Two Different Childhoods

~ Laura

Frank Bruni has a column in the Times this week about kids in well-heeled community, who are plain miserable. Some are so miserable that they commit suicide.

The stress level in our own community is no secret. The PTA has a health and wellness committee, which is specificially aimed at keeping kids from mental health disasters. Friends send me newspaper links to a local girl who jumped off a building during her freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania. Kids do have a lot of pressure.

I go to bed every night before my son finishes his homework. Now, my son is a world class procrastinator, but his late nights can’t be blamed on poor work habits. It’s pretty common around here. The kids go to school for seven hours, then they have two to three hours of sports or theater, and then they have four to five hours of homework. It’s a lot.

They are keeping track of their activities for college applications. They are taking the SATs and the ACTs. They have parents who making sure that they do all those things. (I still haven’t figured out the ACTs yet.)

A certain amount of the backlash to standardized testing comes from the fact that the kids simply can’t take one more stress event in their lives.

Kids in these communities are having an entirely different life experience than kids in inner city or even in middle class suburbs outside the coastal communities. It makes it really hard to make education policy for schools or any social policies, when these populations are so different. Some kids need a break. Others need a shove. My kid probably needs a little of both.

****

Alright, I’m goofing off today. So, let me give you another anecdote about stress on kids around here.

At this week’s PTA meeting, the school guidance counselor told us that the latest trend in college admissions was long waiting lists. Kids are applying to 15 to 20 colleges. Colleges are receiving way more applications than spots, but they don’t actually know which kids are really interested. So, colleges have super long waiting lists. Some kids don’t know which school they’ll go to until a few months before September.

To get off the waiting list, the guidance officer said that it was very important to demonstrate interest in the school by asking for information and going on the tours. You want to get on the school’s radar. One parent said that you should make a reference to the school in the essay. At my niece’s high school, her guidance office provided her with a list of “tips and tricks” for attending college fairs. One tip was to bring ready-made labels with her name, address, and e-mail address, so she could quickly stick it on information cards at the college tables. This way the school could document that she “showed interest” in the school.

 

 

Published by Laura

26 thoughts on “Two Different Childhoods”

  1. While I agree with just about everything Bruni writes regarding the current “too much pressure” culture, I think it is a slippery slope to start blaming serious mental health problems on parenting or school culture. Certainly they play a part, but children with depression or other mental health issues can show up in ANY family, across wide varieties of income/race/location.

    He makes good points on the culture. (Personally, I send my kid to an alternative high school that has no grades and very little homework to avoid the pressure-cooker environment.) But something about him using the suicides to say it just bugged me. He also picked his statistics to bolster his argument by using 2003 and 2013. If he went back farther, he’d see that the teen suicide rate in 1990 is higher than the 2013 level. But that wouldn’t prove his point.

    My heart aches for the parents of the children who died and I can’t imagine them reading this article and hearing him comment on their “hovering, exactingly prescriptive parenting.”

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  2. Of course mental illness shows up everywhere, but sometimes causes of depression are exogenous. Sometimes it *is* a combination of family/school/community culture.

    My thought is that with globalization and other changes in our economy, we transformed our world into one with a brutally stark contrast between winners (with big salaries) and losers (who may or may not be able to pay the rent or afford a copay) and this is what we get. I blame parents and schools far less than policy makers.

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    1. Yup. But I think parents in Palo Alto are worried not just about being able to pay the rent, but transmitting their comfortable lives to their children. It’s the same winner-take-all dynamic, though.

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  3. “But something about him using the suicides to say it just bugged me”

    Me too.To cite a link, “Mental or addictive disorders are associated with 90% of suicides” (http://jasonfoundation.com/youth-suicide/risk-factors/)

    I agree that there are two very different populations in education and that not only makes advice for one inappropriate for the other, but also potentially harmful.

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  5. If you can afford that, then presumably you can afford the price of buying a college admission. (Seven figures at HYP, six at the other Ivies, and presumably also at their equivalents, though I don’t have any data on the last point.) Which is one way to reduce the stress level of the children.

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  6. I don’t need any statistics to sway me from believing that 11-12 hours a day of schoolwork (7 at school + 4 to 5 homework) is unreasonable.

