<p>I just thought I would share a story and invite comments. I'm not sure what the moral is.</p>
<p>My daughter participated in Duke TIP last year in seventh grade and made a 27. In April of this year she took the ACT again and made a 30. She decided to take the ACT in my hometown, about 30 miles away, at the little private school where I graduated and where she attended K-3 through kindergarten, just because it was a little less threatening to her. So I guess this put her slightly on the radar for these kids.</p>
<p>Anyway, my wife was visited with a good friend who told her that all of the kids in the school had heard about my daughter making a 30. I'm sure I told a good friend of mine who has daughters attend my hometown school. My wife's friend said her son participated in Duke TIP and made a 17, and when he heard my daughter had made a 30 (as an eighth-grader) he was so upset he cried because his score was so low.</p>
<p>Now 17 isn't the greatest 7th grade score in the world, but it's not awful, either. It's roughly the 35th percentile of Duke TIPsters. But that group is made up of kids in roughly the top 7.5 percent. So a 17 on the ACT in the seventh grade puts one at about the 95th percentile nationally, which is not a bad place to be.</p>
<p>I have to say, when my kids got their Duke TIP scores I was Mr. Cockle-Doodle-Doo. When they made a 30 in eighth grade, I just kind of kept quiet. I would guess that in the majority of high schools in my state the highest scoring senior won't have a 30 on the ACT, so I can see how having eighth graders posting these scores might bother people. But apparently news travels on its on, even without the parent making rooster calls.</p>
<p>So my question is, do you share your child's academic success? I told one good friend and business partner, who told his daughters, who told the world. I might as well have taken out a full-page ad in the local newspaper. So it's not like I was doing my best to publicize it. I do confess I was proud of the ol' girl, though. Obviously there are those who are glad for my daughter's success. I just wasn't aware of how upsetting it could be to some kids.</p>
<p>I don’t think you did anything wrong, if that’s what you are asking. I tend to be pretty open about my kids with friends, but I do balance the positive with the negative. I don’t always “brag,” I tell the bad stuff too. </p>
<p>I share my daughter’s academic success with immediate family, but that’s about it. I am not comfortable discussing the details with close friends. </p>
<p>You didn’t do anything wrong. Just move on and file away the memory and know that it may be better to not share. However… know that if she make National Merit Semifinalist (top 1/2% in state) in junior year, it may get posted in the newspaper. </p>
<p>Here is some extra unsolicited advise. (Hope that’s OK). Make sure she is picking up good organizational skills. I had a really bright, scattered daughter. But it was not until hs that we realized she had survived on sheer brainpower without learning good study skills. </p>
<p>Tell close family and interested, truly interested friends and her closest, best teachers. I know you are proud, but being modest about it is important. As noted above, when she starts winning awards word will get out. </p>
<p>She can’t and shouldn’t hide how smart she is, but she can learn how to be humble about it. Kids who go to Harvard and don’t want to be immediately branded as 'that Harvard guy" say they go to school in Boston. The star athletes who act like regular people are better liked than the ones who act like kings. </p>
<p>How does she feel about it? My son congratulated his sister on her standardized test score and posted her actual score for everyone to see on his Facebook page. She was mortified! Her words: “It’s when thing to put it up on the refrigerator. It’s something else to put it up on FB!”</p>
<p>When my D2 took the SAT in 8th grade as part of the NUMATS talent program, D1 was a senior in high school at the time. D2 ran into one of her sister’s friends at the test site; D1’s friend was taking yet another attempt at the SAT to raise what I think was a pretty low score. The older kid was horrified to see D2 there, and moaned that D2 would probably outscore her. The friend kept pestering D1 to find out D2’s score later. D1 didn’t spill the beans, it would have just made the friend feel worse, as D2 had a top 3 score for all 8th graders in NUMATS that year and probably outscored D1’s friend by hundreds of points.</p>
<p>Generally we did NOT talk about D2’s high test scores. She also attended the Davidson THINK program in Reno in the summers – we just said she was at a program where she could take a college class in Reno and left it at that. Low profile was our approach.</p>
<p>Another important reason for keeping your pride under wraps is the pressure you might unknowingly be putting on your daughter. When kids like yours outshine everyone early on, they can begin to feel like it’s expected, and that anything less is failure. Perfectionism and fear of failure can mess up a lot of young women, so I’d be careful about the crowing, for her own good, regardless of what your friends think. She needs to know her dad thinks she’s fabulous even if she weren’t an academic star.</p>
