LC, I’m glad to see that you’ve pretty much got things straightened out. Yeah, parents can be dumb, dense, intolerant, or just plain ignorant as how to approach us young 'uns sometimes. On the other hand, as infuriating as it can be, the real world (which is to say, the thing you’re confronted with as soon as you move away) is a million times more so.
Even college, something of a second haven for teens, can be tough. Let me tell you something you will need to know if you’re planning on doing college w/out financial support from your parents. If your parents put you down as a dependent on their taxes, then you will be straight up screwed out of financial aid. Not entirely, mind you, but your estimated family contribution will be based upon what your family can afford, whether they are helping you or not.
If your college has a really understanding finaid department, they can help you out with university scholarships, but keep in mind that these are usually just discounts on tuition/fees and will not translate into spendable money for you until it’s combined with “real” scholarships.
This isn’t to say that things will be impossible as you’ll obviously get your EFC and any award letters far in advance of your actual enrollment, but you’ll need to file your papers farther in advance, probably have to do much pleading with the finaid departments, and it wouldn’t hurt to apply to a few extra “safety net” colleges as well.
For more advice, I’d recommend going to http://www.xap.com as they have a fairly comprehensive (if unnecessarily verbose) financial aid section.
You guys thankx a lot. It just seems like my mom and I will never get back what we had. Today I come home from a rought nite at work, and she’s back at crabbing at me. Calling me a liar. And just ealier today, b4 going to work, she was calling all of my family raving about how I made the National Honor Roll. It’s driving me insane…
I don’t think anyone really mentioned this, but have you ever gone to a therapist? It isn’t anything to be ashamed of. You may think your mom needs to go, not you, but a therapist could help you deal with your anger toward your mother. I have gone through TONS of things with my parents, many of which are still going on which I could write a novel on. I can’t really tell you it gets better, but if you don’t believe it will then it is really hard to get through the days.
It’s a cliche, it’s dumb, it feels like a lie, but odds are she crabs because she cares. I obviously don’t know your mom, so I won’t get too far up on the soapbox, but I think we all tend to forget our social graces when our loved ones are doing something that can hurt them. According to one of my best friends, for instance, I full on yelled at her our freshman year at college because I thought her drunken tomfoolery (read: hooking up with random guys) could get her hurt.
Now while your mom’s uneasiness (assuming that’s what it is) may not seem like the most rational thing to you, keep in mind that most of us are slaves to the media and according to the media, the second a teen steps foot out the door they’re busy dropping e, getting raped, kidnapped, otherwise impregnated, drunk, or shooting at/getting shot by classmates and other undesirables.
There really is no easy answer (therapy probably being the easiest, but still incredibly difficult), and, personally, I’d recommend that you just look ahead to college and not burn any bridges. After all, those burned bridges are really hard to rebuild.
My mother crabbed because she did not like me, has never liked me. Personally, I would not write a letter because that is what I did do and she used it as a big opportunity for drama and more nastiness. It did not help. You think it would, but if chances are it won’t. If she were open to listening to you , she would have.
What I would do:
Sit tight until you go to college. Just think of this last bit as a purgatory you have to endure. It is temporary. You can make it.
Find a school that is far enough away that you won’t be home every weekend or every month and that she cannot visit very often. If you can go with a better college with their help as long as you can choose your classes, go for it. Take their money. If you think they won’t leave you in peace to make your own academic decisions, choose a school they cannot have any power over.
When you get to school, DO NOT rebel against them by doing stupid shit. Study and work hard and get the best grades you can. Since you are not there everyday the picking can’t be either. If she finds a way to bother you can probably avoid her. Do what you want. Don’t make desisions based on what she would approve of or not, just on what you think is right for you.
Graduate and continue your life, If she takes credit you can tell her that she is wrong, or just ignore her. It is your life and you deserve the credit.
She may treat you better after that or she may pick at you the rest of your life if you let her. I have found cutting off communications periodically keeps my mother in check.
I agree with KK’s posts. Parents that set boundaries and expect responsibility from their kids still feel love and pride. It is unrealistic to expect only praise from the world. High school is tough, but it only gets tougher from there. The best thing you can do as a parent is teach your child to be inquisitive, always do their best and treat
others with respect. Truthfully, there are thousands of kids out there with 4.3 GPA’s - maybe it’s more important to be well-rounded and include other activites in your life (volunteer work, sports) than dwell on numbers and scores.
Too many kids do as little as necessary to squeak by. There
are a few teachers in my family, and the general consesus is that a C+ student who works his butt off and raises his grade to a B is just as worthy of praise as a straight A student. Sometimes pressure to succeed comes from within, but we try to blame it on someone else’s expectations. Be happy with yourself and others will be happy, too.
