<p>Congratulations to all parents of recent middle school graduates! In a couple months, our youngsters will be starting their four year high school jouney. Let's share our thoughts and provide support to each other on this thread as we march through another leg of their education.</p>
<p>Here we go.</p>
<p>S3 will be a freshman at our local public high school this fall. Born in late October, he is a bit young for his class, and a bit immature compared to his older brothers as they entered high school. I know a lot can and will change between now and 2014, but I'm still concerned about high school adjustment for him. Does anyone else have this concern?</p>
<p>Just a couple weeks ago, he got intersted in wood carving. After a couple visits to our local wood carving store, he is now spending hours everyday practicing. We'll see if he is old enough to attend "Carving 101" this summer.</p>
<p>Hi, PaperChaserPop. I also have an S who will be starting high school this fall. Like your S, he’s young for his class, but he’s matured a great deal over the past few months. Up until a few months ago, I was very concerned about him starting high school this fall, but my worries have eased up a little. S is volunteering at a camp this summer, so I’m hoping that will help him mature even more before school begins. </p>
<p>I’m not quite ready to begin thinking about college for him yet though. ;)</p>
<p>My 2014 son might be a year older than yours since our school district had a 5 by June 1 cut-off when he started kindergarten. It’s crazy to have school start ages vary so much from state to state. He would have been better off if he had been younger. As it is, he is very grateful to be done withe middle school and to have more courses open to him. There were only so many high school courses he could take while in middle school. The best part of middle school was band. He plays piano and percussion. Do your children play instruments as well?</p>
<p>Welcome - LIMOMOF2 & Apollo6!</p>
<p>S3 is young for his class because of my fault of letting him start private kindergarten early to get around the age restriction of our public elementary school system. I didn’t want him to be two school years behind his brother who is just 15 months older.</p>
<p>S3 plays the violin, but really doesn’t enjoy it. We may let him drop it this year, even though he is projected to be in the high school’s honor orchestra next year. I think it is important that we find and nurture his interests. Hopefully we’ll know more by the end of this summer.</p>
<p>S2 plays the cello and has the talent for it. He genuinely likes it but doesn’t have enough time for practice. He is aiming for all state this year.</p>
<p>D1 plays the piano and likes it, but doesn’t put it much effort into it. She will continue to play and keep it as a hobby.</p>
<p>S1 played the violin but had no passion for it even though he made 1st violin senior district. He dropped private lessons after 10th grade, and stopped playing altogether after his junior year.</p>
<p>Even though I have been lurking since last spring’s scheduling dates, I have never registered until today. I saw this thread AND we just averted our first high school crisis.</p>
<p>My future freshman has homework for 2 classes and the first blog post for Humanities is due today. He finished the book- so I had hopes for no drama. He struggled with looking for the information on the web and how to post new info. He couldn’t even get logged on, but he learned how to navigate the school’s website for e-mail addresses and guessed at a password. (name of school), but now he doesn’t have to wait for a return e-mail.)</p>
<p>I tried to stay out of it, but I wanted to step in and say I’ll handle this part, you start composing your thoughts. But I didn’t. whooo…the potential drama is passed.</p>
<p>Maybe I’ll take a walk while he gets the assignment done. :)</p>
<p>S2 starts high school in August. He’ll be 15 August 23 - old for his grade since our cutoff is Sept. 1 so we held him back a year, as do most parents of summer boys in our area. He’s looking forward to the social and sports aspects of HS, but not the work - in fact, I’m already thinking of getting him a math tutor as a pre-emptive strike, after my experiences with S1, a member of the college class of 2014.</p>
<p>S will attend a very selective magnet HS this fall. We are excited and both somewhat nervous about this. He does have some friends who will be attending along with him. He is very bright, but I worry about the workload, so we’ll see…One of the things I really like about this school is that they seem to be far more inclusive than our local HS and really encourage everyone to become involved in EC’s.</p>
<p>d2 starts high school in August. Classes start the 19th, but they’re preceeded by 2 weeks of music camps. She’s playing softball on the high school team this summer, too, so in some ways it feels like high school started already. (No, she’s not a softball prodigy or anything. Any rising freshman can try out for the JV team.) </p>
