Category Archives: Problem Parents

Examples of situations where the parent, not the athlete, was the problem and how we can learn from their situations

Changing Prep Schools Too Many Times

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Too many families these days make the mistake of changing prep schools (and colleges) for the wrong reasons and/or too many times. These emails are part of an exchange between me and a parent who contacted me looking for advice on having his child change prep schools. This same parent opted not to hire me a year ago when the child last switched schools. This is the child’s third school in four years (one public, one parochial, one prep (he reclassed)) and they want to switch to a fourth school for his final year. His younger brother also currently attends the same school and they would like the two to stay together.

 

Kyle,
I tend to look at a much bigger picture than most families and others involved in the process. In your case, I think Michael should stay at his current prep school. After 3 schools in 4 years, it’s pretty clear the problem isn’t the schools, it’s Michael, you and his mom. You are the common denominator. If your goal is to best position yourselves for the future, the best thing you can do right now is to stick it out for once. That will start to try to reverse the bad foundation you’ve laid and the bad habit you’re all in of picking the wrong school and/or leaving when things get tough. (As it stands now, you’re likely to keep doing the same thing when he gets to college.) I think the best plan for everyone is to stay where he is and hire me now to help you with the college process. That’s the big picture.

If you want to just look at the smaller picture and decide you definitely want to change schools, I have a couple that I think are exactly what you’re looking for. I said yesterday that you can’t afford to make another mistake, but there’s another way to look at it that’s probably more accurate or at least more realistic. At this point, from a basketball standpoint, you have nothing to lose. You know you’re not going to get the basketball you want at his current school next year and you’ve already been to 3 schools so one more isn’t going to make much of a difference. If you want to, you can definitely put him in a better overall basketball situation for his last year. This will put him in the best position to be recruited and ready to play at the college level.

I know that ideally, Sam would move to the same school as Michael. The schools I have in mind could both accommodate and be good matches for Sam as well.

 

Mike

 

Dad’s response:

Mike,

I appreciate you keeping it real.  Kris and I both deep down felt the right move is to stick it out at his current school.  Michael loves the school, academics are great, etc.

Kris and I plan to have a call with his AD and coach and express our concerns, give them a chance.  You are right, Michael needs to stick it out and us supporting his habit of when it gets tough roll out needs to stop.

 

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Let’s Compare: Responsibility?

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Taylor is a post-grad who got full aid plus spending money and plane fare to one of the top 10 prep schools in the country. He was hoping to earn a college scholarship after his PG year, but wasn’t quite good enough. Still, he and his family got what almost every family hopes for – a very top academic D3 school with a list price of $70,000 for less than $5,000/yr. Instead, he’s chosen to go to junior college. This is a problem for his prep school coach, the prep school admissions office, the prep school college counseling office and the prep school itself. The school’s list of college matriculations is nothing short of incredible. That’s why families from around the world are willing to write the check for $65,000/yr. to attend. The school doesn’t hand out full financial aid so kids can go to junior college when they’ve got infinitely better options. The school knows not everyone’s a scholarship athlete. They’re fine with that. But picking a junior college over a top D3 for no good reason is not acceptable, especially when the family told the prep school twice before being accepted that they would take the right D3 offer if they didn’t get a scholarship. Now that the junior college decision has been made, this family has no qualms or guilt and apparently feels no responsibility to the school or others, especially the next kid who wants the same opportunity and now might not get it .

 

Haley is a freshman star three sport athlete who gets nearly full aid to attend a very good prep school. She’s already one of the most popular and respected students on campus, both with faculty and other students. When her school deal was originally finalized she said she felt a responsibility to live up to what was expected of her. At the end of her highly successful first year, she was very proud of her success. One of the reasons, she said, was the pressure she felt because she knew she wasn’t just trying to achieve her own goals. She also knew she was representing other people and any future girls who wanted the chance she got. She’d been given something great, something she loved, and wanted to live up to it.

 

 

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Email of the Day: Problem Parents / Too Many Schools

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These days it’s much more common than it used to be to find kids changing schools multiple times during their high school years. It’s something of an epidemic. I think it’s consistent with the overall mentality of immediate satisfaction in our society today, and it’s not good.

Here’s an email I wrote to some parents whose child must be close to some kind of record for number of schools attended (6 in 3 states), especially for a very good student.

 

Ron,

For 30 years I’ve guided families through the prep school and college process. It’s my full time job. I get paid to do it. I help families in similar situations every year, and my guidance almost always pays for itself. In your case, I wish I could help, but I can’t.

I’ve watched the highlight videos and I’ve been doing some homework on your situation. The pieces are coming together.

You and your wife are friendly, highly educated people. I’ve always enjoyed the conversations you and I have had, but you completely lost your sense of reality on this topic a long time ago. On my website, there’s a section of blogs entitled “Otherwise likeable, intelligent people”. You’ve made the list. If it’s accurate (or even close) that your son has attended six different schools in three different states since he started high school, that’s a huge red flag. It’s so bad in so many ways, I almost don’t know where to start, but here’s where it ends. I’m going to tell you what you don’t want to hear. You’re a problem parent, and that’s holding your son back more than anything else in this equation.

Your son has scholarship level athleticism (although he doesn’t play the game that well). It’s realistic to think he could get a D2 or NAIA offer, and he still might. However, if his academic profile is as you described (3.4 GPA, 1700+ SAT), the much better choice, the smarter choice, is a very good D3 school (a UAA, a NESCAC or similar school) for the next four years. He’d get a great education, have a great basketball experience, and, finally, get some stability.

