The Worst Parent Ever

Sometimes, after reading posts to forums and articles on parenting, I can't help but wonder, "Am I the worst parent ever?". Let me give you some context. As I said in the previous blog post, we're concerned with the type of education our daughter is going to get going to a public school that has only mediocre ratings. So I spend some of my free time looking at real estate, and some time on real estate blogs. What amazes me about these blogs is the prevalence of posts talking about buying a home for the good school district. And in the Bay Area, where I live, how really you can only buy a home in Palo Alto, Los Altos, or Cupertino if you want a good school.

As you might have guessed, we don't live in any of those cities, nor is buying a home in any of those school districts on our short or long range plans. And so that's where the "worst parent ever" comes from. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only parent not scheming or trying to figure out a way to get my child in a Cupertino or Palo Alto school. And all those posts make it seem like some how I'm depriving my child by not sending her to one of these top tier schools.

That's when I have to remind myself, I went to a mediocre school, and I've had more successes in my life than most people I know, and that the school certainly didn't place any limitations on my achievements or my ability to succeed. But it's hard to keep that point of view in an overwhelming flood of opinion in the opposite direction.