You guys gotta read this. On the East and West coasts parents compete in the blood sport called elite private school admission. Which is okay, unless its about Pre-K!


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/nyregion/18bigcity.html?_r=1&em

I'm sorry, but these absolutely crazy parents are competing for kids going into Pre-K and kindergarten! What is wrong with people? This is the website... http://www.aristotlecircle.com/.
Check out this quote:

Parent Testimonials
After our son bombed his ERB, we were ready to fold up the tent. Instead we worked with an Aristotle Circle expert who had a great strategy that made all the difference. Our son got in to the school we wanted and we couldn't be happier # - Grateful Mother.

SHES TALKING ABOUT A FIVE YEAR OLD? HOW DOES A BABY BOMB A TEST??!?!?
WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?

I'm certain this is way more about the parents than it is about the kids. Its sort of like having a really nice car. Its differentiators...its another thing people with insane amounts of money do. Sample conversation:

Rich Jerk #1: Hey, I have a Lexus LS 430
Rich Jerk #2: I have a Lexus SC 430

Rich Jerk #1: I have a 5000 Sq Ft House in the Northhampton
Rich Jerk #2: Northampton, please, that ghetto. I have a 5001 Sq Ft. estate in Martha's Vineyard

Rich Jerk #1: I work 100 Hours a week trading stocks.
Rich Jerk #2: I work 120 hours a week...sleep under my desk
Rich Jerk #1: Oh yeah, I sleep in my Lexus trunk
Rich Jerk #2: I would too if I had your lame car.
[silence....anger simmering on RJ#1]

Rich Jerk #1: My dog has a gold chain and his own house
Rich Jerk #2: My cat has platinum food dish and her own servant. She goes to an elite cat school.

[uncomfortable silence]

Rich Jerk #1: We vacation in the Bahamas every three months...without our kids.
Rich Jerk #2: We own a small island in the Caribbean....no kids are allowed to even look at it.

Rich Jerk #1: I've got one of those cool gold plated toilet seats, and its heated
Rich Jerk #2: My toilet seat is gold,heated, and it vibrates.

[more uncomfortable silence]

Rich Jerk #1: My kids go to a $40,000 preschool in Manhattan
Rich Jerk #2: My kids aren't born yet and they're going to school...we're educating them preconception. Really cuts into the free-time...

[even more uncomfortable silence, followed by gunshots]

I ask you is this any different, being away 50%-100% of your time at your own health's demise, missing your kids first day at school, as the article states, than parents from the projects who are also away much of the time, but for other reasons? It is one thing if one parent has to work, and only the mom or dad can make it..I certainly haven't made it to everything for my kids, but we're careful to try our best to bat at least 80%.

That isn't on these folks' radar from what I'm reading here. Kids are good...at a distance. We demonize those poor people who work 2 jobs and miss their kids events, but they don't have a choice. The elite are too cool to hang with their children.

These are the same people that were so wonderfully smart, so super accomplished, that they drove the world economy into a tailspin that it still hasn't recovered from.

Their hubris is their downfall. They over-estimate their ability to analyze, to solve problems with their brains, money and connections, when the real truth of the matter is that in complex phenomena, such as children, it is better to use empirical processes (discovery) and let things emerge. Growing with the child in an organic, natural and parental way that increases our joy of life, both parent and child, and I'm not paying some guy $450 bucks an hour to tell my little five year old how to study for his test. When these silver-spoon kids turn 40 and you're in a wheel chair, they're going to push you down a flight of stairs because you weren't around. They won't give a hoot about what school you sent them to if you, their parents, were AWOL from their life.

To end, I submit to you as evidence of the insanity, Paris Hilton. All of these are excellent schools.

Hilton moved between several exclusive homes in her youth, including a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Hamptons. As a child she was good friends with Nicole Richie and Kim Kardashian. She attended her freshman year of high school at the Marywood-Palm Valley School in Rancho Mirage, California followed by a short time at Convent of the Sacred Heart (which she attended with Lady GaGa[3]) and the Dwight School in New York for her sophomore and junior years. She was then transferred to the Canterbury Boarding School, in New Milford, Connecticut where she was a member of the ice hockey team.[4] However, in early 1999, she was expelled for violating the school rules.[5] Hilton later earned her GED.[6][7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_hilton