<p>I have also seen this attitude quite a bit in So. Cali., both in kids’ sports and in school. I’m an involved parent but not a “helicopter” parent. I let my kids fail and encourage them to work out their own problems and speak with the teacher/authority themselves when needed. Many parents around think their average kids are “entitled” to the best opportunities and must have the best schools and teachers or they are doomed. Ah the obsessing. It’s not the worst thing in the world if they don’t get the scholarship to the top college, there are so many great colleges around and they may change their major, transfer, or drop out and go to a trade school anyway. It’s the student’s path and a choice only they can ultimately make.</p>
<p>This is true. We’ve seen kids spread out to the neighboring states for college due to this important reason or that, but ultimately many of them transfer back to the local state school after a year or two for convenience.</p>
<p>“What is wrong with being happy for them and wishing them well? I’ve run into the parents and grandparents of the baseball kid, who is a pitcher, and I ask them about him. Why wouldn’t I? I like these kids and their families and are happy for their success.”</p>
<p>No one on this thread has EVER said that it’s wrong to ask / find out about a kid you like, and wish him or her well. That is not what we are talking about, at all. We are talking about taking it upon yourself to know, internalize and memorize lots of details about other kids. </p>
<p>Ok I will confess, I do a lot of internet verification. I check Zillow, Realtor.com, and our county property tax records. Most recently, I met a mom on a college tour. She told me her D’s private prep school does not weight grades and “all the colleges know just how challenging the school is.” I was curious about where the school’s students matriculated for college. The school profile showed that they DO weight both honors and AP courses. I’ve already forgotten the daughter’s GPA but I probably won’t forget the weighting factoid. Does she really not know her kid’s school weight or was I supposed to be impressed with the prep school?</p>
<p>So you met a person at a college tour and in a casual conversation you found out another random attendee’s GPA and school and then you took the time and made an effort to fact-check the information? I’m nosy by nature (and profession) but, honestly, that does strike me a just a little stalker-y. (And I’m probably one of those blabbing moms people were talking about earlier…maybe it’s the fact-checking for fun that seems foreign to me.) </p>
<p>Mom22039 brings up another reason one may choose to remember what others say about themselves and their children. Verifying the facts or non-facts presented allows for a litmus test for the person’s truthfulness and credibility. This will not matter in a stranger, beyond checking the veracity of the information itself before accepting it or acting on it. However, one may want to vet a budding friendship in this way, because one would like to be able to relax and accept the words of a friend at face value. However, many people innocently proclaim all kinds of things that are utter nonsense, and sometime they deliberately proclaim lies.</p>
<p>Back when my D was being recruited and before I found the athletic forum on CC, I was in need of advice from someone who had been through the process. The information I found in books and online was mostly about male helmet sports and did not apply. Anyway, I met a mom who was sharing her “experience” with me. She said a few things about what her D had done which didn’t sound quite right, so I verified. As a result, I decided her advice was suspect.</p>
<p>For the most part, though, I think knowing and remembering things about your acquaintances is simply emotional intelligence. If am sitting in the bleachers and Barbara asks me what I know about X college, it would behoove me to keep in mind before answering that the son of the other woman sitting within earshot attends that school.</p>
<p>I’m not convinced confidentiality is a good policy. I think it has caused some of the mania Snarlatron noted in the OP.</p>
<p>Back in the Dark Ages, our local paper used to print the Honor Roll every quarter. Honors, High Honors, every three months or so. Students who had consistently qualified for High Honors were tagged with an asterisk. It was organized by grade, so by the time the senior class reached the top of the list, there were very few names indeed listed with an asterisk under High Honors.</p>
<p>The paper also listed students’ college destinations. It also reported honors such as book prizes, etc., awarded to students in year-end assemblies. There was a distinct correlation between the asterisked names under High Honors, faculty prizes, and the high status colleges.</p>
<p>There were also many students who were not listed with asterisks who went on to fine colleges. Some of those colleges are the same colleges parents today think are impossible to get into. </p>
<p>Newspapers still print reports of high school athletes’ successes. Academic successes, not so much. </p>
<p>An absence of information feeds paranoid theories. </p>
<p>Interesting thought. Maybe some parental craziness can be avoided this way, since knowledge empowers. There are plenty of posts on CC that complain about the whole “crap shoot” concept, and about the lack of transparency in admissions. The concern isn’t without merit, of course, but generally speaking the involved students with top grades and test scores get admitted to good schools.</p>
<p>Our schools and newspapers don’t print academic info. It’s supposed to be confidential. What they do instead is issue bumper stickers to honor students. Half the cars in our town are sporting them. They also release the info to local politicians. My <em>children</em> receive letters addressed to them from a local politician to whom we have no connection other than that he wants our vote. Complete stranger, and the school is sending him my child’s confidential academic info and he is writing to them about it. He also sends very detailed personalized letters about their sports involvement, even though neither of them have done anything noteworthy. I don’t feel stalked if another team parent knows my kids’ times or abilities–they’ve spent hours upon hours of spectating over 12 years, and if they are interested in sports, of course they would pick this up. I do feel stalked by this guy.</p>
