Sisters are great. I am so glad you are getting a bit of a break. Hugs Nan

Wow wow wow!!! I am so happy for all you guys! What wonderful news! Nan

Well, one disadvantage of a tech school is that if the student decides that a tech career is not for them, they have to transfer rather than just switch majors, which is much more traumatic. The whole small polytechnic can be set up to support and educate tech type students, which can be an advantage. The education probably will be more focused on the interests of techies. That is an advantage if the student's interests are all technical but can be a disadvantage if the student has widespread interests in nontechnical fields. For example, there might be fewer choice of history or literature classes and fewer foreign languages taught. There might be more choices for fulfilling technical electives at a polytechnic and the educational path might include more interesting technical classes right away, since the school is more sure that is where its students interests lie. All three of our boys went to small technical schools. We found that access to labs and workshops was really unrestricted compared to those at our own large university and their education was much more hands-on and project oriented. (There might be less difference in cs.) We also found that their schools had realistic expectations about the students' abilities. There might be more male students than female students. Quite a lot more. This might be good or bad. The students at technical schools are ... mostly techies. This also might be good or might be bad. Both schools our sons were at had policies to discourage cheating. A small school gets smaller as you grow. I think these differences would perhaps matter less for a cs degree, other than the typical big school small school differences? Maybe? I don't know. It would depend on how vibrant the cs departments were in both places, I think. Our sons are really happy they chose their schools, despite the disadvantages. They got the educations they wanted in a way that suited them. None of us can really imagine them surviving the big flagship their dad and I survived. Nor can we imagine them getting set up for their jobs they wanted as well there. Nan

Oh Sadie- I am so so sorry. Many many hugs

Hugs

I agree with the talking part. : ) But to each their own, I guess. I also agree about your last two paragraphs. I think you put it really well.

I usually use a camp stove on the picnic table for pots, and the fire for anything we want to toast or grill or cook on skewers or foil. A kelty kettle is great, if you can afford one. You can boil water as fast as on a stove with few sticks. Our general strategy is to cook breakfast on the stove, eat pbj or cheese sandwiches for lunch, and chop whatever we are eating for supper up in chunks and cook them one or two chunks at a time on skewers. This takes awhile but is the evening's entertainment. I guess it wouldn't be very relaxing if you had 6 small children unfamiliar waving hot pointy things in each other's faces, but I did it with 3 small boys who were used to open fires without a problem. I drizzle olive oil over any vegetables before cooking. You can cook chunks of cheese, apples, and lumps of dough on skewers, too. Pita bread quarters toast well on skewers. When I have a choice, I prefer to make the fire out of sticks rather than logs. It is much faster and it is easier to control the heat. I gather everything ahead of time, then start the fire with some twist s of unshiny scrap paper under a pile of little dry twigs between a v of two big sticks. (Shiny paper doesn't want to burn.) Then I carefully add pencil sized sticks to the pile. Then finger sized. Then "big " stuff, which is anything I can break with a foot or over my knee. Keep in mind that fire likes to burn where two sticks are touching and stack accordingly. I blow gently to get things going. With this method, I can have a fire ready for cooking in a few minutes. It also goes out quickly when I am done with it. We call these cooking fires and the log fires we make for sitting around in the evening camp fires. Either way, the trick is to make a small fire. You can't get close enough to a big fire to do anything with it. It is surprisingly hard to keep people from drowning your nice cooking coals with lots of big cold wood. : ) Nan Ps you can lay down a layer of sticks and build on that if the ground is damp. Bring a bucket for water in case of accidents. We bring 5 gal. buckets to sit on around the fire while cooking, too. We can reach the fire better from a stool that from one of those canvas chairs. Nan Eta Making tight twists of paper works better than just crunching it in balls. It fits with the sticks better. For a first trip, you might consider buying some fire starters- waxy sticks that burn well. For log fires, I do it like Ktgrok. : )

