My topic on horizontal diversification brought up some points and I started thinking, what is our goal, our responsiblity in these times?

Are we just trying to get our children a good education or prepare them for a future where graduates have a 20% unemployment rate coming out of college. Most that are emplyed are not getting ideal jobs, but glad for something.

We want our gifted children to have education that challenges them, but can I really fault the parent that works the system to get their children into an advanced math class -- that most children with an IQ above 120 probably could handle, so that they will challenged and into an AP track that gets them into a good college?

There is a woman I met, whose son (IQ around 160 on the SBV) didn't get into Hunter and we talk about schools and math programs and she is so anxious for her sons. A little background. She and DH are Chinese. DH got out of China with a scholarship to Oxford. Has excellent job now. Their perspective is that education is the ticket to success and the better the education the higher chance of success. Having parents that came out of Europe post WW2 with nothing but their education, I grew up with the same parental attitude. Education -- the right education, like engineering or medicine, protects you against what life can through against you. Since it is apparent now, to even the most hopeful economists that the limpy recovery is jobless and things don't look so good for 2010, I think I can understand these parents attitude and think I have it myself.

Ren

My goal is to help my children be content. Right now the struggle with peers and not being challenged is what I'm trying to improve. I don't have any lofty ideas about being doctors, lawyers or president. Right now it feels like they have the capacity to do anything. Mostly I want them to be happy. If my son wants to be a park ranger and that will give him happiness then it's good. Right now he wants to be an inventor.

survival and self-actualization - both great goals.

Mostly I want to go day to day without DS13 having to chop off and bury huge chunks of his spirit. My feeling is that if one can be comfortable with one's intensity and need to be engaged, then it really doesn't matter if one's wage-work is where they get their satisfaction.

Smiles,
Grinity

My goal is for him to be in a position where he not only dreams but has the confidence to try and the means to achieve. I want him to have a rewarding, balanced life while being a person of character. I feel it's our responsibility to guide him in a way that will help him reach where he chooses to go. When it comes to gifted issues I want him to learn to work and try and to prevent as much coasting as I can because in the long run the coasting won't serve him well.

First, while I really just want him to be fulfilled, I do want him to earn enough so as to be able to support his parents in their old age!

I have no doubt that he has enough brain-power to accomplish anything he chooses... so now I want for him to develop the tenacity and perseverance to pull it off.

And, of course, I want him to have at least one kid just like him... so he can appreciate first-hand the holy heck we've gone through for him. (Which is exactly what my parents wished for me... and boy-howdy, did their wish come true!)

you put that so beautifully. I totally agree