Middle class parenting more competive & sharp elbowed since the pandemic..

[Blooomingheck]

Might be just my area but many parents (interestingly the dads in our particular are the worst!) are doing whatever they possibly can to get their kids ahead.. It was bad before the pandemic but I think it's created a new breed of sharp elbowed, neurotic parent... Is this just my area (1.5 hours south of London)

@Blooomingheck what’s wrong with that?

As a pp said, you have to tutor children to get into grammar schools. We aren’t in a grammar area btw.

I think the real hard work starts in secondary and a lot of the primary years should be about education both in and out of school, enjoying life and packing in as many experiences as possible of the world, what is outside school being as important as inside. However, there is a massive step up from year 6 to 7. If I could do it again, I would have got some private tutoring for dd in year 6.

Dd learned loads during lockdown (yrs 7 and 8) at state secondary and practically nothing when at school as she was incredibly stressed in class. She was lucky. I was there to help and we worked together. As she wasn’t learning much when attending school and her grades were slipping, the choices therefore were to move her to private school or anticipate paying for a private tutor in a lot of subjects. Dd is pretty bright but the setting was overwhelming and she was practically mute in the lessons.

Dd asked to move to private and as we are financially able, we moved dd and she suddenly is thriving, loves going to school and has found a sudden love of history when before she was just going through the motions. Had we not been able to afford this, I imagine she’d have had a life full of tutoring going into yrs 10 and 11.

For me, seeing what I’ve seen, tutoring isn’t necessarily just about getting ahead or hot housing. It’s about your getting the best out of your child and schools cannot do this with all children. However, she definitely wasn’t going to art school in primary. She was going to a few sporty and dance days.

Why does a non emergency message need to be sent at nearly midnight (and so disturbing the teacher who receives them) if they don't expect a reply until the next day in office hours.

"Umm.... because that's when it's convenient for me to send it?"

With respect. It might be "convenient" for you to be messaging teachers at midnight about non emergencies, but you certainly don't need to. It's very rude and self unaware behaviour. I wouldn't dream of doing anything like that. There's no excuse for it.
After 9am and before 5 is more considerate.

It was only a minority doing it at our school anyway (private school, highly competitive) and it has now been addressed.

I live in a working class area, so nope, haven't experienced this. Thank god.

I find this bonkers. It’s work email, if it’s unpleasant to see work emails when you are not at work there are easy ways to ensure that

Other people manage it

@tinfairyel honestly, I don't think you understand how email works. There is absolutely no reason why a teacher, or anyone else, should be disturbed by late night emails. And anyone who is clearly doesn't have a very good management system. Sending an email should be no different to choosing when to post a letter. It should not impact the recipient in any way. [barring, of course, the rude types who then freak out if they don't get an answer in 5 minutes. But that's something else entirely].

I'm almost 40 and I used to beg my mum to send me to that type of creative writing camp, so even back then there was enough demand for them to run every year. That's not to say they haven't become more popular recently, I don't know.

I do know some families who hired online tutors during lockdown, but most seem to have stopped now. I'm a secondary school teacher and have kids in primary, and haven't noticed a change. Could part of the difference you're observing be because your DC have gotten older and closer to exams, and so they've moved into year groups where more DC are getting tutored?

It is completely fine and absolutely not rude to send an email at any time of the day or night. The recipient then reads and responds when it is convenient for them to do so. It is strange that there is so much angst about this. Some people clearly enjoy getting worked up about things unnecessarily!

This email stuff is crazy.
Emails are designed such that you send them at your convenience, and the recipient reads them at their convenience.
I might well send an email at the weekend at a time convenient to me, but I don't expect a reply then. Of course it's not rude.

He took his child on a bus? Disgusting.

I'm sure it was part of a carefully planned and stage programme of civics. Visit to a food bank, trip on a bus and cash donation of your choice to a worthy cause.

No we were waiting for the bus,they were both cycling. Was made even funnier that they both got off their bikes and stood there lecturing then rode off again 🙄🤦‍♀️🤣

Surely work emails can be sent at any time? Teachers are not obliged to read an email at midnight.

If they had colleagues, in Australia or the Pacific isles, they’d be getting emails all night long!

