Wow, Open Eyes, I couldn't agree MORE. Back in the very old days, my parents were really educated and really intelligent. I mean no doubt at all. To this very day I can't understand how such intelligent and educated people could NOT understand (or even ever TRY to understand) their children. It rather flabbergasts me. They were really, really SMART people. They had TONS of friends. They both had lots of advanced degrees from the country's absolute BEST universities. And they had no more understanding of their four children than they had of a GOLDFISH IN A BOWL. They would have had MORE understanding of a cat or dog!

Of course, I've talked this over and over and over with T, because it's so outlandish to me. So incomprehensible. And she says they just weren't insightful people. They totally resisted any insight into themselves and into anyone else. Their literally HUNDREDS of friends and students were apparently people who could put up with their superficiality. I can't tell you how much of a fraud it looked like to ALL their many children. I would very, VERY much doubt that this kind of situation could occur now. People today are really very much more sophisticated, I think. If you just read the good newspapers and magazines today you'd know better than my parents did.

But there's no question at all, to me, that today we understand that schools can't do it all, that the major part of the responsibility rests on the parents, like it or not. Take care!