I like to think i’m very well rounded. I get good grades, I work, and I have almost 250 community hours. I am not atheletic, but I’m a dancer. And i’m going to be president of my school, and i’m heading into my Senior yr as an IB student. It’s like i’m starting to think she had Multiple Personality Disorder. One minute she’s telling me how smart I am, (while getting mad because I say it’s not big deal and that many kids have 4.3 gpas) and then the next minute she’s mad screaming at me and saying i’m sooo horrible because I didn’t clean my room. It’s unreal.
You should probably tell her she needs a psychologist. Then ignore her whenever she starts screaming at you or calling you a liar. Just turn your back on her and act like she doesen’t exist. That does sound like she has a mental problem, and maybe you can teach her to stop doing it if you just ignore her whenever she does.
Personally as a 16 year old myself I get bad grades have no community hours and could probably get into any college in my state on my SAT’s alone(not really a big accomplishment, the highest average is about 1200). I like to think that I am not well rounded at all, because I don’t want to be everything.
My mother was like this sometimes, LC, and I think it was because she loved me so much. Also, she saw some things in me that she didn’t like remembering about her own teen years, so she came down hard. Has she ever told you stories about what she was like in high school? I didn’t make the connection until later, but then I started thinking about some of what I’d heard about her high school boyfriends, and realized that part of the problem was trying to save me from the troubles she went through. The problem was first, that I didn’t really have the same problems, and second, that even to the extent they were similar, I had to make my own mistakes if I was going to learn from them. But that’s the hardest lesson a parent can ever learn. Eventually she learned it well enough to keep her comments to herself when I got engaged to the totally wrong guy. If she had said what she thought, I probably would have married him to prove her wrong instead of realizing that it wasn’t going to work.
It sounds like you’re worried about being able to go to Emory not because you think they won’t pay for it, but because you don’t want to accept their money. Swallow your pride and do it. The fact is, she’ll treat you differently once you’re in college - she’s not going to know how late you’re out or what you’re doing. If you still feel the same way about her after you graduate, save up the money and pay her back. But I bet you don’t.
If things continue to get worse, even though you follow all of the good advice above, be very careful before doing something drastic like moving out and breaking all ties.
I had a similar upbringing to several of the folks here. I was very bright, and therefore bored in school. If I brought home a B, it was the end of the world. An A was expected, but never praised.
At the age of 18, I moved to Europe to get away from the folks and didn’t return for 10 years. Upon returning, I tried to work things out with them, but wasn’t successful. My mother passed away twelve years ago, my father last year. I hadn’t seen either of them for 13 years.
I don’t know exactly what I would do differently, but I’d give 20 years of my life to be able to go back and try.
lee, how old are you? If you think high school is the toughest thing you have to face, let me lay down a few middle-aged-acquired facts for you:
In high school, you rarely, if ever, have to:
worry about whether you should pay the rent or spend the money on food.
sit up all night with a sick child, and then still have to go to work the next morning and function on only 2 or three hours of sleep.
lose your job and have no prospects and realize that there are a couple of small, helpless humans who depend on you for everything.
give up part of your selfish interests and live your life completely for other people.
be a protector, provider, decision-maker, wise man, fool, hero, villain, chief cook and bottle washer, diaper changer, vomit-mopper, etc., etc., every damn minute of every damn day.
And that’s only a partial list. Nearly every day another brick gets added to the load. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. In fact, I love my life and my family. They make me whole. And I willingly took on all of the above and more, and wouldn’t trade it for the world. I just wanted to inject a dose of reality here.
Sometimes I wish my life was as “tough” as a high-schoolers.
I am 32 years old. I have been married 12 years. I have at times been sole supoorter or my family. I have faced:
[li]The depths of poverty.[/li][li]Poverty’s cousin Hunger. I nearly starved.[/li][li]depression.[/li][li]Discimination.[/li][li]Loss of my home, and my job in one day.[/li][li]My husband losing his ability to walk and facing other physical disabilities.[/li]
We have mangaged to put ourselves through college, get decent jobs and live happily through thick and thin. Not a damn thing was tougher than spending a single week at home with the family I grew up with. If I had honestly believed that it did not get easier after high school, then I would have killed myself. If it had been as difficult then suicide would have been a good choice.
Heh, LC, it sounds like you’re very much in the same position my best friend was in during high school. Without going into details, a psychiatrist did say, upon being told of my friend’s mom’s behavior, that she probably was crazy (editorial note: he actually named the brand of crazy, but I’ve since forgotten).
So, in short, I know (albeit second-hand) how tough it can be to live with a parent who is, by all rights, insane. On the other hand, I also know (again, second-hand, but for this, three times over) how terribly difficult it is to support oneself while attending school full time. It’s honestly one of the most difficult things you’d ever have to do, and will probably cause just as much stress as your mom would in its stead. As I and lee have said, college can be a much easier time, especially if you have some financial backing.
Needless to say, I can not emphasize enough how important it is not to burn that bridge. Trust me, emotional difficulty is a lot easier to deal with when there aren’t several dozen logistical difficulties coming along with it.
