GFG, I always read The Tiger Mother as a tongue in cheek performance by an Eastern intellectual, a joke on all the criticism of Chinese mothers. That is, Amy Chua was laughing at us/the uproar.
I know that there are extremes out there, but the pressure has many sources. Teens are as/more motivated by their peers as their parents. Sometimes the source of competition is the kids. Some of the high schools full of high performing kids would have a hard time creating a relaxed culture. Sometimes kids drive themselves. My older daughter did. I don’t think she would be happy unless she was working toward some form of betterment. I put her in private school 'cause I figured she would be trying to be the best drug dealer if she was in our local school. Now she’s at a HYPS and still driven [in ways I have rarely been
One source of stress stems from kids and parents realizing a little too late what it takes to succeed in their high school and earn a spot at good college. We know several families for whom the light bulb turned on in the fall of their child’s junior year, and so they orchestrated a frantic frenzy of activity with the goal of compensating for what the student had not accomplished previously but which they felt was necessary for college apps. The one such student whom we know pretty well just looks exhausted and defeated, and is not doing was well as she was before in her primary EC.
Another is stricter standards within the high school. I’ve watched our school keep upping the ante on honor roll cut-offs, NHS requirements, subject-area honor societies, club participation rules, pay-to-play rules, community service requirements, and quantity of classroom testing and standardized testing. So even parents who are generally aware can fail to remind/guide/push their children accordingly, if certain honors or recognitions are desired. Then the parent is frustrated and can take it out on the student for not staying on top of things. Truly, it is the student’s responsibility, but I can attest to the quantities of e-mails we receive with bureaucratic reminders about this or that housekeeping detail the student must see to, and things can easily fall through the cracks.
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I don’t care if the source of the pressure is the student’s peers. That doesn’t excuse the lack of corrective adult leadership in schools and homes.
I suspect the corrective adult leadership is just relieved that all that teen energy is going to study and ECs and not to dealing drugs and hooking up. I know I tended that way.
My own D’s were spending 100% of their time studying and doing their extracurriculars, without time for drugs and hooking up. That doesn’t mean that if they were doing the former at risk to their sanity, emotional health, and perspective on life, I would have spoken up, big time. And one of them once enrolled in an extra AP which was briefly turning her into a machine. Therefore, I told her to drop the class. I’m the mother. I was allowed to do things like that and so are all those other parents out there who are as capable of noticing things like that as I am, and who are as responsible for noticing things like that.
brava, Epiphany. In the same vein, I wonder about the parents who complain about a hyper-critical athletic coach who is sapping their kid’s self esteem. Have a private meeting with the coach to discuss it. If the behavior continues, go up a level to the director of your school’s PE department (or comparable). If nothing changes- tell your kid it’s time to fall in love with tennis or fencing since the soccer coach doesn’t seem to be a good personality match.
But don’t tell everyone you know that your child is in therapy because of a lousy coach. Drop the sport and move on. You’re a parent, not the director of some reality show on TV looking for a dramatic finale.
epiphany, I am sorry your daughter couldn’t manage the extra AP class. I’m sure that, if my daughter was “a machine.” I would intervene, too. Fortunately we never had that experience, just a lot of drive and intellectual energy.
I’m confused. Why would you be “sorry” that my D “couldn’t handle,” as you put it, a sixth AP course during the same semester she was taking 5 of them, had already finished another 5 the prior year, was applying to colleges, continuing her international level extracurriculars, and winning awards – all of which resulted in 3/3 of the Ivy League U’s she applied to?
It seems as if you think she did not have at least the same level of internal drive your own child/children did. That would be doubtful. It’s just that overload on the human brain and body is a reality for even the most capable student,-- regardless of the level of drive – and exceeding that is not something which is required to prove that one is capable of high level work. Perhaps I miscommunicated?
Whatever level of intellectual thirst any student has – my own, yours, anyone else’s here, no one is so super-human as to deny physical limits.
I think the difficulty with this concept is trying to guide your kids so they won’t have regrets for mistakes they could have easily corrected. One daughter has a 3.8 GPA UW in her junior year. A tad more studying and effort (turning in all her homework) her freshman year and those two high B’s could have been As. Now as a junior, she realizes she can’t be one of the 30 valdictorians at her high school.