<p>I have a d1 who is a rising senior, and I work in higher ed, almost exclusively with freshmen, so I’m pretty comfortable with what’s ahead. But, d2 has much bigger dreams when it comes to college and I suspect her experience will be quite different from d1’s. Of course, just about anything with d2 is quite different. The kid defies categorization. She plays softball with, what d1 calls, the “manly girls” and bench presses at about 70% but she’s also a cheerleader,a mathlete, and voted “most stylish” by her peers (amazing what that kid can pull off a clearance rack or thrift store tumble table and put together). All I know is that the ride with her will be a seat of the pants kind of thing!</p>
<p>Just a note to Apollo6 - as someone who works with college frosh, I have to say that I’ve never seen a student who was at a disadvantage for being older. Just the opposite, in fact.</p>
<p>DD enters HS this fall as well. She has a rather rigorous program planned, so she’ll have to be on it from the get go. In additon to her required summer reading, she’s trying to get a bit ahead by taking care of easy to get out of the way things, like making up study cards for each vocab unit, as she knows these help her when she’s studying. She’s also playing tennis this summer, as she did through MS, and has hopes of making the HS team on some level next spring. Tennis camp coming in a few weeks at a womens’ college (she’s attended this before) has given her a taste of what college life might be like, and she has some rather selective schools on her radar at this point. We’ll see how that pans out. We do think we’ll combine vacation trips with college visits over the next few years… </p>
<p>One of the books she is reading this summer is “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens”…couldn’t hurt, right? 
</p>
<p>So many experiences ahead…and these years will FLY by!</p>
<p>My 2014 son is spending a month learning Spanish at Concordia language Villages, conditioning for cross country and taking health and p.e. online. He can count his xc practices etc for p.e. that way and not waste time on it in the fall. When he’s home he is babysitting his younger sibs so that I can teach summer school and learn the $$ for CLV so he has a pretty busy summer. In our state he is “average age” for his grade. He’s been a mature kid from a young age, just smaller than most until recently. He will be very happy to be average size this year instead of noticeably smaller the way he used to be. I just find it odd that every state has their own school cut-off age so college freshman can typically vary from age 17-19.</p>
<p>First things first–I need help with the CC lingo. I have two children, a son who will be starting college in the fall and a daughter who is about to start high school. Are they DS and DD? S1 and D1? Just S and D?</p>
<p>Anyway, my daughter turned 14 in April and will be a freshman in a large public high school. She is bright and ambitious, but this doesn’t seem to translate into wanting to focus on anything this summer except hanging out with her friends and being where the boys are. I’m having a hard time finding the right balance between letting her be a happy, well-adjusted kid and directing her toward doing some of the things that we all know will be helpful when it comes time to think about college. She has begrudgingly agreed to a few extra cello lessons to prepare an audition tape for a city-wide youth orchestra. </p>
<p>My son is a free spirit who refused to do anything just because it would look good on a college application. Instead, he pursued his passions, which collectively painted a well-rounded picture of who he is. He will be attending Reed College, which was his first choice school, so all seems to have worked out well. I’m concerned that a passion for hairstyles, make-up and boys will not produce similar results for my daughter. Anyone else faced this situation?</p>
<p>Welcome to cc ,Zandari! Since you have only the one of each, generally you would refer to your daughter as D or DD and your son as S or DS. The numbering is used by people with more than one daughter or son. For example if you had 2 daughters, the older one would be D1 and the younger would be D2. Some people with more than one prefer to distinguish their children by age, such as referring them to S18 and S14. </p>
<p>I think there is an abbreviation thread here on the main parent discussion page. I found it very helpful.</p>
<p>zandari, I’ve also got a rising freshman daughter who is all about hairstyles, makeup, and her friends. She is a very different kid than her older (rising senior) sister, and I expect them to take very different paths towards (and then through) college. And life, for that matter. 
