<p>My 3 kids are all academically successful. My oldest just got accepted ED to Duke. Everyone wants to know our secret. We have a great value that education for educations sake is one of the great blessings of life. We honestly aren’t looking for achievement for achievement’s sake. We want our kids to be life learners and this has stuck in them. We always put them in great schools…Montessori for preschool cannot be over estimated. My kids learned to learn for the sheer fun and wonder of it. Then they went to an IB elementary school for G/T school until 8th grade. IB PYP taught them their own relevance in the learning process. They learned to respect their own questions and learned how to find answers. They all three seem to “OWN” their own eductions and seek it out because they want to know. We respect our kids and their decisions. We trust them and accept them even when they make mistakes. I think the OP of this thread seems to achievement oriented. There is no formula. It’s got to be in your heart. And regarding genes, I cannot deny that my kids were blessed with high IQs. School isn’t hard for them. They are very lucky and we have taught them they have a responsibility to use their brains to better the world. We don’t care if they get A’s, but we expect them to do their best and present themselves well.</p>
<p>“Most would point to their high emphasis on education and discipline.”
Sounds about right to me. But wouldn’t this alone explain Asian achievement when it comes to getting into colleges? Corporal punishment is not a necessary part of the equation.</p>
<p>“This tends to force the asians to straighten up their act.”
Might be true, but as I mentioned in my first post, discipline by spanking or beating (read: abusing) can seriously damage the relationship between parent and child. Not to mention, there are non-violent methods of teaching your kid to value his/her education. The parents on this forum tend to have academically successful kids, and many are well-adjusted, too.</p>
<p>But you seem hellbent on beating your kids when you have them, and I doubt a couple of strangers’ comments will change your mind.</p>
<p>I think that my sisters and I have all turned out quite well (sisters both go to great colleges, I was just accepted to several) and I think the most important reason for the way we turned out is because my parents are full of love. They have encouraged the importance of reading and education, but are never hard on us for receiving a less-than-stellar grade. My entire life, my parents constantly let me know that they loved me no matter what, especially when they got divorced around 8 years ago. Sure, my sisters and I make mistakes and my parents know when to discipline, but they are forgiving and understand that everybody is just human. I am blessed to have them. They have always been proud of us and are supportive of whatever we want to do in college and in the workforce. </p>
<p>Another thing is that my parents gave us strong direction. My mother’s Hungarian parents were not much of a help during the college process because they were unfamiliar with the American system. My mother knew that it was important to get me started early (not too early, though) with the college process and to be a guiding hand to help me. Rather than do things for me or pester me to get things done, she helped give me friendly reminders, organization, and was there to talk about all the stresses I had.</p>
<p>I have to say that as my daughter became more & more set on attending a non-conventional school I became more and more anxious. My husband was against it from the beginning. He wanted her to attend a 4 year school period. Major in acting but get a degree! We researched many schools but in the end decided on AADA in Los Angles (You can read our story on Yelp.com by looking up the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She did earn an AA degree at quite a $$$ high price but I think her experience has been invaluable. I say allow your child to reach for the stars. After all it is their dream, their life. Our dream should be that our children love what they do and are successful doing it.
My daughter has made it easy to believe in her. I believe that she will be a working actor. I belive that she can do whatever she sets out to do. She is just about to finish The Company in a few months. (AADA’s 3rd year. A very prestigious part of AADA that you have to audition for.)
What did I do right? Was it luck? Maybe… but I truly think that she was born with great character. And that God blessed us with a great and very talented & bright kid. She may not have earned herself an engineering degree but you do have to have book smarts to get through that school. It’s not all about just acting. It’s part history, research and a lot of writing.
I have to say that I think as a parent I have earned my own degree since I first posted here. I have graduated (kind of) from Empty Nest 101 and may have done some things differently but for the most part. I give my credit to The Lord!</p>
<p>Melin720~ Sometimes you have to make your life the way you want it to be. When you are out on your own… you can break the cycle. My niece had a sad childhood but she has a wonderful life now and a great family. Her kids are loved and cherished! Just know that when you have your own family how you DON’T want to be!