<p>Way back when I first joined CC, I asked for views on the question of whether my son should tell other people about his high SAT score. He was a kid who somewhat flew under the radar, and I wondered whether it would help or hurt him for other people to know about his score. As I recall, there were varying views on that. He ultimately told some close friends, and they were all very happy for him.</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting article to look about about good grades and valedictorians (and also implies some interesting things about prestigious higher level education):</p>
<p><a href=“Why Valedictorians Fail”>Why Valedictorians Fail;
<p>There’s a big difference between stalking and curiosity. Or having an idea of performance in sports, which is often about performance over time (and team records.) And still, some kids can just be there for their own personal reasons.</p>
<p>How is that article related to this thread? The logic is faulty. First, the author equates money in the bank with success. Secondly, he assumes that the B or C student is a B or C student because he was busy taking risks and learning about the real world, while that goody-two-shoes A student was following the rules and studying hard. How do you know the C student wasn’t just watching sitting on the couch watching stupid TV shows or getting stoned and that’s why he got worse grades?</p>
<p>D felt very uneasy the other day in gym class when one girl was hounding another about what she got on the ACT. D saw it as verging on bullying the way one girl was singled out when she said she was worried about the upcoming test because she had gotten a low score the first time she took it. </p>
<p>I just looked into the valedictorian study. She had a sample size of 81 ,all of whom came from Illinois. I don’t have a lot of faith in academic publishing, and even I’m surprised that something so bogus ever got published. </p>
<p>That was rude and unfair. But I would not be at all surprised if the girl who was inappropriately pressing for an answer about what the actual score was, had not been burned by that sort of comment before. “Oh, I did terrible on the SAT.” “Really, what did you get?” “Oh, I only got a 2200.” The problem is not the actual information, because a fact is a fact. The problem is using a fact in a self-aggrandizing way.</p>
<p>A similar scenario happened to a friend of ours, but he’s an adult. Another dad was pressing our friend to tell him about his son’s high school placement scores, hoping to brag about his own child. The obnoxious dad only knows friend’s son through sports and apparently assumed he wasn’t a good student. </p>
<p>Our friend kept trying to dodge the issue since it’s such a rude question but finally the other dad was so persistent that he blurted out the scores - which were near perfect. Shut that dad up right quick.</p>
<p>@TheGFG Yes, the C student may have been slacking off and sitting on the couch, but there are those who don’t study and do well in the world. Do you think the world would be the same without people such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, who dropped out of Harvard to pursue business? Obviously, the people who value grades more than experience would say that these examples are failures, having dismissed grades as inconsequential. However, without these people, the world would not be where it is today.</p>
<p>The opposite can also be discussed. Just because you have C’s and drop out of Harvard doesn’t mean you will become the next technology leader. You have to have an idea or already be interacting in the world. If you’re just sitting around and playing video games, you’re obviously not going to do something (unless you’re really, really good at playing).</p>
<p>As I’ve noted before, every time the Olympics roll around, we hear inspirational stories about poor athletes who became top runners by running up and down mountains barefoot with rocks in their pockets. This doesn’t mean, however, that this is the best way to become a top runner. Similarly, the best path to success is not getting Cs in high school or dropping out of Harvard, even though some people who do this are successful.</p>
<p>On the issue of sports stats–my oldest kid was an elite-level athlete in a somewhat unknown Olympic sport. She was on the national team and went to ever major international competition except the Olympics.</p>
<p>I always hated overhearing people at meets making comments about her performance (it is a sport that is judged). More often then not, the comments were not positive–how did she get such a high score–she did X (big mistake). </p>
<p>The worst offenders were moms of other competitors. These women would try to memorize the Code of Points and second guess the coach and were always giving their kids pointers on how to do better in competition. That behavior drove me nuts. I was fine with not knowing the all the rules. I was also happy to let the coach do the coaching–that’s what I was paying her to do. </p>
<p>I encouraged my kid, supported her when she was up and when she was down, and went to all the competitions and always congratulated the other kids on her team, but I decided early on not to say anything negative about other kids and not to undermine the coaches.
My kid had a great experience–she loved what she was doing and it was a great hook that helped her get into a very good university. She still loves the sport and took all the courses to become certified as an international judge. She believes that judging is a way to give back to the sport that did so much for her. She judges in addition to a having a full-time career.</p>
<p>I was happy that my younger kid was not into sports and that I didn’t have to sit in the stands any more and listen to mean-spirited comments. Younger D was into drama club and you can’t chit chat during a performance!</p>