Thursday, March 28, 2019

Early Admission

The recent college admissions scandal has grabbed headlines for the last couple of weeks. Apparently, wealthy parents (some celebrities) have paid large sums of money and falsified test scores and athletic accomplishments in order to get their kids into top schools. I read an article that explains that this highly visible scandal is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to parents overparenting their kids. Caroline and I were blessed with two phenomenal children.  I'm sure we messed a bunch of stuff up along the way, but I remember getting a call from my high school age daughter when she had blown out a tire on our car after she hit a curb. "Dad, I don't know what to do."  I gave her the name of the tire shop that we used regularly and asked her to get the tire replaced.  I remember vividly saying, "You can't just show up and tell them to put on a new tire.  You need to call them before you go and get a price.  They have a different price for walk-ins." She has told me since then that she was horrified to make that call, but we look back on it now and laugh. I hope that story is one of many where we gave our kids the responsibility they deserved to handle things on their own when it was very tempting to drop everything and bail them out.  In thinking back to the current college admissions scandal, I wonder if the kids knew what the parents were doing for them while it was going on and what a terrible scar this will leave on them.

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