Ask the grumpies: What do you hope your kids will do differently than you did?

nicoleandmaggie

Jun 9

CG asks:

What do you hope your kids do differently in college/life than you did?/do

I'm not really sure? Things worked out pretty well for us, and our kids are in much different situations. For example, we started poor and they have the luxury of starting well-off. It's just an entirely different base.

They're also different people than we are. DC1 has already not met hir life-partner in high school. Zie thinks zie might be asexual, but could also be demi-sexual (like me), or may just be still too young for romance. Although things worked out great for DH and me, DC1 isn't DH or me. So what will be different is hir romantic life, but what I hope for is the same-- for hir to be gloriously happy with how hir romantic life turns out, however it turns out.

DC1 also didn't get into my undergrad and doesn't seem interested in economics, though who knows, that may change. (Must say though, if zie had wanted to do economics, zie should have gone to the state flagship or Macalester-- Carleton's econ department is oddly focused on macro, probably because of proximity to UMN, and they're not very research active.) So... that will be different. But I hope what is the same is that zie will end up majoring in things that zie loves and zie will end up training hir mind to "think like an X" for the X of hir choice.

I hope DC1 makes more and better friends than I did in college. Most of my relationships were built on proximity and not particularly long-lasting. But only if that's something DC1 wants.

If DC1 goes to graduate school, I hope the transition isn't as awful as mine was. On the one hand, working a bit first would be good. On the other hand, if all goes well, zie will only be 20 at graduation, so maybe going directly to grad school is the right move.

I do hope DC1 doesn't get stuck in a red state after graduation. So that's something different. It honestly wasn't that bad when we first moved here, but in the Trump era it has gotten horrible.

Grumpy Nation, if you have children, what do you hope your kids do differently in college/life? What do you think your parents wanted for you that was different than what they had?