<p>I have shared my daughter’s odyssey through the medical school application year. Now they all ask me and want updates. (I haven’t yet told them she will be valedictorian of her college. Unless someone asks it sounds like bragging ; </p>
<p>Only my son, his GC, & I knew his scores. Had my parents been alive, He would have shared with them. We discussed how sensitive and competitive people can be.</p>
<p>Congrats to your DD, and TatinG- very nice!!! :-h </p>
<p>Parents and kids generally know who the top students are because of award ceremonies, the classes they take, etc. The word always gets out even without saying anything. Many kids at school know my daughter’s GPA even though neither one of us ever told anybody. Somebody pulled her transcript out of her hand one day and saw it ( nice). </p>
<p>I think your daughter still has 4 years of HS left. If she is anything like my kid ( rising senior- yikes) there are going to be plenty of meltdowns due to stress. Many of these kids are highly intense perfectionists. My advice is to keep it humble and to let her know how proud you are of her regardless of test scores. There may be a day when you decide it’s best to put her in one less AP class; not because she is not smart enough to do the work, but because the time commitment and need to keep straight A+'s becomes unhealthy. </p>
<p>My daughter has been to so many award ceremonies that I stopped mentioning it to her sister because I did not want her to feel bad ( she did not appear to feel bad). If she learned about it I simply said " oh yeah I forgot to mention it to you ( she is away at college). Although sister is not jealous at all, one day she commented about all of the awards . I simply reminded her that she ( sister) is quite an amazing athlete and that everybody has their own particular strengths and weaknesses. My older daughter was getting ready to announce her sister’s test scores to her group of friends and I stopped her in her tracks and told her to stop. </p>
<p>I don’t consider a high score on the ACT or SAT academic success. It is just a high score, which measures whatever the test designers are able to measure in the 3 or 4 hours that the test takes, which might be something like academic potential or academic ability. I left it up to my kids to decide if they wanted to share their test scores.</p>
<p>I did not have my children take SAT or ACT in middle school. I saw no good reasons to do so and many down sides: unnecessary pressure to the one who was good at tests, and insecurity in the one who wasn’t etc. I would never want anything as silly as a test to come between my children, even a little bit.</p>
<p>That said, my nephew recently took the ACT as a 7th grader and did very well. It was validation for him and his mother since he was not picked for the enrichment program in his elementary school. </p>
<p>I definitely don’t think you did anything wrong by sharing with a few close people. Other kids do need to realize that no matter how smart they are (or think they are), it’s a big competitive world out there, and you aren’t going to always be #1 in it. It’s good for parents to get some acceptance and reality around that fact as well.</p>
<p>I try to say things like “My S did very well.” I don’t think there is anything to benefit from revealing scores. Like thos kids in jr high who would say after every test, “I got a 98 - what did YOU get?” Annoying.</p>
<p>I also think it can be detrimental to kids for the parents to be too concerned about their test scores and grades. That’s a lot of pressure. Think about it, if you only brag on your kid when they score a great test grade - what does that say to the kid about their value? I would prefer to brag that my kid is a unique and one-of-a-kind individual, who is valued more for being kind and compassionate than for being a brainiac. </p>
<p>That being said, can I brag that my kid got a perfect score on the SAT?, and ended up going to a music conservatory where they don’t even look at test scores. He says he wishes that he could have sold it to someone who cares. haha (Also, no test prep, one sitting)</p>
<p>I think it’s wise to only share standardized test scores with family members (grandparents etc.) This is not only to avoid potentially awkward situations such as the OP describes, but more importantly, to avoid (perhaps inadvertently) the message to the child that scores on standardized tests are a source of pride in themselves. I think parents have every right to take pride in a child’s accomplishments. Scoring well on a standardized test in and of itself doesn’t tell you much except that a kid is bright, which is not an accomplishment but a trait. Sooner or later someone is going to outscore the high scoring child, somewhere, sometime. We don’t want our children’s sense of self hanging on standardized test scores. It’s better to emphasize what the child does with that raw material than the material itself.</p>
<p>The level of test-score shame, ironically, is higher among high-scoring kids than low-scoring ones. </p>
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