happens to want to take the “tippy-top” school route. I myself went to a directional state university and think I turned out just fine. No matter whether she wants to go to Stanford, a state school, the local junior college, or trade school, my husband and I will support her.
@BeeDAre your post especially hit home with me because I see my daughter in the same place where your daughter was in 8th grade. My daughter wants to take extra classes at the junior college this summer so that she can fit more honors and leadership classes in her freshman year schedule. She wants to take zero period to fit in another freshman class (which she’s also doing this year at her jr high). She wants to join a ba-zillion clubs. There isn’t enough time in the day for her to fit in everything she wants to do. And I know that can be a recipe for burn out.
I’m not sure yet whether I will be a concierge mom or a more hands-off mom while my daughter is in high school, but I do think that I need to figure out a way to encourage her dreams without having her burn out. You have all given me a lot to think about and I appreciate it so much:)
I would just offer this advice for your D - make sure she can accept that there will be someone - or a few someones - at her high school that is as bright or brighter, than her - and who does not have to work so hard for it. They will be faster, get higher test scores the first time…
Or maybe, by some miracle, not, but there seems to be at least one freaky-brilliant kid at a high school who doesn’t even have to break a sweat being there… At my D’s there are a few, at least.
She’s not one of them. For her, it’s a lot of work to keep up.
My D also takes longer than some - some of that is her tendency to be a perfectionist. Again, stressing the “good enough” at home is important…
And if your D does want to opt out of the most-selective academic plan, by her own choice (my D decided by junior year she would not apply to very selective schools, but for reasons I still don’t quite get, opted to stay on the most rigorous high school path) let her know she WILL still be a successful human and citizen, no matter what.
And don’t let the peer pressure get her down. My D’s peers actually gave her grief for applying to small directional schools. Intellectually, she knows she is on the right path for herself, but emotionally - I think that was painful, having her peers and friends tell her she was “giving up”, “slacking”… (Yeah, some friends, but they’re young and stupid, as bright as they are, lol)
Encourage her to think for herself and shut out all the naysayers - either way she goes, actually.
Best of luck to your D, she sounds like she already has a very good head on her shoulders.
But this hyper-competition re: college admissions and who can take the most APs and Honors and who has the most meaningful ECs… it can be devastating for some kids. Just keep an eye out for that.
^I second everything that BeeDAre has stated! She is spot on.
"I would not like one of my sons to be a boyfriend/husband to someone who was accustomed to being waited on >>hand and foot just because of a big deadline coming up at work."
This is absolutely what my kids see. Except they see that I do it for my husband and he does it for me. When I’ m >about to work on a trial or he has a huge project at work the other takes up all the household work.
We find this a very good way to operate. Nothing wrong with it at all.
[/QUOTE]
I believe there is a striking difference between two adults who decide to bail each other out mutually, vs. someone who is always on the waited-on side of things even as a teen when realistically their “obligations” are not at the same level of importance as those of working adults.
The difference is that in the latter case, you’d end up not with your own described marital model, but with one spouse constantly assuming that s/he is the most important person to be catered to, never having picked up the slack in the other direction or even for him/herself as a kid.
I went to college with kids like that - they never were willing to take their turn in student organization duties or errands or dorm chores if they had “too much work” - blissfully and rudely unaware that everyone in the community had just as much going on. And I still work with someone who thinks that the reason other people volunteer for tasks around the office but he doesn’t is that “they must have more time and less to do than I do”.
And as I said before, another real risk is that the kid portrays an unrealistic [for them] “ability” and gets in somewhere where they could be over their head and really suffer. I believe there are threads here on CC about kids getting into Reach schools and not necessarily thriving there.
My parents were concierge parents but I always met my responsibilities to others. I also learned to cook, clean ( I’m a good housekeeper if I do say so myself ) and do laundry ( I LOVE laundry) despite never doing any of this growing up. My parents presented many of these chores as " things you do when you have the privileges and responsibilities of adult life". It was never an issue to learn. None of it is very hard. My kids have followed in my footsteps. Neither ever even loaded a dishwasher at home but the first time my older daughter babysit at age 13 I got a call from my neighbor who hired her who said “so how do you train your kids so well to run the dishwasher. She’s the first babysitter who ran the dishwasher and put things away for us” I have had no clue she had done that and when I asked her about it she responded “well isnt that what you’re supposed to do when you’re in charge ?” How does she know what to do? Answer was “I saw what you guys did”.
@maya54 - I’m curious, were you as a child and/or your children “tidy” sort of people growing up? I ask because my younger daughter likes her surroundings rather tidy and will clean her room without me even asking - she just likes everything to “look nice.” My younger daughter is also the first one to pitch in if she sees me folding laundry or cooking - I never have to ask her to do this. However, my 8th grader has never been tidy. She will make mess after mess without cleaning up. Her room could be absolutely disgusting and she wouldn’t bat an eyelash. She has never offered to do any chores around our house, if my memory serves me correctly. She’s a super sweet kid, but thinking about things like cleaning and organizing never even enter her mind. And that’s is why I am concerned that if I become my older daughter’s “concierge,” she will never develop the habits to take care of regular household stuff. With my younger daughter, those general habits are already there.
