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    Joined: Jan 2008
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    It seems that parents of girls are more "fearful" of early college than the boys. Which I can totally understand. Our 15 year old girls can be easy targets, yet how many college girls are interested in a 15 year old boy?

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    Originally Posted by Wren
    It seems that parents of girls are more "fearful" of early college than the boys. Which I can totally understand. Our 15 year old girls can be easy targets, yet how many college girls are interested in a 15 year old boy?

    Actually, it's exactly the opposite for us (see my previous post). I don't really think girls are more or less likely to make bad decisions than boys are, and I'm not concerned about my DD being a "target." I know for certain that I was less of a social target than my twin brother at virtually any age. And, in a very general sense, girls are often more socially mature than boys are. I'm not a fan of making sweeping statements relating to gender, though.


    She thought she could, so she did.
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    I personally would not be a fan of sending a 16yo boy across the country to college, either. I'm concerned about executive function, not drinking and sexual activity.

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    During my second year of college, I studied and traveled abroad in Europe. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. However, looking back (especially after discovering a journal I kept) I am shocked at what things my friends and I did. If my kids did what I did... LOL What's interesting, is that everyone thought (me included!) that I was one of the "mature, good, responsible" kids hahaha ... Too much freedom, too many new friends and too many exciting things to explore! ... And that's what made the whole experience so incredible smile

    Last edited by Cecilia; 05/13/11 10:46 AM.
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    What do you think about having your child take a semester off before graduating h.s. to do a work related internship?
    Any other ideas to "slow" the process down yet make the time spent valuable?
    We have thought of having our DS learn history, music, and art history beyond high school levels,but are concerned about accumulating too many college credits- any ideas?

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    Sorry mnmom23, but it is much easier to rape a girl. And that is not a choice. I think you underestimate the situations a young girl, especially if she is attractive and smart and some idiot wants to prove something, can find herself. Even if she made all the smart choices. Being 16 is being 16.

    Ren

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    Originally Posted by Wren
    Sorry mnmom23, but it is much easier to rape a girl. And that is not a choice. I think you underestimate the situations a young girl, especially if she is attractive and smart and some idiot wants to prove something, can find herself. Even if she made all the smart choices. Being 16 is being 16.

    Ren

    I would never minimize rape or suggest it was a choice or even say that a girl could not unwittingly end up in a dangerous situation, be the girl smart or not, attractive or not. But, I would suggest that boys could also get themselves into a lot of trouble, physical, emotional, or otherwise. My objection was to stereotyping that early college would be more inappropriate for girls than for boys. I still feel that it depends on the child, the family, the college situation, and the living situation, and not the gender of the student.


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    Originally Posted by AlexsMom
    In my own experience, taking a year off of rigorous math and science classes, on top of coming from a high school that didn't offer much in the way of rigorous science, negatively influenced my choice of college classes. I personally would rather see DD go straight to college than take a gap year.
    I certainly remember getting advice at school that if you were doing an arts or humanities degree a year out was a great idea, but that this was a danger if you were doing science or maths. In my case, it was more that I'd been hanging on by my fingernails for years waiting for "real" education and having got to the point where I could see the prospect of getting some, there was no way I was going to postpone it for another year.


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    Originally Posted by Val
    Just wondering. For those of you with kids who will probably graduate from high school 2+ years ahead of schedule, do you or your kids have ideas in mind for what they'd do next?

    Would you let your child go off to college very early? If so, would you let him/her go if the college was close to home or would a distant college or university be okay?

    I know that there's no single right answer to this question and that everything depends completely on each child, but I thought I'd ask as a way to solicit exchange of ideas. Here are a few of ours for our child:

    * Do a high-school abroad year or two with a program like AFS.

    * Get a p/t job and take random classes at a community college (astronomy, ceramics, etc. etc. etc.).

    * Do an exotic internship (e.g. Marine Biology in the Bahamas). There are many experiences like this aimed at high school-aged kids.

    * Other.

    Oh my.

    Well, this is definitely our situation, but as I think I've stated repeatedly, our largest concerns with her at high school graduation (not quite age 15, we anticipate), is that she is also right in the middle of a window of vulnerability w/r/t good management of a life-threatening chronic medical condition.

    So the conventional path of 'going away to college' would be terrifying even if she were fairly mature 18. In light of the chronological age and relative maturity re: executive skills, there's simply no way that it's an option as far as we can see. It might be possible if we opted to move to where she went to school so that she could still live at home, but honestly, we don't see a compelling argument for doing that. She's undoubtedly Ivy quality, but I don't know that she's necessarily enjoy it any more than many other collegiate environs, which negates the benefit of doing that.

    So our plan at the moment is to have her make a smooth transition from high school into community college courses (a trek that we've already begun with art and other community ed courses with her at 11yo) then into post-high school study at the same community college, then into a four year degree at a local public university with a good reputation. After undergraduate study, SHE plans to either pursue graduate studies in the physical sciences or go to law school. Or maybe library science.

    We feel that it may well be in her best interests to do a sort of 'gap year' if she can, though it's complicated since many travel opportunities are not possible for her. She has mentioned the idea of working on turning her small business (a low-profit that currently partners with a community non-profit via a fixed percentage profit-share) into an NPO, and/or doing an unpaid internship with the community non-profit to learn some granstmanship, etc. These are all things that we are really encouraging her to pursue.

    Even if she were to do those things, however, I think we'd still encourage her to take a class or two. Probably math. (Because I also think that math is one of those things that if you don't use it, it does rapidly atrophy. Recovery is painful. wink )




    In any event, we think that it's probably too soon to know for sure what she wants to do as an adult. Our job is to coach her to keep options OPEN for as long as she can so that she buys herself plenty of time for those decisions.

    We've discouraged her from specializing too early, in other words. smile


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Originally Posted by passthepotatoes
    Originally Posted by E Mama
    Yes, CFK these are our opinions and not meant to be "pushed" onto others. Being well rounded is subjective. We feel that excelling in core subjects alone is not well rounded -that is what I meant and it is simply our opinion.
    Of course, to each his/her own.

    Your assumption remains that kids who are entering college are not well rounded. It is a very debatable point but let's just say for a minute we could all agree that being well rounded is a good thing. And, let's say we can agree the definition of being well rounded is excelling across the board in all academic areas, being highly proficient in at least one foreign language, being good at a least one sport, being well developed in at least one area of the arts. There are early college kids who exceed that definition easily. (and of course many kids who enter at traditional age who don't).

    Kids mature at different rates in different ways and families vary greatly in their resources. I'm sure I probably thought at the beginning that with so many things to study college could be put off for ten years. And, then we hit the reality that for our child this was lonely, unsatisfying, and not engaging. That's entirely silly when there existed a perfect solution in the form of a university education.

    So to answer the original poster, we were lucky enough to have a good local college option.

    Yes, this is the situation that we anticipate finding to be the case with our DD< as well.

    We're already seeing the stress fractures from TRYING to make things fit... when they... just... don't.


    Asynchrony is a real beast in many ways, isn't it? I just shake my head sometimes when I realize how hard it is for others to understand what we're up against here as parents. Most of the people we know IRL truly don't have any way to understand what it means to have a child who is simultaneously ten and twenty-one. Nevermind understanding what that feels like from her perspective.


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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