How are Grammar schools so much better than comprehensives if they get the same funding?

What’s wrong with having friends?
They can be an absolute gift especially when you have young children.

How do you even know your children are clever enough to pass the 11+? Grammar schools are selective, comps are not. It really is as simple as that.

It is a really really really good idea to have friends when you have school age (particularly primary school age) children, particularly if you are not living near lots of extended family (which it sounds like you aren't). What will you do when your children want to do 2 different things in two different places? When one of them is too ill to get up, but the other still needs to go to school. When you are too ill to take them to school? Trying to do it all with just yourself and your partner is really really hard. Making friends (no one is saying you have to be best friends but at the social chit chat in the playground level) with other school parents is a necessary social skill.

Who do you think will be trying to collect your child?

What about parents of other children? What will you do when your child makes friends and wants to socialise with them outside of school?

How do you make friends?

Or perhaps you lead a very isolated life.

Oh @Karma1387 pease read these recent posts from many very helpful MNers and consider your reactions.

It is totally normal for an adult to chat to a child they know without having the permission of the child's parent. If this happens in a school setting (examples noted by PPs; others I can think of include – child is among a group staffing a stall at the school fair; child is at a book fair after school; parent is in school for nativity/assembly/coffee morning/parents-come-to-school-lunch event – for some of these things that schools organise (!), not all parents will be there. I couldn't aways get to school things bc I worked FT; I did not feel the need to give the school permission to allow DS1 to talk to his friend's mum who was there.

DS2 showed the possible parents round his junior school when he was in year 6. No one asked me for permission. I have no idea who these parents were. It was totally fine.

Seriously, what do you honestly think the safeguarding issue is here? Please have a think and try to see how all of that is totally fine. And no, I never spent any time telling my DC not to talk to strangers. There are many strangers (ie ppl they don’t know personally) whom it is fine for them to talk to.

Wrt DC being let out of school, it does vary. My DC in infant school had to be released by the teacher when they had seen the person who was picking them up. But in juniors (so year 3 onwards) they were allowed out and came to find their parent – or (shock) walked themselves home. It's all steps to independence.

I appreciate that you want to do the best by your DC. Many DC really like school and don't feel that they are stuck there. I urge you to go and look round some local schools and get a feel for them. A good way is to see if they have a spring or summer fair you can attend.

A PP refers to having read a previous thread of yours. I read it too. It has the same features: sky-high levels of anxiety, suggestions of a discordant relationship with your partner, lots of good advice given, OP's absolute resistance to taking any of it. If OP were my neighbour, I would be feeling very concerned about the near isolation of the child(ren) and the probable lack of social skills, to such an extent that I would be considering contacting social services or a children's charity to check that everything was OK and whether the parents needed any support. Schools are also attuned to how a child presents at school.

How is this safe or sensible for your child? What happens if you are taken ill, get mugged or have a car accident and you are the only person authorised to pick up?

Being a vexatious complainant to your child's school is going to be much more of a problem for the complainant than it was. New guidelines are about to be set out in a white paper, prompted by the enormous amounts of time schools are spending dealing with them.

Hours spent dealing with parental complaints takes away from the already demanding jobs teachers and heads do - teaching, data inputting, marking books and homework, creating wall displays, parents' evenings, report writing, safeguarding, lesson planning (teachers); budgeting, dealing with parents, fundraising, liaison with other schools, overseeing the school office function, building relationships with the governing body, liaison with the academy/local authority heads); not to mention dealing with the fallout from the cost of living crisis and depletion of public services since 2010 - clothing children, feeding children, safeguarding, putting together Education, Health and Care Plans.

Schools are communities of children and adults. They are not providers of a bespoke service to individual parents for their child.

It's not a done deal that school will hate you if you send you children to school. Hate is too strong a word. If you try to manage every last detail of your children's school life and thereby become a vexatious complainant, the new processes will enable the school to deal with you so that you are nolonger a nuisance. If you do the sensible and right thing and respect the school as an important and trusted partner in your children's education, you will be fine and your children likely flourish.

Crikey. I was at a children's art session today with my child. One of the children had been asked to hand back everyone's paintings but was struggling to get the children to listen. He was getting annoyed so I asked him if he wanted some help.
It never occurred to me that any of the adults in the room might think I'd spoken to him for nefarious reasons.

What job does your DP have?
Is he on a decent wage to afford a house in a catchment for a decent school?

Life is all about choices.
I didn't give up work when I had DC. Some of my friends did. That's fine.
My DH and I live in an area with very good schools. We wouldn't be able to afford it on 1 wage. That's a choice we made as a family.

If you are serious about wanting a house in the south east in a catchment for a very good school, you will need a decent household income.

Ah thank you, but actually an advantage of being young enough not to realise any more than “granny’s fallen over”. No over thinking when you’re 3!

Well done your son @LeastOfMyWorries that's really impressive of him, especially as it must have been so horrible for him to see. I'm mid 40s and don't trust I wouldn't just get in a tizz.

Be wary of giving up your career for so long without being married. You are in such a vulnerable position. It's good you are working part time and keeping your hand in.

Don't underestimate the benefits of being near family. The stress of distance when you need help / childcare/ just want to see them or when they need you can be immense. Plus the obvious benefits of close multigenerational relationships. Your partner seems to have preferences about where he wants to be. I am worried the cracks of resentment will appear over time given you seem to want different things.

I don't think, if your partner is academically high achieving, not keen on homeschooling and would actually quite like you to change your mind about working more, it is not going to go well if convince him otherwise. Even just to year 3.You have to both think it's a great idea. You keep saying of course it's a joint decision. To home school would it depends on him agreeing to something you already know he disagrees with, and also solely funding it. I think you need to put the idea out of your mind.

It sounds like he / you already can't live where you want to because you aren't working. It doesn't sound as though you went into parenting jointly agreed he would be the main earner and you would be off indefinitely.

If you two don't like where you are it makes sense to move. I would pick somewhere with decent plan B comprehensives in case grammar or home schooling don't work out long term. Or you have a child who is strong in sport / drama etc.

But to be honest your posts read as though you just want your kids with you for as long as possible and are anxious about letting go. Or them growing up. You have referred to difficulties you had as a child and at school and having had counselling. I think possibly you could do with a few sessions around this because you may be allowing your own experiences to cloud your thinking. What on earth is the issue with a child chatting to a parent on an open day??? You say you will go with what suits each child. But contradict it as then say you don't like your nephew doing fractions age 5, despite him loving it so much he goes to maths club. So you'd remove that from him would you, and send him out to play?

OP I think I'm going to have to bow out of this thread which is a shame as I have direct knowledge of some of your questions.

But I don't think responding to you is actually helping, it's just feeding your severe anxiety. You're obsessing over controlling your children's interactions whilst at school and hugely overthinking every possible scenario. Yet, you're completely ignoring the damage you are doing to them by exposing them to your paranoia and making them live clearly a very small, suffocating life.

I hope you get the help you need.

Most children will have parents with high expectations who value education (and many, if not most will have paid for tutoring).

Check how oversubscribed the schools are though. Our local grammar turns lots of students who pass the exam away every year because they just don't have enough space for everyone.

My Year 6 has been showing parents round. I wasn’t asked for permission. It’s good for DC.

You really do need to relax a bit. Your school days will not be your children’s