    Add in one more year of high school then if there is so much material to get through that you need to be working at it 12 hours a day.

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    1. I think I did that much homework in high school, and it didn’t seem like a big deal.

      The key was that the HW was teaching me, and, I enjoyed the learning. I still remember all the work that went into two major term papers fondly and the math HW sets were absolutely necessary for my learning.

      Now I didn’t do 2 hours of sports each day on top of that. My feeling isn’t that the kids do more HW now, but that they try to do everything, the 4 hours of HW, 4 hours of sport, 4 hours of community service, . . . .

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      1. I agree. Since when does every teenager need to play a sport? I think that’s just crazy. I was involved in the school newspaper but that was my only thing really. I dabbled in art classes and computers. I did have a schedule like Laura’s son though, going to bed after my parents but that seemed true for most of my friends too. I am willing to bet there is a lot of texting or skyping or IMing or however teenagers communicate going on during homework time just like we talked on the phone. That stretches homework for hours. Interestingly by 11th and 12th grades when many of us had jobs on top of it all somehow we got it all done. We just didn’t spend as much time on the phone.

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    2. I worked that hard in high school. (I didn’t do sports, but I was editor-in-chief of the school paper, which was a big commitment.) I had about 13 hours of work a day.

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  7. Kids are applying to 15 to 20 colleges. Colleges are receiving way more applications than spots, but they don’t actually know which kids are really interested. So, colleges have super long waiting lists.

    Find safeties (affordable colleges your kids would attend), and use the early round judiciously. With a do-able college acceptance in hand, the number of applications drops radically. Less stress.

    To get off the waiting list, the guidance officer said that it was very important to demonstrate interest in the school by asking for information and going on the tours. You want to get on the school’s radar.

    ((hits head on desk.)) NO NO NO. If you’re on a waiting list, it’s TOO LATE to demonstrate interest. They know that already. You’ve applied. You demonstrate interest BEFORE applying, to improve your chances of admission–especially important for students who are strong students, as colleges may (rightfully) suspect they’ll be dropped like a hot potato for Stanford.

    To demonstrate interest:

    Visit.
    Register for visits (if possible, check the college admissions website “visit” portal. The more a college tracks demonstrated interest, the more nosy the questions will be. Point out to Applicant Child that you don’t have to answer all nosy questions, especially questions about the other colleges on your list.)
    Behave well on tours, showing curiosity about the school.

    Open emails from possible colleges. (Honest to god, they can tell if the emails are opened.) Set up an email with a non-embarrassing address, such as GreatKid2020. Make sure someone will open the emails if high school senior is too involved with senior year to do it.

    Don’t give out the student cell phone number, if possible. They will apparently call it, or send texts. Imagine the problem–your child is taking an exam, his phone rings, it’s an admissions officer from Likely School 2, who gets offended if your kid can’t talk.

    One parent said that you should make a reference to the school in the essay.

    No. (Is this parent trying to sabotage the competition? I’m not being sarcastic. This is very bad advice.) Every single college admissions presentation (from admissions officers) emphasized that it’s a common error for students to swear their undying love for Tufts (for example) in their application essay for Duke.

    The place to talk about the college is the college supplement, at which point it’s mandatory.

    **Be careful about teenagers filling out questionnaires. The College Board has a student information section–your college profile. Don’t let him fill it out alone. It’s better to avoid it, if possible. Just make sure your teenager doesn’t paint a picture of a kid who doesn’t want to leave the Northeast, if that isn’t true. Dollars to donuts it all gets put into data sold to colleges.

    I AM VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE LEVEL OF COLLEGE ADVISING AT YOUR HIGH SCHOOL. This is doubly concerning because the college admissions officers will assume your children have better than average college advisors.

    Think of it this way. Depending on your income, you may qualify to pay full tuition. Your research could significantly cut your family’s tuition bill for the next four years. It is highly profitable (in terms of saving money otherwise spent) to research college admissions. A National Merit finalist can qualify for a full ride at quite a few colleges. Full whack is around a quarter of a million $.