And as a parent… I will cyber adopt you and tell you Good Job! 4.7 is awesome!! Be very proud! Congratulations! I mean how much better can you be? Don’t let your parents rob you of your joy! And we all know that anyone who obtaines 4.7 is not lazy!!</p>
<p>whoops I meant obtains</p>
<p>Haven’t read any of the posts on here, but I got into my top schools, and my parents really just let me do my own thing. I think something like the drive to succeed has to come internally, not externally. </p>
<p>My advice to parents: Tell your kids to find what their passions are, and to pursue them, and help them pursue them. My Mom drove me all over the state for performances, competitions, games, MUN and JSA conferences, contests, you name it. However, she didn’t tell me to get involved in any of them-- that was my decision.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While I don’t think that parents should “tell” their high school aged kids what to be involved in, I do think it is appropriate to nudge them a little. Children and teenagers frequently don’t know what the full range of possible activities are, and I think parents have a responsibility to help them discover what their passions might be, by exposing them to a variety of activities. </p>
<p>When my son was in 5th grade, he had a habit of reciting back, line by line, entire scenes from favorite movies that he had memorized, complete with accents and body language. I suggested that he take a drama class, and investigated to find where they were offered locally. His initial reaction was negative - none of his friends took drama classes, especially not the boys! I pointed out his reciting habit, and encouraged him to give it a try. Well, he did take the class and loved it. He ended up participating in plays throughout middle school and high school. </p>
<p>Mock trial competitions are going on now, and I think his drama experience has had a very positive impact on his performance in mock trial. I’ve been so impressed this week at how he speaks so confidently in front of a courtroom full of people. One of the judges specifically complimented him on his poise.</p>
<p>When I attended the parent’s orientation at our daughter’s college it’s president asked us all what we did to get our kids to be there.I think most importantly it is your kid and that combination of really loving something and pursuing it with joy that is key.As parents we have always paid attention to our kids’ affinities and tried to offer them opportunities to develop them.In the case of our daughter she loved the arts but it isn’t as if there were as many “competitions” for her in the arts as there is for science and math.I, just by sheer luck, came across a national arts competition in our local weekly because a kid had entered. The school hadn’t even mentioned such a thing existed. It turned out her instrumental teacher was a recorded jazz trombonist and he was willing for a low fee to arrange and help our daughter put together an audition tape.Now I realize some would ask how much does all this parental support cost? In our case we are self employed and had to be very careful about our budget. Long story short she entered the contest and did well. She thinks that, coupled with the fact that she wrote about things authentically important to her in her essay made the difference. We did not see her applications and she actually visited the university she now attends with a family friend.</p>
<p>I think cornfed (btw LOVE the username!) and roneald are both right on! I think it has to be the child’s passion coupled with the parents helping that child find the right opportunities to pursue and develop that passion. And roneald, as a mom I appreciate your thoughts on your Mom driving you all over the state. </p>
<p>My saying was that all I was there for was “to drive and pay”, that was my role (and to encourage of course). I actually miss driving DD and her friends around because if you just stay quiet and listen, you learn allllll about what’s going on with everybody!</p>
<p>I think there are a number of issues, all jumbled around the issue of ‘what did we do right’? One of the things that I find a bit troubling is the notion that if a child didn’t go to a top 10 school, that somehow something wrong was done. There is a notion out there, common among many, that if you don’t go to an ivy your expections are totally shot to heck, and that isn’t true. Going to an ivy or the like can be a leg up, but it is not the be all, it isn’t like in some countries where literally where you go to school determines your career path (Japan is one country I can think of, where getting into the best public university pretty much guaranteed a high level job coming out, least as of the mid 90’s when I was in grad school). Yep, if you want to go into investment banking at the snooty places, you better come out with a degree from one of those schools, or if you want to go into a whiteshoe law firm better come out of a top 10 school, but those are limited. Yes, getting a degree from an ivy can help open doors on first interviews out of school, but after that, it doesn’t mean much, I can tell you that as a hiring manager with a lot of years experience, work experience means more…</p>
