Seems to me that if life in New Canaan or Greenwich is too much of a pressure cooker a sensible parent would move to Norwalk (a ten minute drive from New Canaan for those of you outside the NY metro area). Trust me- no kid is staying up until midnight trying to balance 5 AP’s at Norwalk HS.
I don’t buy the argument that the pressure is so intense and systemic and pervasive and everywhere. Even in the most gilded communities, you are not more than 15 minutes away from a less affluent and less competitive neighborhood. So move there.
The kids in Scarsdale and Chappaqua may indeed be overloaded with tutors and cramming and EC’s. But Mt Vernon is ten minutes away. Portchester is 15 minutes away. Yonkers anyone? Don’t subject your kid to the hyper competitive climate if you object to it. Within a reasonable commute of where you live there are communities where the parents don’t show up for college night ('cause the kid is going to State U) and nobody is vying to get on the debating team- any kid who wanders over after school gets a spot.
I sense that we all want our cake and to eat it too- and to have someone else clean up afterwards. But part of being a grown up is making choices for your kids (and then sitting back and letting them take over). I sense that the irritation I’m reading is that someone has stretched to pay to move to Winnetka or Highland Park (just to take the Northeast out of the equation) and now their kid hasn’t made the HS orchestra because there are so many fabulous musicians who live in Winnetka and Highland Park who are going to get in Stanford over your kid.
There are plenty of HS’s in the Chicago metro region.