    I highly recommend “College Admission: From Application to Acceptance, Step by Step,” by Robin Mamlet and Christine Vandevelde. http://www.amazon.com/College-Admission-Application-Acceptance-Step-ebook/dp/B004LROUTK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429306067&sr=1-1&keywords=robin+mamlet.

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    1. Cranberry,

      That was magisterial.

      A note or two:

      1. People also do the name switch thing at the graduate level and when applying for faculty jobs. Not kidding.

      2. “This is doubly concerning because the college admissions officers will assume your children have better than average college advisors.”

      That would be revolting–to be penalized because the college thinks your school is doing a better job than it actually is, so this is the best your kid has got.

      So glad not to live in the NE. My kids can provide geographical balance!

      Very nice work!

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    2. This is a public school, so there is almost no college help. But this is a wealthy town, so everybody (not us) hires college consultants. We don’t really give a crap, because he’ll get into NY’s and NJ’s good public universities. Affordable and quality.

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      1. That’s what everyone needs, a guaranteed safety, that’s also affordable, that they are willing to attend. Our kiddo applied to one private HS and that was it. Everyone hears that and thinks that we were arrogant about our kid, but, we weren’t. We were just comfortable with our guaranteed public schools. That’s why a college list that caltech, mit, and your state college is fine, if you’re assured entrance to your public college.

        (BTW, we’ve heard of folks hiring private counselors for middle school admissions)

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      2. bj,

        I realize your kids are legacies to one of those schools, but do you have any thoughts about admissions there, particularly for girls?

        My husband has already talked to a guy at the math department here about our 7th grader, and the math guy said he’d be happy to talk to her and they might be able to get a topologist to talk to her, too.

        That was gratifying, but a little weird that they would take so much interest in a middle schooler, right up until I remembered–duh, she’s a girl.

        As I told my husband later, Mars needs women!

        We would also be quite happy with our state options, but if our C were to get into MIT or Caltech or Carnegie Mellon, it would be very tempting.

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      3. Some people hire college consultants in this town, and at the private schools my children attend. I don’t know why they hire them at the private schools, as I’ve found the college advising to be excellent–very realistic, centered, and useful, aiming at finding a good match for each student. I suspect parents who hire college consultants at these schools don’t want to hear the message that not everyone can get into Harvard.

        I would look for a college consultant with a good reputation from friends–not “he got my kid in,” but “he helped kid stay on top of the process.” I have heard good and bad stories about college consultants. I think they can impede as well as help students. I would certainly want a consultant who follows the IECA guidelines for good practice. http://www.iecaonline.com

        @AmyP, I think math professors at colleges are often very happy to work with interested middle and high school students of any gender. Math is one of those skills which can show up very early. Don’t force your daughter to do it with any idea of improved college outcomes. That’s a really grim approach to life. On the other hand, if she’s really interested in math, and enjoys wrestling with questions, why not?

        I seem to recall you live in Texas. I have gathered that the state university system is very strong. I’m not convinced there would be an advantage to going out of state, or even that far away. If your daughter had to choose between CalTech, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Rice, University of Texas, Duke and Vanderbilt, depending on the financial incentives, I would not choose full pay at MIT, for example, over a merit offer at Georgia Tech, Rice or Vanderbilt. It depends on what your daughter wants to do, of course, and if she wants to be able to visit home easily.

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      4. Cranberry said:

        “@AmyP, I think math professors at colleges are often very happy to work with interested middle and high school students of any gender. Math is one of those skills which can show up very early. Don’t force your daughter to do it with any idea of improved college outcomes. That’s a really grim approach to life. On the other hand, if she’s really interested in math, and enjoys wrestling with questions, why not?”

        Well, C has a 96 in her math right now, she has strong mathematical intuition and spatial skills, she outscored 95% of Texas seniors on her 7th grade SAT this year, she watches Vi Hart’s math videos on youtube for fun, and if that weren’t all enough, she’s got both a dad and a grandpa with advanced degrees in math (and that’s from two different sides of our family), plus a couple of math professors among our extended family. I think she’s probably the first mathy girl in our family, though.

        So, a math for undergraduate is not a crazy stretch for her.