Given your history, I expect you will choose a JuCo for a year or two, then yet another school after that. I said at the beginning I’d like to help, but I can’t. I’d have to tell college coaches about your son’s history and that they’re asking for trouble if they take him (although they almost assuredly would know it without me telling them). They’d ask me why. I’d tell them the parents are a big problem. Then they’d ask me why I bothered contacting them in the first place, and they’d be right.

Sorry for being blunt. I’ll call you later to discuss.

Thanks.

 

Mike

 

 

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Don’t Leave PG Year Early

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Leaving a PG year before graduating is almost always a bad decision. Not only do student-athletes lose educational benefits, they also call into question personal characteristics like integrity and dedication when they fail to live up to their commitments. Ironically, those that leave early are usually the ones who need to stay the most.

Education is about life preparation. Prep school, especially a PG year, and even more than high school, is all about life preparation. It’s not just what is learned in the classroom, it’s about maturity, responsibility, decision making and character. It’s about teaching the student-athlete what to do in college when there are fewer rules and more choices. It’s about how the student will react in certain situations. What will he or she do when no one’s watching? Bad decisions such as leaving a PG year before graduating pave the way for bad decisions in college.

Here is just one glaring example of a poor choice by a student and family, both of whom should know better.

Derrick had no scholarship offers after his senior year of high school. An average student, his grades were not keeping him from receiving a scholarship, but he needed to learn what it takes to make his grades and test scores reflect his natural intelligence. He opted for a post-graduate year at a school with an excellent track-record in his sport and a level of education that matched it. Three weeks short of his prep school graduation, and just days after receiving a good, mid-level D1 offer, Derrick left his prep school and went home, claiming he wanted to spend more time with his family before starting college summer school the following month.

His prep school coach, a former D1 standout and excellent student at one of the academically top rated D1 schools in the country, talked to Derrick at length about the decision. He accurately pointed out the flaws in his decision making and urged him to reconsider. So did the Director at the school. What came out in the conversations was not an issue of time with family at all. As it turns out, a two week family trip to Europe was already planned for the day after graduation, so there would be plenty of time with family. What came out in the conversation, the real issue, was that Derrick had been slacking off in his classes and would have to work hard to catch up. In addition, he was going to have to take end of the year exams. Despite knowing this before he agreed to do a PG year, he now claimed that was going to be too much work, especially since he had already done it last year as a high school senior.

Teenagers make questionable decisions. Parents are supposed to know better. Any parent knows parenting isn’t easy, but it’s part of the job description. Derrick’s parents supported his decision. They invoked the all to common refrain “he’s 18, we can’t make him do it” and offered no resistance. His prep school coach explained to Derrick’s parents how much more difficult college will be given the increased demands of sport and classes, and how they were setting a bad precedent by supporting Derrick’s decision to not live up to his current responsibilities. Nothing changed. Parents and child missed a valuable opportunity to increase their chances of future success.

Another adult in the support system who failed Derrick was the post-graduate director at the prep school. Contrary to the coach and school Director, he offered virtually no resistance to the decision, begging the question of what exactly he is responsible for in his position.

Derrick’s future college coach, more than anyone, had the power to change the situation if he wanted to. One simple sentence telling Derrick to finish prep school and that would have been the end of it. A future college coach’s word is gospel to a brand new recruit, and Derrick would have done whatever his college coach told him to. Instead, the coach did what’s all too common. He took the path of least resistance by not challenging the family. Like many in today’s litigious society, he chose to avoid confrontation and the possibility of offending anyone. Ironically, he cost himself, his athletic program and the college in the process. Even though Derrick had accepted the scholarship offer, the university admissions department had yet do admit him. Leaving prep school early was not going to help that. In addition, Derrick’s degree from a prestigious prep school would have reflected very well on the college athletic program and the kind of kids the coach is recruiting. This college generally gets few, if any, students from schools of that caliber, the athletic program almost none. More importantly, Derrick likely might have received some college credits from his PG year. With the demands on time at the college level, along with the increased difficulty of the courses, many athletes drop courses during the season or take a lighter load and less challenging classes to begin with. Having credit for some courses before he arrived on campus would be a significant benefit. It also might have allowed him to take graduate courses as a senior, which would again reflect well on the sports program. Finally, college is an academic institution first. The idea of a college coach signing off on this type of decision is at best ironic, at worst unacceptable. Both the kid and college would have benefitted if he’d stayed just three more weeks at prep school.

Some would rationalize decisions like Derrick’s by saying the student will make the right decisions when it comes time in college. History shows that’s unlikely. As in sports, the sooner a child learns life’s fundamentals and forms good habits, the better the chances of future success.

Others would say the prep school coach and the school Director are biased, that their reasons for not wanting the student to leave school are motivated by self-interest. While there’s certainly some truth to that, it’s dwarfed by the objective facts as stated above. These are people in educational leadership positions whose job it is to provide the best guidance they can to teenagers and parents. They got it right.

Not only do athletes cheat themselves emotionally and educationally when they fail to finish a PG year, they exhibit a lack of work ethic, commitment and perseverance that should be concerning to college coaches. They’re going to get the sport benefit either way. They might as well get the non-athletic benefits while they’re there. By leaving school early, not only did Derrick forfeit a degree from a prestigious prep school that would have followed him for life, he and his parents missed a great chance to improve his chances of success in college and in life.

 

 

 

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