I'm a teacher. I often work in the evenings, including emailing colleagues who may not be working. Some of my colleagues send me emails in the early morning, when I'm busy getting my kids ready. Parents also send emails when they want. Many parents work 9-5, so forbidding emails outside those hours would mean they simply couldn't contact us.

It's not "rude and self unaware" and it doesn't cause any problems, because... We don't look at our emails when we don't want to see them!

I can see it could cause a problem if a teacher is prepping lessons and needs their email for that, and then an irate parent email comes in and ruins their weekend. But certainly 'non urgent' ones shouldn't cause an issue anyway.

However I would assume some kind of filtering could be set up so non school domain emails go into their own box if a teacher wants to?

I believe that's because your area is probably more secure with their parenting style & believe their kids will be fine..
Whereas my area seem more insecure hence all the boasting or interrogation... Petrified they've missed a trick... My kids do lots of activities, we do educational days out, nice holidays but I don't feel the need to brag about it...

It was only a minority doing it at our school anyway (private school, highly competitive) and it has now been addressed.

I have to assume that you have such strong, irrational issues with email out of hours because at this private school the emails were not only sent late at night, but with the expectation of an almost instant response? Because finding that frustrating is reasonable, but its not reasonable to expect normal people to only send emails during office hours.

The complaint about receiving an email in the evening is strange. As long as the parent isn't expecting a response outside the teacher's working hours, what difference does it make?

Lots of companies have banned emailing after 6, in fact most of France have?!

My emails ping to my emails and I’d rather not get them from parents at midnight, saying that I would quite like a parent email me about how their kid are getting on…!

Lots of tutoring etc here too - SW London. I generally choose to ignore it and do my own thing with my kids. We do lots of clubs etc but the focus is on enjoyment rather than achievement.
But there are many wealthy parents here who are very successful in their own right and expect the same from the kids and will do everything they can to achieve it.

What I find interesting though is that, despite the intense academic pressure (in fact not just academic, the kids are expected to excel at sport, music etc too), the kids all seem to be remarkably well balanced. You hear about so many teenagers with mental health problems etc and you would imagine it would be exacerbated by the parental pressure and high expectations. But I haven’t seen any evidence of this.
Maybe they hide it well but in general the families I know who are like this seem to be thriving. I guess they are generally fairly stable financially, parents still together etc and maybe those are the most important factors. As I result, I do sometimes wonder if I should push my kids more but ultimately that’s just not who I am.

Agree that the hysterics schools get into over email is unwarranted- it’s not a summons! No expectation to read and respond over the weekend or late evening, but I’m at work all day, so I might send it out of hours… it seems bonkers to try and control this, and then same rule for secondary school/6th form kids is also silly imo. Just ignore your email until the next working day, like everyone else manages to do.

I'm in a grammar area, so obviously tutoring is rife. But tbh I feel like the schools are grateful without explicitly saying so. After all, the results they achieve are at least in part down to the pro activity and pockets of parents…

But a parent isn't a company are they?

Just turn email notifications off outside your work hours.

So stop using autoforward and notifications.

And no, “most of France” has not banned emails after 18:00. The legislation does not specify exact hours - my French warehouse team who start work at 22:00 would be cross if they couldn’t email over the night’s picking updates to the loading team…
The legislation simply requires companies over 50 employees to have an appropriate digital disconnection policy.

@Bibbetybobbity

My friend teaches year 6 in west London and says she could get away with teaching them nothing and they’d all do well in their sats as are all tutored so much …!

Isn't this because those emails are a problem because
a) too many people are doing over time and working long hours and companies are (supposedly) trying to fix that culture and
b) emails sent from very senior people within organisations come with an expectation of an instant response?

So yes, if I get a work email from someone sent late at night, it doesn't affect me, but it does make me wonder if this person is struggling with their work/life balance.

That's an entirely different scenario to a parent who works during the day who then uses their off time to deal with family-related stuff such as sending a note to a teacher about something.

YABU to say "middle class parenting". I am as middle class as they come but do not do any of the things you mention.

Being middle class does not automatically make you a sharp elbowed twat. It does also not preclude you from using a bus or going to McDonald's.

I think that this is another MN stereotype that you can only be middle class if you tutor your DC, send them to private or grammar school and are constantly performance parenting. The two things are not mutually exclusive. Some of us are perfectly normal, unassuming people.