I attended a local program last month at a high school where Julie presented. She is fabulous!. Other panel members included a child psychiatrist and the Mother of a young man who was extremely high achieving up to the day he committed suicide by walking in front of a speeding commute train. The group of nearly 450 parents in attendance probably included a number who interact with their children, teachers, etc in ways very similar to the very pertinent post from Rob T. While the program made many in the audience quite obviously uncomfortable, so did the recognition of a Mother with the courage to stand before them, to talk about her son, to talk about his suicide, and to talk about how some, even now, question why he would take his life when he was "doing so well as such a great HS."
In our area, we have parents trying to get their children registered at the very best grade schools, when the child is 6 months old. They already have Harvard and Stanford as their child's future. They won't take wait or take no for an answer. If they don't get their way, they "use" their "poor" child and how the actions of others, like Rob T's wife, to communicate very loudly how the child is devastated. Many also use their vast amounts of wealth as a power to remove anything, and sometimes anyone (i.e. teacher) which gets in their way.
Personally, none of us will parent like Julie, who has very much changed her approach to parenting her children away fromm her own experience, based on her experiences and learning as the freshman dean at Stanford. I can guess that justbaseball did not post the article for any reason other than to allow all of us an opportunity for consideration of various perspectives. Articles from very thoughtful folks like Julie sharing their experiences will, hopefully, allow us to consider other options and to look at different perspectives, especially the perspective of the child we are parenting.
Just me, but I find it very hard to understand how the thoughts can be so easily dismissed, especially when the answers won't be known for years into the future.
Put into an athletic model, there have been many, many threads on the HSBBW that one main reason players end up "failing" at the college level is they are not mentally prepared to fail and to adjust to that failure, because they never had to before college.
In some important ways, that mirrors the message Julie is communicating.
If we truly ascribe to the baseball is life concept, Julie's message seems to be a powerful one to capture and appreciate and consider, rather than to be dismissed as some attack to be taken personally.