I just read an NPR article about racial inequality in higher education. Among other things, it talked about supporting students once they are in college. Florida State University was mentioned as having a good record of racial equality in its graduation rates. It has weekly meetings where problems of inequity and appropriate support are discussed. The example given had nothing to do with academic readiness or ability. They found that Latina students were being derailed by family commitments - students were going home to help and then having trouble getting transportation back to campus- so they hired a bus to take students home Fri afternoon and return them Sun. Another sort of background scaffolding... This reminded me of another sort of support we offered our sons, one that had nothing to do with ramps - we protected our college students from other sorts of commitments. They were excused from many clan events (like birthday parties) even if they were near enough to get to them. They were excused from family tasks and chores during short vacations. We didn't overload them with family minutia unless they wanted it, and we didn't deliver bad news during finals. The assumption was that they would have their hands full studying during term time and during holidays, they were supposed to be recouping. This didn't mean they didn't do a lot of dishes for me or go help Grampa paint the boat, but we left it up to them to volunteer rather than requesting help. I put my car at their disposal during holidays as best I could so they could see friends. We tried to do a few fun family things so we got a chance to visit and left them alone the rest of the time. We tried to keep the house quiet when they were sleeping (small house) and keep any sick relatives away. All this was harder to pull off when they were living at home going to community college because the temptation to interrupt them or expect help from them was greater when we could see them, but we tried. We talked about it a lot to try to reduce the omnipresent guilt that comes from playing video games while someone else is doing dishes. They greatly appreciated that sort of help. It also set expectations of hard work. This probably wouldn't have worked if we had had students who weren't trying to get themselves through college as best they could, but as long as ours aren't exhausted or depressed, they tend to be hard workers. Nan

I had small babies, so minimal damage. I also am pretty strong at my core. When I suddenly started leaking, I also started having neck cramps. When I searched for the solution to the neck problem, low magnesium cropped up and another symptom turned out to be leaking. A magnesium supplement solved the leaking and helped cut down neck problems, low energy, and migraines. Just in case it helps someone... Nan

Fot the record, youngest went to one of those 60+ K schools. The older two went to out of state schools that weren't that much less than that. Many people we know have. How are we all affording it? Usually, by cobbling stuff together - a combination of scholarships, savings from grandparents and parents, summer jobs, loans, and monthly payments by the parents. Often the parents do something to make more money during the college years. It seriously impacts the parents' ability to save for retirement. It is done anyway. For some students, one of those expensive schools is a good fit. Youngest's school has set him up really well for the future. Nan Eta The price of college was no surprise to us but I have been in the room when unsuspecting parents found out how much their alma mater costs now. Those were some seriously upset parents.

Holding you and your family in the light. I am so sorry.

I am still reading the Dune series, with Heyer for light relief. Nan

I am so sorry. Holding everyone in the light. I came on this morning to say tell your children you love them because an aquantance's 20something is missing. Just awful. Nan

A bit over a third of the houses in my small town New England neighborhood have grown kids living with parents in them. This is common where I live. Life is easier living together and pooling resources. Some people don't get it though. Nan

That is indeed highly annoying. As the parent of late bloomers I got that sort of advice. Thank goodness I knew better than to follow it. Now I have a 23yo, a 26yo, and a 30yo living at home and am even more subject to it. Sometimes I explain that the combination of family preferences, school loans, and live-on-a-ship for 3months at a time jobs makes this a really good option for our family, but usually I just think, "Glad my parents weren't like you!" and pity their kids. A lot of perfectly nice people told me they would have cut my hair short this winter when I couldn't use one arm and my husband had learn to braid hair. People are weird. Nan

I guess it is a gpod thong people don't stop learning just because they are a grown up. Nan

Mine don't request anything but they get excited about my pizza (breadmaker crust), oatmeal bread(niiiice breadmaker), homemade mac and cheese, and fish in all forms. We eat a lot of fish - chowder, baked, raw in sushi, smoked with goat cheese... Now I am hungry.

Never say never. I went through a review of trig with my middle one so he could retake a college class more successfully lol. : ) Nan

Congratulations. It is a hard transition. Lots of hugs. Nan

"Scaffolding in the background" ... What a good way to put it! That's what we do. My parents did it for me. Their parents did it for them. Coaching on interactions with others - yes, we do that. Actually participating with the student - no, we don't do that. The exception was getting our high schoolers (and our extra student) signed up for community college. I sat in on the beginning meetings with advisors, etc., especially with the extra young adult because she was absolutely petrified. This was a person who had lived on her own and supported herself since high school, too. She just was very unprepared and completely intimidated. A bit more direct help was really important in her case. Fortunately, the community college was used to it. It was just grand to see her relax and figure out she could take care of all that on her own, after a few semesters. : ) Nan ETA - Even in that case, I never spoke to her professors myself. I coached her (and my own children) on what to say, but I never did the saying for them. I can't imagine the professors being willing to talk about anything important with me. Wouldn't that be a breach of privacy of some sort? I don't think even the school that told the students and parents point blank that they sent grades home to the parents would have been willing to do that. There were in between people we were supposed to contact if we suspected a problem.

