In these stories, you young parents are just getting a glimpse of what is possible for your child. For a theoretical basis for what I am going to say, take a look at "The Lost Tools of Learning" by Dorothy Sayers:
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html.
Suppose it were possible day by day, in the easiest and most pleasant manner, to load your children with prayers, psalms, bible verses, wise sayings and much more besides, wouldn't you want to do that? Essentially we adapted Sayers ideas to our catechetical approach and had wonderful results. We adults tend to think of learning as onerous, but young children do not. They *love it*!
We followed this approach, and by the time my daughter Stephanie was ready to enter first grade she knew the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory be in English and in Latin. She knew the ten commandments, the six precepts of the Church and much more besides. She had listened in as we instructed her older brother David for his First Communion from the Baltimore Catechism, and she knew by heart 28 questions and answers about the Mass, and much, much more.
At one point I was making up a prayer book of psalms for us to use in our night prayers and the kids were learning about one psalm by heart every two weeks. The only reason the children don't know the whole psalter is that I ran out of steam. Talk about feeding an insatiable maw!
An example. When the kids were about 6 and 4 respectively St. Patrick's day rolled around. I was sick to death of the effort to turn this Catholic feast into "Irish Day" so I printed out a thirty six line version of the Shield of St. Patrick, plastered a shamrock on it, and put copies all over the apartment complex. Then the bright idea occurred to me that maybe we could use this for a night prayer for a few days, which we did. "I bind me today God's might to direct me, God's power to protect me, " etc., etc. etc. for 36 lines.
When I was about to put this aside, both David and Stephanie said to me, "Hey Dad, could we memorize this?!"
Do see what had happened? The love of learning and the desire for God had taken root in their hearts. Moreover, they were proud of their accomplishments and wanted to augment them. We did memorize that prayer, and it became our night prayer for about 14 yrs!
To this (and the grace of God, and the lives of the saints that we read over the years) I attribute the fact we never had any problems of rebellion in their teen age years, that they both got scholarships (Stephanie was a National Merit Finalist and an almost straight A student throughout her schooling), and that today they are both daily communicants, and prayerful, fun to be with, a balanced and virtuous young man and woman, graduates from the University of Dallas in philosophy. Stephanie at 22 is now teaching in her former high school, David is a numerary with Opus Dei.
What am I saying? Put as much of your time and effort and money and ingenuity on the front end as you can. College will take care of itself. In fact, many things will take care of themselves. Load them down with as much learning, prayer and wisdom as they can absorb, and they can absorb a lot, but do it with a light touch. You and they will have a blast in the process, believe me.
