My kid got an email many, many months ago with a plane ticket itinerary. Seems that Navy had bought her a ticket to attend CVW, without advance notice. The email indicated that if there were any problems with the itinerary, changes must be made THAT day. Yes the ticket needed to be changed. No, the kid could not undertake this task on her own, THAT DAY, with no advance notice, without being able to converse with me about the scheduling since the travel would include ME driving her a long way to the airport and I too have a busy schedule. The task was time sensitive and required coordination of schedules. Not possible for the kid to do it. YES I know that some of you, who know our lives and my child better than I, will still swear up, down and sideways that the kid should have been able somehow to handle that task on her own, or simply accept that she is not Navy material. I get it. The internet permits this certainty. But it isn't realistic.
Here is another example - Some of you may be aware that many sports recruit at such young ages that the coach is not permitted by NCAA guidelines to contact the player directly. The player can leave phone message after message, send email after email but the coach can never return a phone call or ever reply to an email. Some parents (luckily, not me) have thrown in the towel and helped the kid out by contacting a coach to schedule a time for a phone call. Yes some athletes have club or high school coaches who play this role, but not all athletes are this lucky. Without SOMEONE having the ability to place repeated calls to the coach until FINALLY getting through, JUST to schedule that time for the kid to call so that those two can talk.....well, if not for the parent with a flexible schedule, the kid would never get recruited by Navy (nor any other D1 school for that matter). Navy often fills or nearly fills recruiting classes in some sports even before the coach is permitted to contact the player directly.
[The original post quoted two separate phone calls. In the second, the parent had a kid who was a cross country runner. There was no way to discern, at least from what the parent was quoted as having said, the age of that cross country runner. And very possibly, if only the kid attempts the phone calls, the kid will never succeed in reaching that coach on the telephone. Too bad so sad, huh?]
In my business, we talk about "signals" - when one thing means more than that one thing because it suggests something else, something bigger. So yes, I get it when people worry that if Mom is the one initiating the communications, then maybe Mom is the one who wants Navy. Or maybe Mom is the one who is mature enough for Navy. Lol. It can be hard to remember that the thing about signals is that they are just signals. Even those of you with such extensive experience, who can spot these signals a mile away and know from personal experience the potential implications.......surely, if you dig deep, you can come up with one counter-example?
This thread, on the issue of parents contacting various Navy-related personnel (admissions, BGO, coach) has wandered. It started with the assertion, that appears to be without merit, that any contact from a parent is immediately recorded in the kid's file and will hurt that kid's chances at admissions. The second assertion - that any parent communication (perhaps due to time conflicts or time urgency) is a signal that the kid lacks sufficient independence or maturity, seems questionable at best to me but surely, open to discussion. The third assertion, that any kid who isn't comfortable making an important phone call on his own while 15-16 years old SURELY will lack the maturity 24 months later to thrive at Navy - well, again, we will have to agree to disagree. Such a kid would want to think about his goals, think about where he stands at that point, and accept that moving forward, he would need to overcome those emotions that make it difficult for him to make that call. But that is a deficit that is no more serious than any other deficit that is discussed, so much more objectively in my view, on this forum. Low GPA? Low test scores? No leadership positions? All can be overcome with hard work, etc. This is the supportive attitude on this forum. Then why not that approach with the kid who has this "phone call ability deficit?" It's just philosophically inconsistent, not grounded in child development, and I believe that it comes from a lack of personal experience. You don't see those deficits around you, so you don't see kids overcoming those deficits. But it does happen.
On a different note: I've managed, till now, to restrain myself from responding to the poster who asserted courageously, through the anonymity of the internet, that I had suggested in my earlier post that some parents don't love their children What a horrible thing to post. I never said nor implied such a thing.
