On The Mend From Around the Bend

I suppose I should put a more serious heading on this entry but it's catchy. Besides it's another beautiful Spring day and I just paid ConEd so the power will stay on for another month. And the flowers are coming up in the backyard, right where I planted them. Apparently on this less well-heeled side of town--read: fewer mini-mansions--the squirrels are not so smart. They didn't manage to dig up and eat all of the flower bulbs. Not even a third. Ah, the little known advantages of living on this side of town. Dumb, less ambitious squirrels.

Anyway, Kid 1 is doing better. He has been excused from French class. They call it "auditing". He goes, sings the songs and does his thing but he doesn't get a grade. He can take it again as a freshman. I tried to get the language requirement dropped for him at the beginning of sixth grade but they wouldn't do it. Now it's done. He can't write English and I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what a 'tense' is, so it wasn't going to work very easily, if at all.

He is seeing the school psychologist once a week. Who knew that they will actually do therapy with a kid if necessary? I didn't. He is seeing a shrink--psychiatrist--later this week to get his meds checked too. He says his meds are fine and he usually knows so I suspect they'll stay the same. I hope so.

Now that there is no stress about the end of the quarter and getting assignments in, he's okay. I have no idea how his report card will come out. This will be one we don't bother to open probably. His father says it was the stress that pushed him to the edge this time. I tried to talk to the Irish Typhoon about the idea that he'll likely not attend a four year college but got no where. I can't help thinking that it will mean one less set of tuition payments for him so perhaps he sees it as a positive. I know that fewer kids are buying into the 'four year degree=good job' mindset but still.

Being a kid who doesn't go to college isn't easy. For one thing all of your peers are  at school and it's lonely. You're not old enough to drink so you can't meet your friends in a bar and it's hard to meet new people. Not going to college is still viewed as a sign of failure. I saw a friend's youngest, learning-differenced kid go through this. Another kid with a fragile mind, he found he couldn't endure the stress of living in the city even though he's a successful creative guy at 24 or so.

But people are wising up when it comes to the conventional four year college formula. If you pay $50,000 per year for four years and your kid ends up living in the basement after graduation where is the price/performance? I marvel at some of the college stickers I see on parents' cars in this area. "Keene College", "Denison University", and on and on. The price is the same everywhere but I can't help wondering how any parent can feel secure that paying $200,000 for a four year degreen from a tiny, no name private school is going to give a kid a leg up. I think more and more parents are going to see that the equation is unbalanced.