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    Originally Posted by Wren
    I discussed this because "Price of Privilege" was brought up in the topic.
    And it happens to be front and center of something I am doing. Her point is about doing for your child instead of them doing for themselves. So you arrange playdate with KidA, drop them off at 3:30 and pick up at 5. Instead of DD going out the door, finding KidA and KidB, maybe C. Then they brainstorm what to do, do their playing and DD knows she has to be home by 5:30 and has the responsibility of coming home instead of me looking for her. Not that they don't do a little brainstorming about play but the huge amount of toys in the house helps. Instead of meeting up emptying handed and figuring out next steps. Levine thinks that these simple steps help build the skills necessary to survive. And the parental arms race and blueprinting each year through to college creates a problem in college and beyond.
    Since reading the book, I have taken a conscious step back and said, "figure it out," I can't always fix it, when I can.

    I haven't read the book, but I did go and read the chapter on her website, and some interviews and articles. The bolded is the core message of her excerpt, but you're applying it to a very narrow and impractical segment of life. Maybe she has a chapter on how the only way to let your child to become resilient and competent is free-ranging, but the excerpt was about life in total, which has vastly more opportunities to either take over or let them become competent.

    Quote
    It is an umbrella term, often used to cover a wide range of overzealous parenting activities, ranging from the relatively benign to the downright disastrous. Overinvolvement refers to unnecessary involvement. It is usually, but not always, ill advised, and some children can be remarkably forgiving about this sort of behavior. I tend to think of overinvolvement as the things we do for our kids -- the forgotten dishes we wash, the unmade beds we straighten, the editing we do on our child's writing assignments. But overinvolvement stops short of psychologically manipulating the child. It is more likely to slow progress than to damage children. Intrusion, on the other hand, is always unhelpful, if not damaging.

    Both intrusion and overinvolvement prevent the development of the kinds of skills that children need to be successful: the ability to be a self-starter, the willingness to engage in trial-and-error learning, the ability to delay gratification, to tolerate frustration, to show self control, to learn from mistakes and to be a flexible and creative thinker. Kids who develop these skills have a large toolbox to dig into, both to enrich their lives and to help them problem-solve.

    It's catastrophising to say that if you can't let kids roam in packs twelve hours a day you might as well have them in lessons. Take our schedule. School finishes at 3:15. If we have a 4pm activity the kids are either in the car or in a very controlled environment until 5:30, which is so close to dinner time there's not really time to get into something. But if we don't have a class they are playing by 3:30, getting a good 2 1/2 hours of play in before dinner. Don't you think quite a lot of games can be made up in that amount of time?

    I don't see the fundamental difference between knocking on Betty's door and asking her to come and play at the park unsupervised as any different to arranging for her to come over to your house and spending three hours in the backyard or meeting Betty and her parent at the park any playing whatever while the parents chat. I overhear a lot of Calvin ball between my kids and between them and their friends during playdates. It's the fluid play and negotiations which build executive function, not the presence of an (ignored and ignoring) parent or the fence around the yard.

    More on not interfering too much
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    What my professor was talking about was not abject, crushing, demoralizing suffering, but a more tempered form of discomfort and struggle. She was not advocating throwing our kids into the deep end of life and letting them sink or swim. What she was talking about was allowing them to face adversity while they still had a safety net, letting them stumble over little obstacles as practice runs at life’s larger challenges. Noted psychologist Lev Vygotsky talked about the concept of scaffolding—a way of providing appropriate support to children to allow them to stretch beyond their current abilities. As parents practicing the art of benign neglect, that’s what we try to do. If we do everything for our kids, if we smooth out every bump in the road, if we do everything in our power to remove pain, challenge, and discomfort from their young lives, we deny them the opportunity to learn, to grow, and to develop the coping skills they will need as they become independent adults.

    When I think about the skills I want my son to develop, I want him to be secure. I want him to be confident in his own abilities. I want him to struggle through things, work them out on his own, ask for help when needed, and bounce back when things go wrong. I want him to be determined and resilient. In order to do all of this, sometimes I need to do nothing. I need to give him the chance to fail. I need to let him fall down, but be there to pick him up. This is what separates benign neglect from just plain neglect. I need to know where he is. I need to know what he is doing. I need to know that I’ve put the sharp knives out of his reach. It means, though, that sometimes I need to not intervene even when I so very much want to.
    http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/parenting-and-the-art-of-benign-neglect-0123135

    and on calvin ball and executive function
    Quote
    At the heart of the Tools of the Mind methodology is a simple but surprising idea: that the key to developing self-regulation is play, and lots of it. But not just any play. The necessary ingredient is what Leong and Bodrova call “mature dramatic play”: complex, extended make-believe scenarios, involving multiple children and lasting for hours, even days. If you want to succeed in school and in life, they say, you first need to do what Abigail and Jocelyn and Henry have done every school day for the past two years: spend hour after hour dressing up in firefighter hats and wedding gowns, cooking make-believe hamburgers and pouring nonexistent tea, doing the hard, serious work of playing pretend.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27tools-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    tl;dr. blush

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    Everyone reading this thread would be amazed to discover the percentage of Ivy (and SLAC/Elite) college student offspring of our acquaintances/colleagues who have "chosen" their children's majors in college.


    I'm truly not joking. These are children 17-21 years of age in colleges and universities from Brown to Cornell to Princeton whose parents have picked what they will major in. They openly admit that. They are astonished that we are permitting our 14yo to make this choice for herself.

    I cannot even wrap my head around dictating such a thing to my daughter.



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    Um, yeah. Presumably you have similar privacy rules there as here, though? If a new student comes to me as their tutor and wants to change subject, then if the bureaucracy (places, qualifications) works, they can, and noone will tell their parents if they don't; indeed, I'm specifically not allowed to give a student's parent information about them (any more than I would give it to random member of the public).


