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Last night I ran into a parent who has a child in my DD's class. She asked me where DD will go to middle school. When I told her that DD would be going to a different middle school than her child, she said "Good, that reduces the competition for [X]. [X] really wants to be the smartest kid at [the middle school]." She then went on to say that she knows our kids will be competing for one of 40 full-ride scholarships for in-state tuition when they get to high school. I told her that I'm just happy that middle school is settled and will worry about the college scholarship stuff later.

To be honest, I cringed at this conversation. I have no idea how our kids compare academically. With DD, we've never really talked about other students as competitors. I've focused on getting DD around other smart kids and wanting her to have intellectual peers. Then I thought about this woman's kid who comes off as super confident (and competitive) then I thought about my kid who is modest to a fault and is reluctant to tell people about her abilities. I wonder if I have gone too far in the opposite direction.

Do you encourage your kids to be academically competitive?

I'd cringe, too. I expect that this woman's child will grow up to be as obnoxious and socially dysfunctional as she is.

I encourage my DD to do her best.

Whoa. That is a totally screwed up thing for her to say.

I would never encourage my child to think this way, no. (I am really not competitive--maybe even to a fault.) DD has a friend who has always been competitive and it makes me very uncomfortable. It seems to bother her as well. He gets very caught up in winning or losing games, whereas DD just loved to play. I have seen her lose on purpose so as not to agitate him.

I'm glad to hear that other people found her comments offensive.
I do worry that DD is "going underground" about her abilities as we head toward middle school. Clearly, this woman's kid is not going underground with respect to her expectations of herself. I guess it just brought my own concerns into stark relief.

To be honest, I would not feel comfortable if my DD suddenly started talking about being the smartest. How do you even measure that? Having a 2e younger sibling, DD knows that someone can be smart without being a high achiever. I just wish DD seemed a little more comfortable with her abilities and did not try to down play them.

My first reaction was, 'Whoa, that's someone with *no* filter!'

Not only can I imagine myself saying those things, I have said them -- but only to immediate family members, out of earshot of anyone else. I also assume many of the parents at my son's school (over half the families are immigrants), who fit the stereotype of 'tiger parents', are saying the exact same things in privacy.

By 'family members', I mean my husband, in-laws, *and* children. Yes, I encourage my kids to be competitive in academics, so they are included in conversations about, say, who is likely to win a merit scholarship at the high schools they're applying to, or what order they are likely to place in at math competitions.

It's possible to do this in a healthy way, I think. Ds's school encourages it, but only within limits: teachers strike a good balance between individual and team pursuits, and they stress the importance of both winning and losing graciously.

This atmosphere has been very beneficial to my son. He learns important lessons every year, ones that don't come easily or naturally to him: hard work pays off; failure is part of learning; it's possible to learn from your peers; your friends root for you no matter what.

Stepping back a bit -- it brings up the issue of motivation: is just learning something enough, or do we have to make a competition out of it? I see among my students a few who value knowledge and understanding for their own sake; for others, they are a means to an end; and still others fall somewhere in between. I would say that some level of comfort with a competitive atmosphere will probably come in handy for most people, perhaps especially those who were born without that 'fire in the belly', that burning urge to compete.

My wife encourages this more than I do.

I'm still pretty bitter about the my entire "life is a giant competition" era that led me to near total burnout early in life.

When she gets to the point where competition matters in terms of high school, I might think about it, but only to the point of solid achievement. I'll probably try to evaluate her class and figure out where she is with respect to percentile so that I have a good idea of her achievement target.

There's always the urge to train her to destroy the competition, but I think I'll just repress that or solely use it against insurance companies.

Yes, to some people that kind of comment is a compliment of sorts. I have had people say things vaguely like this to me about my DD after she left her old school ("It makes the rest of our kids look better now that she's gone, ha ha") though not quite as baldly.

The problem being that having the value that you want your child to be the best isn't really a good value to have.

It tends away from pro-social behavior.

Just starting this year for 3rd grade, I do tell both DS8 and DD8 to do their best and get the top grades - not in relation to other kids but in relation to their abilities. So I guess that is "academically competitive" to an extent. The reason why I even said anything is because their effort grade are consistently lower than their achievement grades. Grades of "A" in achievement are paired with grades of "2" (on a 1,2,3 scale). I want them to not be satisfied just because they earned an "A" on their report card, but to actually produce the written work that they are capable of consistently.

I generally agree, but I think that with a slight modification, it can be quite productive. Our emphasis is not on "Be the best". Instead we emphasize "Be the best you can be", and do not worry about how they compare with others.

We were surprised that DD13 started becoming competitive on her own. Her friends in elementary school ended up being some of the strongest in Jr. High, and she wants to keep up with them. While she competes with them on one level, they all help each other study and work on projects together. And since our town emphasizes academics, the brainy group is the popular group, so there is no need to go underground.

DS10 is also popular (both DD and DS won student council rep elections), but is intensely competitive on his own. He is used to getting first place in academics and in chess, and gets overly upset when he does not. For him, we have to tell him that the effort is what is important, not the results.