I hope learning the lesson in high school will be better than learning it in college.
@dadoftwingirls I think it’s got to be up to your D to gain motivation from her past experiences, just as we have all done throughout our lives. If being a valedictorian is something she wanted, it’s a good teaching moment. Our S was the same way - did “A” work (mostly) on tests and projects, but got dinged constantly for not turning in homework. We harped and harped to no avail, but he just needs to figure it out himself. He ended up with a 3.75UW, and got merit scholarships from every school from which he was accepted (all private).
Am I disappointed that he didn’t do the best he could do? Absolutely. Did we try to impress upon him what he was doing to himself all along? Yup. But at the end of the day, he needs to take responsibility for his own path, and if that path doesn’t include an elite college because of what he did, then so be it. In our case, the programs in which he was interested were not at elite schools. In any case, your D will have many opportunities for scholarships and a wide range of schools (assuming her tests somewhat mimic her GPA) from which to choose. I just feel like we cannot orchestrate every moment of our kids’ lives, they need to have a part in it, and if they don’t, I’m not sure how they become responsible, self-sufficient adults.
CC parents are tend to be on the savvy and involved end of the parenting continuum, and their children are also often on the high end of the achievement spectrum too. With all due respect, epiphany, there was no risk to your D to drop that AP class. As some said up-thread, sometimes the students feeling the most pressure are those who aren’t quite at the top of their class but are trying to keep up with the kids like Epiphany’s D due to internal or external pressure. The student with 4 or 5 AP’s may not have felt dropping was acceptable since he is already “behind” the top kids. Not saying that should make a difference, but he and his parents may feel it does.
Secondly, I think parents tend to trust the school more than they should. Was just talking to a father whose son I hadn’t seen this season on the school team. Apparently, the young man was failing a class and so was pulled from his sport. In the fall, the father had told the teacher and counselor that he thought his son should drop down a level, but was assured by the teacher that S would be fine and the counselor also advised against dropping. He wasn’t fine. At fall conferences, D’s teacher told me D should take AP Chem next year since she was doing so well in Honors Chem 1. I ignored that recommendation because I know my D would not be able to handle that class as it’s taught at our high school. I know that based on the experience of my older kids combined with an understanding of my D’s abilities. However, I can see how another parent with less confidence in her own assessments and less experience may have listened to that advice, and then their kid could have ended up in a big, stressful mess this time of year.
Thirdly, school regulations often make lightening a student’s load impossible… By the time a student reaches the overload point, often it is past the school deadline to make a schedule change. Experience with our first child gave us some understanding of the workload of various courses and teachers, but aspects of the curriculum change over the years, staffing varies, and kids’ strengths and weaknesses differ. Thus our parental knowledge has not always been perfectly applicable to subsequent children. This year we did suggest D drop a class that experience had told us she could manage, but a different, less helpful teacher took over and it was a bad fit for her. Fortunately, we figured out in time that D was in over her head, but it very well could have happened that we would not have realized there was a problem until fall conferences. By the time fall conferences roll around, the student may no longer drop the class. I have heard parents complain of thinking their student was OK until the teacher told them otherwise at conferences. (Yes, that should not happen, but teachers often take forever to grade work and update the grade portal, so even the student is not aware his is doing poorly.) Also, often the first intense academic crunch time falls right before Thanksgiving, which is too late to figure out you can’t hack it since drop deadline has passed.
@Cameron121, why did you think that merit scholarships or her choice of schools were an issue that concerned us? I never mentioned any of those subjects.
I was a) sympathizing with you b/c my S had a similar situation, and b) offering positive feedback to counteract your D’s disappointment about not having a shot at valedictorian - I was not presuming you were concerned about anything, just pointing out something positive about your situation based upon my S’s experience, as posters often do on this forum.
It’s just that overload on the human brain and body is a reality for even the most capable student,-- regardless of the level of drive – and exceeding that is not something which is required to prove that one is capable of high level work. Perhaps I miscommunicated?