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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    Everyone reading this thread would be amazed to discover the percentage of Ivy (and SLAC/Elite) college student offspring of our acquaintances/colleagues who have "chosen" their children's majors in college.


    I'm truly not joking. These are children 17-21 years of age in colleges and universities from Brown to Cornell to Princeton whose parents have picked what they will major in. They openly admit that. They are astonished that we are permitting our 14yo to make this choice for herself.

    I cannot even wrap my head around dictating such a thing to my daughter.


    Yeah, I will flat out state my preferences, hopes, etc., but dictating? For one thing, I wouldn't imagine I'd get very far, lol. I guess $$ talks (?)

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    My brother sort of did with my nephew. My nephew said he wanted to be an NHL referee. My brother said he would only pay tuition of something that led to a job.
    He became a mechanical engineer, has a good career, married has child and bought a 4 bedroom house when he was 30.
    Direction can be helpful. My brother didn't say become an engineer, just study something that has jobs at the end.
    Now DH was told to become a doctor. His older brother was told to become a doctor. The middle one, went for law, they didn't think he could make it into medical school. Now, the middle one went to DC, did become a lawyer but worked for the Feds, has a very high position, will get an amazing defined benefit plan -- it is the Federal govt. Plus he worked as an aid to z governor for 8 years and gets that pension.
    Who needs wealth with that?

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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    I'm truly not joking. These are children 17-21 years of age in colleges and universities from Brown to Cornell to Princeton whose parents have picked what they will major in. They openly admit that. They are astonished that we are permitting our 14yo to make this choice for herself.

    I cannot even wrap my head around dictating such a thing to my daughter.

    My scholarship was tied to engineering.

    So, no engineering, no free college.

    I suspect that lots of scholarships are like that.

    And it wasn't like I had the slightest idea what I actually wanted to major in, having no actual knowledge of anything but school.

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    Originally Posted by Wren
    Now, the middle one went to DC, did become a lawyer but worked for the Feds, has a very high position, will get an amazing defined benefit plan -- it is the Federal govt. Plus he worked as an aid to z governor for 8 years and gets that pension.
    Who needs wealth with that?

    That *is* wealth.

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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    Everyone reading this thread would be amazed to discover the percentage of Ivy (and SLAC/Elite) college student offspring of our acquaintances/colleagues who have "chosen" their children's majors in college.


    I'm truly not joking. These are children 17-21 years of age in colleges and universities from Brown to Cornell to Princeton whose parents have picked what they will major in. They openly admit that. They are astonished that we are permitting our 14yo to make this choice for herself.

    I cannot even wrap my head around dictating such a thing to my daughter.
    Who has earned a merit scholarship, right? I'll be more disposed to spend 4*$65K = $260K to get my child a degree in computer science than gender studies. Colleges cannot expect parents to fork over enormous sums of money but then butt out. I understand that forcing a child to major in something that does not interest him is a bad idea both intellectually and career wise. But the intersection of interest and practicality needs to be found.

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    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    Everyone reading this thread would be amazed to discover the percentage of Ivy (and SLAC/Elite) college student offspring of our acquaintances/colleagues who have "chosen" their children's majors in college.


    I'm truly not joking. These are children 17-21 years of age in colleges and universities from Brown to Cornell to Princeton whose parents have picked what they will major in. They openly admit that. They are astonished that we are permitting our 14yo to make this choice for herself.

    I cannot even wrap my head around dictating such a thing to my daughter.
    Who has earned a merit scholarship, right? I'll be more disposed to spend 4*$65K = $260K to get my child a degree in computer science than gender studies. Colleges cannot expect parents to fork over enormous sums of money but then butt out. I understand that forcing a child to major in something that does not interest him is a bad idea both intellectually and career wise. But the intersection of interest and practicality needs to be found.

    Agreed-- but this is absolutely not what I'd call "respectful dialogue." Not locally.

    My DH and I have both inquired gently to find out-- and the response is an overwhelming "Why would I consult my foolish 17yo about such an important thing. Of course not-- s/he was majoring in ________-- I told him/her so all along-- and that's all there is to it!"

    We have pointed out DD's strengths, interests, and weaknesses to her, and told her what WE know about various fields of study... but the decision, ultimately, is hers.

    It was certainly mine and my DH's, after all.


    Personally, my feeling is that if you feel that the expense is "too much" to allow for the risk, then maybe the expense is simply too much to begin with.

    But that's us.


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    I think that Bostonian's point about finding the intersection of interest and career options is a critical one.

    I don't think that the STEM fields have bright prospects in the future as many 'knowledge workers' may be taken 'straight off the peg' in low cost regions where education is good like Eastern Europe, India or China.

    The one plus for Medicine is quality of life - 3/7 days is considered full-time in many US family medicine practices according to friends in that field AND one may live anywhere and be assured of an excellent standard of living. Specialists, particularly if they have an entrepreneurial streak can become wealthy but regular GPs can certainly have a comfortable existence almost anywhere. Freedom like that is worth way more than mere lucre in my book.

    Academia is also a pretty cushy berth once tenure is attained but the potential for abject poverty, victimhood and full on abuse with an outside chance of ever getting tenure makes it look less than appealing.

    At the end of the day, I understand that I will not be able to force my child into any field as she has my DWs stubbornness with my own as an exponent.

    I will try to spend the next 8 years or so doing my best to help her calibrate her BS filters. If my DD insists on studying a non-rigorous subject like Angling For Unfair Advantages Studies or other bleating liberal social hypochondria promoting studies then I will consider myself to have failed in that task.

    Last edited by madeinuk; 04/05/14 09:05 PM.

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