Well, obviously there's a difference between healthy and unhealthy levels of competitiveness.

For my part, I always wanted to have the best grades, but I didn't worry too much about it if I didn't. I never once entertained the idea of becoming class valedictorian, because I knew that accomplishing that would involve a whole lot more effort on homework than I was willing to give, because at the top levels of a large high school (graduating class ~1000), that's what it would take to be the best. If someone else wanted to do homework four hours a night, let them. I'd take a C on my Trig/Pre-calc homework notebook and an overall markdown to a B, thanks. I had better things to do with that time.

Instead, I graduated somewhere in the back half of the top 50, with people both above and below me who'd given themselves physical or psychological issues to get there.

Those are the type comments that make me cringe too. I am assuming this woman is living through her kid and wants what is best for HER, not her child. Well, that will likely backfire as her child gets older. I also see performance anxiety all over this situation.

What you are doing is the right thing.

I was not the kid who strove for A's. Get the A then indulge my interests. But I did perk up when there were some very hard problems that others struggled with.

But I still got the "set the curve" comments in HS and college.

Its interesting to think that the "Texas Cheerleader Murder" parents exist in other areas....

Which then brings up the question, if your child is intelligent enough to get a full scholarship, but doesn't work hard enough in high school to get it, should you still pay for college?

I think the original post describing the other mom was very weird- I mean, how do they know for sure that in 7 years, your child will be the only competition for the scholarship? Maybe they have moved away or their kid isn't making the top grades and test scores the child is capable of? It's nice, I guess, that your child is an "academic threat," but that is so weird!
Some academic competition is good and too much is bad, I think.
We are in a heavily "Tiger Mom" area. My son's best friend in third grade is Chinese and goes to Chinese school each week, one hour violin, and 2 hours piano every day! The boy seems heavily depressed all of the time. He is not a dumb kid but not as smart, probably, as his parents hope he is. I just don't think it is worth it to make your child so profoundly miserable all of the time like that.

I don't see any reason to. How would college be the best environment for a kid like the one you describe?

Yeah. Good point. HS has a lot more smarties than Middle School. 1 or 2 per middle school means 4-10 in HS. In addition, other kids will mature in HS and become focused as well.


WOW! I agree.

But I can see it.

Two parents of six year olds at Mr W's old school made comments about him as a 3 year old taking piano lessons with a 6 year old to the Piano teacher. They seemed to think their kids should be "ahead" of him and in the "advanced" group.

One mom asked DW how much we "work with him" and just did not believe that we don't do much at all. (And feel guilty that we don't..) Heck, we can't stop him from singing all the time, picking out CDs at the store, or telling us which songs he wants to listen to in the car.

I thought she was talking about statewide scholarships.

Although, to your point, there is also the issue of strategic enrollment.

For instance, my sister-in-law was transferred from a harder high school (where her more intelligent brother graduated valedictorian) to an easier high school to increase the chances that she would do well. It worked and she managed to get first in her class and snag a full scholarship to a state school in the process. Although this is only practical when you own different houses in different school districts.

I agree with you that it is brutal for the child. But I suspect you misunderstand the reason why it happens. I will explain this using some statistics and tying to an article I read from The Economist about two years ago.

The statistics show that selective colleges, in an effort to promote "diversity", demand different levels of achievement from each race. A recent Business Week article quoted a Princeton sociologist named Thomas Espenshade. He wrote in 2009 that on an 1600 point SAT test, if all other credentials are equal, an Asian American needed to score 140 points more than whites, 270 points more than Hispanics, and 450 points more than Arfican-Americans to have an equal chance of admission to a private school.

The Economist article from two years ago is called Sex and the Single Black Woman. Here is the opening paragraph:
"IMAGINE that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called The Logic of Life. With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging. Somehow or other, she “steals” a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues. Before long, every woman has to try harder, and every man can relax a little."

Back to the tiger mom issue. The tiger mom knows her child has to compete against other highly capable Asian kids for entry into selective college. So she tries to up her child's game by seeking the highest academic and extracurricular achievements. Other Asians notice this too, and soon there is an arms race for achievements. The Supreme court has recently agreed to hear a Texas case on racial discrimination in selective colleges. It will be interesting to see the outcome.

PS: This last bit is off topic, but the Economist article also suggests implications about sending daughters to colleges where the majority of students are women. Would the less attractive college women who "upped their game" also force a chain reaction there?

So, once again, the problem seems to be parents living through their children.

And then you get into the Ivy League college, but you can't afford it.

Winning!

-

I graduated from Harvard Med with honors, so I get the whole academic competitiveness thing. Frankly, I have always enjoyed academic competition and have thrived on it. I've tried to pass that on to my kids, who are extremely uncompetitive.
I just can't see making your child (or yourself) miserable over all of this. It just isn't worth it. How many such kids get into the Ivies, etc. and fail? They must face up to the fact that they aren't as gifted/smart/whatever as their parents want them to be.
The Chinese moms in my son's third grade class have all told me approvingly that he is the smartest kid in the class. I don't know if he is but I guess I'm glad that they think so!

