Why Mom doesn’t always know best
Hand-me-down dreams don’t always fit
If I look a little bit smug on my first day of school at Lansdale Catholic in 1980, I couldn’t help it. I was extremely happy to be headed off to L.C. instead of what would have been my mom’s choice of high school for me—Gwynedd Mercy Academy.
From the very beginning, I wanted to go to L.C., the archdiocesan high school where all my friends were headed. My mom, on the other hand, thought an all-girls academy would be a better pick for her straight-A, college-bound student.
I was sure that I could be just as successful at L.C. My mom was particularly worried that (and I’m laughing as I type this) if I went to a co-ed school, I might be too distracted by boys and vulnerable to falling off the college bandwagon.
My mom had loved her high school experience at all-girls Hallahan, and it was hard to convince her that a single-sex school wasn’t the linchpin to ensuring a great high school experience for me. But even 14-year-old me saw the advantages of being used to operating in a co-ed environment if I were headed out in a few short years to conquer the equal-opportunity world now open to bright young women.
I have to think too that my attending an academy would have been a way for my mom to vicariously live out the high school dream she’d been denied. My mom had won a partial scholarship to an academy she would have loved to attend, but my grandmom thought a private school would be too highfalutin. To my grandmom, whose mom had denied her the chance to even go to high school, the archdiocesan high school was good enough.
The battle of L.C. vs. Gwynedd was a fierce one, especially since I’d won a partial scholarship to Gwynedd. My mom advocated hard for Gwynedd. But to her credit, ultimately she let me decide where I was going to high school. And once I made my decision, my mom was totally supportive of my choice. I never heard an “if only you’d gone to the academy.”
As it turned out, I enjoyed my high school years at L.C. just as much as my mom enjoyed hers. I wasn’t distracted by the boys, managed to graduate in the Top Ten of my class, and then headed off to college and grad school just like my mom had hoped.
I still maintain that I was on to something as far as being better prepared to function in a business world half-full of men. And L.C. delivered a really big bonus: I met my husband there—one upside of co-ed!
Later, I’d follow my mom’s good example and let my daughters make their own choices about high school, even though I held my breath a little while one of them considered attending Gwynedd.
The fact that I hoped my daughter would choose the archdiocesan high school instead of the academy perhaps points to one almost universal truth of parenting—as long as a choice we made worked out well for us, we tend to default to believing a similar choice will suit our kids.
My mom’s positive experience at an all-girls school made her less sure about sending me to a co-ed high school. My positive experience at an archdiocesan high school had me crossing my fingers that my daughter would choose the same.
Why do parents do this? My theory is that most parents have the goal of always doing what’s best for their kids–but knowing exactly what’s best all the time is exhausting.
Parenting requires so many decisions that we often default to what worked for us. We’d be totally overwhelmed if we didn’t make some choices based on our past experiences.
So our experiences become the starting point–like when I assumed my daughters would enjoy piano lessons and Girl Scouts just like I did. Sometimes that proved true, and sometimes it didn’t.
It’s also tempting for parents to transfer dreams they haven’t achieved themselves to their kids. Look at how easy it was for my mom to make the case for the academy’s merits because that was the high school experience she would have chosen for herself had she been allowed. I believe that, consciously or subconsciously, my mom saw my attending an academy as a way to make up for the dream she’d been denied.
We parents often start off assuming that our preferences and dreams will fit you just as well as they fit us.
It can be a heavy lift for a parent to let go of a dream when it turns out their child has something else in mind. That’s why I so admire my mom’s willingness to let me choose the high school that was right for me.
I believe that everyone is happier when parents respect the principle that grown children are entitled to be the authors of their own lives.
But I also believe that sometimes it’s necessary to extend some grace to parents who have tried to nudge you in the direction that they believe is best.
With any luck, your parents will come to understand that the best dreams are the ones you dream up for yourself.