<p>I think too we have to be careful about success as well, what is it? To many parents it is their kid going to an ivy, getting on executive track, and buying the big house and expensive car, but is that the only definition of success, how much money someone makes>? I have seen a lot of talented kids, who were fantastic artists and musicians, who because of parental pressure went the big bucks route…and were miserable. There is also a price to be paid for that kind of pressure and success, something that is always danced around, and that is the suicide rate at top schools, the kids who burn out and kill themselves or get hooked on drugs. Many who get on that high power track find themselves questioning it, I was reading an article in the NY times the other day about an evangelical church in NYC, that is thriving, and a lot of its congregants were people who found its message that ‘success isn’t everything’ attractive, that after all the pressure from parents and such to ‘succeed’, they were finding something different…</p>
<p>I would agree with other posters,that the biggest success factor is helping the child find their own passions, that whatever that is (that could very well be a mainstream track for success, like being a lawyer or whatever), that they find things driven from within, then without. When a kid can internalize their passions/interests, it becomes a lot more powerful then when parents browbeat them.My son is a serious music student, but that turning point for a lot of reasons had to happen pretty early (compared to where kids heading on other tracks find that ‘seriousness’,), and he had to internalize it, he realized he loved music, and after that,he drove it, we didn’t have to tell him to practice or whatever, it clicked. I have also seen a lot of kids in music, who have been basically forced by parents to pick up an instrument, practice hours on end starting pretty early, and while many of them become pretty talented on the instrument, they also make lousy musicians, because it is clear they are doing it for someone else, not themselves.</p>
<p>With other pursuits, including school, they have to internalize that, that you can browbeat kids into getting good grades, get into a good school, but if they don’t really want to be on that track, they very well might crash and burn…in terms of education and grades, I think it is about showing the child how that fits into their dreams, rather then ours, that if they find their passion, they are making a basis for doing so…</p>
<p>Now we come back to the original question, what makes a kid succeed? Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers” talks about this, and what you find I think helps a great deal. Obviously, encouraging our kids to explore, to find what they have a passion for, is way, way critical I believe, it is about trying things, not being afraid to fail, that I think kids really start flying.Gladwell points out that when people succeed, there are people around them who help that happen, family being a prime one, that few really ‘make it on their own’. He also found that with equally bright kids, that a big difference was parental encouragement and support, that parents who were passive, who assumed that for example if kids wanted to do something they would ask to do it, or that that ‘would be taken care of by the schools’, would not have the outcomes of parents who were interested, who actively suggested the child try things and actively tried to help them explore things, to find what they had a passion for. If Bill Gates mom hadn’t headed the computer club at the school he went to, and got them time on a timesharing computer (a rare thing back then), it is unlikely he would have founded microsoft, as an example. (In general, at lot of that often has to do with socioeconomic backgrounds, that in middle to upper middle class households this active nature was involved, while in working class and below backgrounds the parents were a lot more passive; these are generalities, not hard and fast rules). I would say that encouragement is crucial, I think that those who say ‘what the kid is will come out in the wash’ are doing their child a disservice. </p>
<p>When kids have the ability to explore, when they have the ability to find what drives them, they also tend to internalize all the steps needed.Yes, cultural factors play a big role, in effect the culture in Asian households where studying and hard work are central to what a kid is expected to do, for example, makes a big difference (my only disagreement is does the academic success that comes from this necessarily lead to success overall? Depends on the definition of success…), but in any event the kids end up internalizing that the road to success is through their education, as part of things in some major role. </p>
<p>I think the biggest thing (and this is my opinion)…do as much as we can to help them find their passion, not what we would wish it was. If a kid is talented in math and science, but loves to write, don’t necessarily assume they should be an engineer or scientist or doctor;if a kid is gifted athletically,don’t play out dreams of glory if that isn’t his/her path and so forth. I think a kid who finds their passion and internalizes things is going to end up truly successful, they will know how to work towards those dreams, and fly with a little help from their friends (okay, parents, relatives, etc)…and I think that is true success, and there is nothing wrong with having a passion and making money at it, lots of people have:)</p>
<p>^ That was a great post, musicprnt. I realize I’m bumping a two-month old thread, but it’s quite worthy of being bumped, especially since decisions are starting to come in and your post will give people some perspective on what success means and what getting into a top tier school means.</p>