@khmama. No they were not tidy. At all. Lol. And no offers to help really. But my kids both seem to feel that it’s " unfair" to their roommates to be messy. So they are definitely Relatively tidy at school. And my older daughter is the roomate who takes on most of the cleaning responsibility in the kitchen she shares. She’s used to a pretty tidy kitchen and she says that when she lets other people clean it up it’s just not “done right”
I personally don’t believe that there’s a certain age that you have to Learn to clean or cook or do laundry by. I was never expected to do them as a kid and didn’t do any of these things before I was out in college or on my own. I was not a tidy kid. But I keep a neat organized home and laundry is one my actual pleasures.
@fretfulmother, I understand what you are saying as I think I do well under 50% of the household chores. My wife and I divide up the tasks by visible or invisible. I take invisible: planning, investments, insurance, electronics, travel. She takes the visible: things need to be fixed, she does 90+% of the cooking. We both do laundry. But, she and I are very busy and we hire folks for cleaning, laundry, snow shoveling etc. At times, she can get frustrated with the division of labor, but she feels blessed by the interesting life that we have that is full of opportunities for her. By focusing as I have done on excellence in academics (I got degrees at three of HYPSM) and then work (as a professor at HYPSM, investment banker, family office PE guy, hedgie and consultant), we can afford for her to work as an artist and not have to teach. She has become reasonably well-known as a combination of true talent and time to teach.
My closest friend has charted an extraordinary career. He has written one of the best-selling business books of all time, is a sought after speaker and consultant, but in his real career, he has prevented wars and saved many lives. He has functioned as a social entrepreneur, starting organizations that are designed to and, often do, really help the world. He has made quite a many millions of dollars. He is exactly like my gifted, dyslexic son who succeeds via extreme focus. He never cooked when we were young – he had the same five food items in his kitchen to keep life focused on what was important. I highly doubt he could have repaired a car or made a budget – though, unlike me, he was and is neat. He is not a great contributor around the house – he learned to be a good father though he wasn’t at first – but he makes me look like I’m a big help around the house. His wife recognizes what an extraordinary guy he is and what kind of life he has made for them. She makes everything work (he is very happy to spend money if it will make life easier). So, while I am not encouraging people to be bad at housework, but there are circumstances in which there is something of a symbiosis and one spouse recognizes that the other is pretty extraordinary and fills in around that person.
There may be a sexist element to this. One friend is a well-known academic (no doubt quoted on CC in fact). Her husband was also a professor but not of the same caliber – and I think he became jealous and they were later divorced. In contrast, another friend is a very famous scientist – he hasn’t won the Nobel yet but has won just about every other award available. His wife was a litigator at a very good firm. She decided to quit (I think the work was fundamentally not rewarding) and they no longer needed the money as he has started several successful firms on the side and she organizes around him. She’s very very busy with do-gooding stuff but his work is central. Not so with our female friend.
My son is a college freshman this year, and I was definitely a concierge parent. Between, school, sports, music, and drama, he really didn’t have time. He was happy to help when asked, and I never worried that he wouldn’t learn to do these things (cook, clean, laundry) himself because you figure these things out when you need to. His first weekend at college, he texted me with a few laundry questions. That’s it. He’s always had clean clothes and bedding every time we’ve seen him. I think they learn more from example than anything else. He knows what his Dad and I do, and he’ll do it when he needs to. I don’t think that taking care of chores for your kid spoils him, or makes you a helicopter parent. I think the key is to be doing these things for your kid because YOU want to, not because the kid demands them, or because you don’t think the kid is capable.
@shawbridge I think all of your examples are helpful - but they are largely also about adult partners working things out as equals. You are right in your implication that our cultural soup of sexism, various attitudes toward different jobs, etc. - will necessarily influence which partner spends how much effort on which tasks, even in true partnerships.
@Awesomekidsmom @maya54 and others - I respectfully disagree. It’s not that laundry is “hard” - the hard part is learning that your own precious hobbies are not always the community’s first priority. Just because a kid learns to make his own bed when he is on his own, doesn’t mean he has internalized that one does chores for the whole family as part of its membership. Keeping one’s own area clean is kind of an extension of the same selfishness of only doing priorities for oneself in HS.
I still reject the prioritization of a teenager’s “obligations” as higher than family needs, parents’ employment, even parents’ recreation as adults, frankly. Teenagers should first fulfill their family obligations, and their sleep/health, and last, in what they “have time” left to do, they do.
And yes, that means some kids who currently use parental servitude as a proxy for ability/achievement, will be less “excellent” in some of the fake ways that “excellence” is currently measured. I believe that parents who sacrifice their kids’ personalities by being concierges instead of leaders, even if they win the HYPSM admission, will have reduced the potential to raise a less-selfish human being on this planet.
@fretfulmother - your comment got me wondering…what if “concierge-ing” for your child helps them get really good grades and EC’s, which could help them get significant aid/a full ride at a college, thereby saving the family perhaps almost a quarter of a million dollars? Now this is assuming that the family was going to be full pay anyway at a college that costs around $65,000 a year. I wonder if in that case, the “concierge-ed” child has actually made a significant contribution to their family and their obligations. BTW -I’m not even sure what my opinion is on that yet, but that came to my mind as I was reading your post.