One of the things I was horrified by when I became a parent was that people were so judgemental of each other and with so little appareciation that we're all, really, making it up as we go along.
At least there is much less of this in real life. Part of why this thread has been interesting to me is that this sort of negative stuff isn't something that seems to happen in real life a lot. So, I'd hate for anyone considering the early college option to fear that you will be confronted with negative comments all the time. If it is truly the right path for your child it will be obvious to the people who know them in real life. And, then you will be more likely to hear something like "It must have been rough to be confronted with the need to make these decisions, but you handled it well."
I agree. Ironically the only naysayers I have encountered about decisions I have made for my son have been on this board. For people that know my child, there is usually no problem understanding why we do what we do.
This has generally been our experience, as well. People who actually KNOW our child (and us) think that we are very much rational and pretty conscientious without being terribly push-oriented. At least not more than is warranted by her particular blend of personality characteristics.
And she
will be in all college coursework, probably
before she is fourteen, since I am not seeing what else to do with her last two years as a high school student at this point in time.
What Grinity said (back several pages even from the quote above) really resonated with me, both as a parent, of course, but
also as an insider from academia. Colleges which are "no place for
especially young students" are very often not exactly healthy environments for students at traditional ages either. I've seen that play out so often that it literally makes me
weary to think about it.
I would be extremely reluctant (at this point) to have an 18 year old child of mine live and attend school in such a place without access to parental guidance or any safety net. Yes, there is some sort of cultural rite of passage there, certainly-- but far too many children now have no one to catch them when they begin to fall. Times
have changed from when we went to college in the 70's and 80's. (Er-- and 90's, I'm also guessing.
)
It's a 24-7 world of social media and pressures, which leaves little time for the scholarly, deliberate pace of things that we tend to recall as normative. I'd not be averse to having a traditional college student live at home while attending college their first two or three years. Not at all. That goes
at least quadruple for an extra-young student.
It's hard to imagine all the minutiae that are involved in a child that young actually doing things intended for older people until you've tried a few of those things. It's
complicated. For a child even as young as 13 to attend college courses, often a great number of hoops have to be jumped through, and the child may have to have an affidavit of empancipation in order to live in dorm housing (since colleges are prohibited from acting
in loco parentis, but obviously a child who is under 16 is VERY clearly a minor and not legally responsible for him/herself). Complicated.
As for internships-- YES, this is a HUGE problem. We've run into this already with DD at the middle school/high school level. There are competitive paid internships available through our land-grant institution's Land-Sea grant programs, but many require the applicant to be a minimum of 15 years old. Some require a drivers' license. All require the student to still be enrolled in high school. Ergo, most are not things that my DD will ever be eligible to apply for. Others, there will undoubtedly be issues regarding the insurance policies related to laboratory or field work.
<back to catch up further>