Last year was academically disasterous for D2, and not just in the CC sense. We’re working to run D2 through a battery of tests so that we can figure out what schools would be a better fit for her then her current public magnet.</p>
<p>That said, she adores theater and dance, and does a gonzo job with improv. She’s also a natural with younger children. She is watching her older sister go through the college application process, and says that she’d like to go somewhere warm with a lot of school spirit. We’ll see what kind of young woman emerges over the next few years.</p>
<p>D3 will be a freshman too but she’s on the younger side, won’t be 14 until November as we live in a state where the cut off is December. I also have a rising senior along with a college sophmore. My D3 is also attending Concordia (Spanish) this summer–she’ll take level 3 this fall and I’m sure the immersion program will help. She attends a rigorous private college prep 6-12 so high school won’t be much of a change in terms of the actual school or the kids she’ll be with although the academic rigor does take a bump up. </p>
<p>Thanks for starting this thread–I’m looking forward to participating and getting to know everyone. Having said that, I have a senior this year with all that involves, finalizing the list, recommendations, SATs, applications, etc. etc. so college for my 2014 D seems very, very far off!</p>
<p>Is your daughter at Marine on St. Croix this session? That’s where my son is. He’ll be 15 in October. That shows how crazy the age cut-offs are. His sister skipped 1st grade so turned 14 in the September of her 9th grade year. Since her peers were a year or more older she felt like she was at a disadvantage. Her age difference is no more beginning this year because we gave her a gap year as a Rotary exchange student between her sophomore and junior years. I’ve come 360 on the age question.</p>
<p>Welcome 29happymom26, footballmom104, FallGirl, ordinarylives, PlanAhead, zandari, SlitheyTove, collage1!</p>
<p>Having had one child through this process and two in the pipeline, believe me, these four years will be over very quickly, especially, if your child’s schedule is packed with activities. There’s just never enough time!</p>
<p>Freshman year IS the time to explore and discover interests. We need to be vigilant in detecting signs of passion and fuel that passion if there is one. Hopefully, they will latch onto something for the next three years. More importantly, it is also the time to discover and form their identities and peer group associations. Give them some space, but do emphasize your family value to them and be there for them – as in really listen to them – as they face the most intense peer pressure in their young lives.</p>
<p>We just registered S3 for an all-day basic wood carving class this Saturday. Because of his age, either PCM or I need to be there with him. Like I said – time to explore and discover.</p>
<p>FallGirl, thanks so much for the guidance on abbreviations. The thread you mentioned is very helpful. Now I know what people were talking about in the posts I’ve been glancing at for the last year!</p>
<p>SlitheyTove and PaperChaserPop, thanks for your words of sanity on finding a healthy balance between letting our kids be themselves (and not somebody’s idea of who they should be for the sake of impressing college admissions committees) and giving them the opportunity to find what they love and work hard at it. You are so right about how these years fly by. I cannot believe DS (notice the professional and correct abbreviation) will be heading off to college in fewer weeks than I can bear to count.</p>
<p>There’s a big age spread for our almost high school seniors, D2 won’t turn 14 for another 3 months or so. Our school district has a late cutoff date for kindergarten, so she wasn’t the youngest. </p>
<p>Just dropped a bursting-out-of-her-skin-with-anticipation D2 off at camp. I used to think camp was expensive. Then I started reading CC, and calculated our EFC. :eek:</p>
<p>Apollo6, my D will be at the same site as your S but doesn’t attend until August–wouldn’t that have been funny if they’d been there at the same time and met?! Please do let me know how he enjoys it.</p>
<p>Son #2 is a freshman this fall. Like many of you, he is young for his age (turns 14 in January). But he is very familiar with HS, as our high school includes eighth graders (and his mom also teaches there). He runs cross country and plays soccer and the alto sax. He spent part of this summer traveling throughout the mid-Atlantic and going to minor-league baseball games with Dad, who works in the field. Now, he needs to get cracking on his summer assignments from English (not his favorite subject) and world history.</p>
<p>He’s already gone through the college visits, SATs, applications, proms, graduations, etc. because of his older brother, who is a rising college sophomore. And he has his list of colleges that he wants to apply to.</p>