I agree with mithawk's analysis.

Regarding the OP's anecdote, I would never tell another parent I was glad for competitive reasons that her child would be leaving my child's school. Besides being tactless, it ignores the fact that parents of other bright kids, and the kids themselves, are good sources of information about educational opportunities.

The anecdote does raise the question of whether the advantages of being with lots of other smart kids (probably learning more, having more like-minded peers) outweighs the disadvantages (lower class rank). For college and graduate school I think one wants to attend the most selective school possible, since (among other reasons) employers care about school selectivity. For high school, it is not clear to me that attending a Stuyvesant or a Phillips Exeter Academy boosts one chances of being admitted to an Ivy, since many students at those schools will be applying to Ivies. OTOH, the connections one makes at those schools are valuable, and given the Internet, they may be easier to maintain than they were 20 years ago.

I guess everyone in my family is pretty competitive, even in academics, but hopefully not in a boastful way. I didn't know if DS8 would turn out as competitive as his parents, but it seems that he will be. When I asked him if he wanted to do the Explore test, which is designed for 8th graders, he said that yes, he'd like to cream some 8th graders... I am happy that he's in a school environment with intellectual peers, where he is not the very top in everything and he knows it. Before we moved to this school, DS thought he was the smartest kid, but now he realizes there are others who know just as much as he does. He still *wants* to be the tops, though! I encourage him to be happy when his friends get high marks too. I also tell him that I'm just happy if he does his best and is learning new things.

Any conversation like this or the one the OP describes would be instantly put me on my guard. I would assume that "being the best" is more important to him/her than anything else--more specifically, that it doesn't matter if you ARE the best as long as you get to LOOK like the best and get the accolades/advantages that go along with that. I would suspect this was the kind of person who will do anything to get ahead, and I would be on my guard; IME, those people are dangerous and often empty at the core. (There's some honesty for ya.)

I do not agree

'working' with your kid definitely helps,however smart one may be,logically it should help more for gifted kids. teaching a work ethic helps immensely to any kid

I see kinda of opposition group to tiger moms in this forum.I feel highly educated chinese parents see lot of opportunities in this country and want education as their priority and may be do not want their kids to go through hardships they had gone through.

I am not backing any group,but thought of sharing my opinion

I totally agree. Also in the book I saw a gifted mom with an excellent sense of how hard she needed to push, certianly Sophie and eventually Lulu.

sorry Yannam....I missed the flow of the conversation here. Yes working with a chil to develop work ethic if needed is a key adult responsibility. If the schools can't or won't do that for an individual child then the parent must.
I thought you were talking about working with a child so that the child would be more academmically competitive. Srry. If I had read more carefully I wouldn't have misunderstood. Volital topic if I'm failing to be able to read.

Smiles
Grinity

teaching work ethic is going to work everyday. If you do notlearn that however gifted one may be it is difficult to keep his job...

Interesting article but my thought was...what if there were 19 adult males and 20 adult females? I don't as easily picture the guys upping their game...I picture guys inventing video games or beer or sports or wandering off into the woods. Or working together with the other males to make rules about who has access to females. That sounds familiar.

Does this relate to the topic at hand? I think the OP brought up that some families go about solving the same problem in different ways based on their values and assets. I think the problem is that most schoolsystems aren't set up to meet the academic or social emotional needs of the kids at the tippy top. Some families respond by accepting the rules and going for the most visible brass ring while others question the whole system and try through advocacy to use what's availible to try and build a new solution.

Shrugs
Grinity

I agree. Do you thing it is harder for gifted kids to learn work ethic because of overexcitabilities or because schoolwork is unchallenging or. Due to asynchronous development or 2e bottlenecks. Or maybe it is difficult for many kids independent of giftedness?
G

I believe that they too will try to compete, but in a different way. Forgive me for this non-politically correct generalization what I am about to make, but historically women choose men in part based upon who can provide enough money for the family, whereas men select women in part based upon attractiveness, which suggests fertility.

Having too many men vs women is becoming a problem in countries that abort a disproportionate number of girl babies, thus creating a population of young men that will never get married. I believe in China these "bare branches", as they are called, tend to be the ones least economically successful, and there is concern they will cause unrest in the future.

I realize we are getting off topic, so that's all I will say about this.

My point was that Mr W is intrinsically interested in music and works at it all by himself. He is the most advanced kid for his age his piano teacher can recall. He does not need any support from us other than a correction here or there. Just by supplying the right environment he pushes himself.

There is a difference between innate self direction and external pressure for motivation. There is also a difference between mindful work and mindless work.

The key is to end up with a person who is intrinsically self motivated who works via a well thought out approach who constantly evaluates and adjusts their methods.

Sure, the kid who is pushed will surpass the kid whose parents ignore his desires, but the kid who wants to do something who is scheduled and support by his parents will surpass the pushed kid, all things being equal.