We toasted the graduate. At that time, my husband made a short speech about hard work and best wishes for the future. Toasts on special occasions are normal in our family so this didn't embarrass anyone. You could do a toast when you brought out the cake. (That is when we usually do it.) I think a surprise announcement of the AA degree via a second cake is a really fun idea. A second toast and speech to follow it up would be fun and make everyone laugh. I gathered as much of the graduate's reading list as I could on a shelf and stuck up a variety of photos and paperwork on a bulletin board for people to look at, if they wanted. People who were curious about how homeschooling worked spent time studying the projects, drawings, papers, and paperwork. The people who had been involved all along enjoyed looking at the pictures. It marked the occasion but didn't embarrass the graduate. I have a really cute picture of middle one and his best friend clinking wine glasses of milk over the cake. (It was chocolate and eating chocolate cake without washing it down with a glass of milk is hard for our family grin.) Nan

I believe you about there being a societal shift. We have relatives and friends in academia who say the same thing. And I certainly agree that there are some kinds of helicoptering that stunt growth. That said, what DO you do when you yourself have suffered from the results of bad college advising and you are aware of how important course choice is and you can't really afford the extra year that bad choices could lead to? And what DO you do if you have a late bloomer? As far as life patterns go, starting engineering school at 19 is easier than starting at 22, when all the skills to manage totally on one's own are finally in place, I think. Starting at 19, receiving help along the way, and graduating at 22 allows one to start adult life at 22 rather than 26. And what DO you do if you are a really high strung family? Offering emotional support throughout their lives is a viable option, I think? There are some things that are easier to manage at 50 than at 40, and not really manageable all on one's own at 20 or even 30. Again, getting on with one's life by going to college while staying in closer contact with one's parents than some of one's fellow students isn't such a bad option, I think? Of course, none of this involves flying in to clean your child's room once a month, but when I hear stories like that, I wonder if something else isn't going on. Perhaps "cleaning" is a privacy screen for delivering medicine whose prescription would be hard to transfer, or checking on a student who struggles with homesickness or depression or an eating disorder or some other thing where actually being with the student for a bit to comfort or check on them is necessary. Or maybe the student is fine and it is the parent who needs to see the student periodically to help ease empty nest depression. I wonder how much of the helicoptering is because many of us went to universities that didn't provide enough support - poor advising, poor dorm supervision, poor food, etc. Some of us say I-survived-you-will-too, but others of us can see that we survived only by getting lucky and don't want those same odds for our children. We are actually a combination of the two. Food and dorm supervision - we survived and you will too. Advising - we want to up the odds. Poor professor - you'll survive but we advise you to compensate for the bad grade you will inevitably get by making sure you do extra well in other your other courses and make sure you learn the material on your own or you won't pass the next class. Friend choice - happy to talk it over if you bring it up but it is your business. Health issues - we want to up the odds so we are proactive and will help or will help you find the appropriate help. Sports problems - if it is a health problem we are proactive about it but otherwise you will survive. Internships - we want to up the odds so we try to help. No money to play - you will survive. No money to pay rent - we help. No money to fix your wreck of a car - we help. As far as we can tell, they don't have any trouble at work once they are graduated from college and working. They are amazed at the things their workmates don't know how to do. As far as living skills go, we continue to offer help as new things come along. As our own parents are still doing for us. Life problems like car problems are handled the way they always are in our clan - we try to help each other out with loads of emotional support, loans of cars and money, painting parties, do-it-yourself house repairs, combined vacations, childcare, nursing, or whatever. And I wonder if part of the cause of the societal shift is that in some areas, there are fewer good long-term options for people without a college degree. (...which is part of the vicious circle involving poor job skills...) Nan

We have found that building a ramp for our boys works better than leaving them to try to scale the cliff by themselves, getting part way, and then falling back down and having to try again with injuries. Ramps work better in our family. We help/do a lot at the beginning and once they know how to do something, encourage them to do it on their own. When they can do it without its taking a ton of time and energy, they do. We sort of leave the timing up to them. Maybe this wouldn't work if they weren't trying to do their part, but they mostly are, at least, they are as much as we are. We seem to get much better results this way than the cliff way. We've tried both. That said, I can't imagine calling a professor. Our schools have had pretty specific channels for parents to use if they had concerns and we have stuck to those. We have overseen choosing classes in the beginning. It is complicated and mistakes cost beaucoup money. Nan Nan

Yeah!!! I am so happy for you! Good for him! Huge relief, hunh? Nan

Sadie, many hugs. I have had at least two MASSIVE parenting fails as well. It is indeed sobering, but the good news is that parenting doesn't have to stop just because your child isn't a child anymore. If you keep the relationship, or mend it, you can fix mistakes. Nan