        From talking to my husband (who has a doctorate in math), there is a difficulty in that for a normal mathy person (rather than some sort of savant), you have to get up into the graduate level before you know enough to do original work in math, which if you turned out to not have any original math in you, might be depressing! My husband had a really, really hard time finding his way to be able to do original math work and when I first knew him, I got to see the tail end of his math career, which involved literally hundreds of pages of scribbling and dead ends. There is lots of going down rabbit holes and coming up with no rabbit–at least for a rank and file mathematician.

        Just from the point of view of safety and practicality as well as her own personal satisfaction, I do want our C to do a double major or at least do a minor (ideally some mixture of STEM and humanities): math and classics, math and art, computer science and art, computer science and classics, etc, maybe accompanied by high school teaching certification.

        “I seem to recall you live in Texas.”

        Yep!

        “I have gathered that the state university system is very strong. I’m not convinced there would be an advantage to going out of state, or even that far away. If your daughter had to choose between CalTech, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Rice, University of Texas, Duke and Vanderbilt, depending on the financial incentives, I would not choose full pay at MIT, for example, over a merit offer at Georgia Tech, Rice or Vanderbilt. It depends on what your daughter wants to do, of course, and if she wants to be able to visit home easily.”

        Yes!

        I’m trying to do appropriate self-talk about not paying more per year than the equivalent of UT Austin, but if C were to get an offer from something like Caltech or MIT or Carnegie Mellon that was more expensive, it would require a lot of will-power not to do it. But I think I’m impervious to the charms of the vanilla Big Private Expensive Universities (Rice, Vanderbilt, Duke, etc.), as I know she can do quite as well closer to home much more cheaply.

        For future reference, do they offer Lamaze for parents of high school seniors?

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  8. Sort of on topic: I just got the strangest survey. I was asked how I felt about Common Core, what type of school my kid attended, my political party, and if the election were held today would I vote for “the Democrat Hillary Clinton or the Republican Jeb Bush.”

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    1. I had to work something like 70 hours this week, so I’m already too tired and drunk to have caught the name of the people doing the polling, but I’m not as tire and drunk as whoever figured the safe Republican default was Jeb.

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      1. My guess is that this is a sort of a push poll from the Jeb people, trying to create a vision of inevitability.

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    2. Yeah, I’m going to be able to milk the Common Core into a very nice writing career until Nov 2016.

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  10. I am late to the party, but I just wanted to say that this is what I spend much of my waking hours freaking out about:

    “I go to bed every night before my son finishes his homework. Now, my son is a world class procrastinator, but his late nights can’t be blamed on poor work habits. It’s pretty common around here. The kids go to school for seven hours, then they have two to three hours of sports or theater, and then they have four to five hours of homework. It’s a lot.”

    We do not live on a coast, we live in the Southwest, in a state with some of the poorest education outcomes in the nation. But our son, who is 13, goes to a private school, sounds exactly like her son. I stayed up with him last night, because I am seriously concerned about his sleep and wanted to track how long it took him to do each assignment. It is crush time and they have a big project due. He spent 7 hours total. A more normal night is 4-5 hours. He also is on a swim team, but I am increasingly letting him skip practice so he can get more work done. At one point last night he said to me, “I am not sure a world class education is worth my happiness.” I had to put my foot down at midnight and make him go to bed. He still had about an hour of math and a 300 word assignment that generally takes him 2 hours each week.

    Like Laura, I am acutely aware of how norms like these for some kids are so markedly different from kids who are poor, or who don’t have the opportunities that we have. I am also increasingly thinking about opting out (not just of standardized tests, but of the whole shebang). We could forgo the second salary that helps us pay for private school. But I fear that we would have to leave school all together to have some semblance of a life where we are not always trying to cram everything in. I love my work, I want my kids to love learning and build a fulfilling life, and we are not high pressure parents for whom only prestigious colleges and professions will do. But by choosing this path for our kids, we are setting them up to burn out before they even get to high school.

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    1. I still stand by my comment above that I believe that 12-13 hours a day of school work/homework is excessive. Would our kids lose much by pulling it back to 10 hours a day with some wiggle room to spend time with family/friends, be physically active, enjoy the arts, read a book for pleasure, etc?

      I’d love to see some stats on the marginal cost in terms of health and well being for those extra 2-3 hours a day.

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