To think that there is nothing wrong with being a "pushy" mum

[CliftonGirl]

Just that really. I used to be a "relaxed" mum with DS1 which I regret, but thankfully I switched to a "pushy" mode when he was in year four. As a result he moved from a bottom-middle set to a super selective grammar and doing brilliantly. I am very pushy with the younger DCs.

I've noticed a lot of people on mumsnet think that we are still in the 20th century and you can get to Oxbridge from a mediocre school without much effort. AIBU to think that the world is much more competitive now and there is no choice but to push DC to achieve?

Ps, English is not my first language, so please don't flame me for the spelling mistakes.

IMO there's a huge difference between being pushy and being supportive:a supportive mum helps her children with homework, encourages them to aim high and have a clear vision of their hopes for the future and will help her children in any and every way possible to achieve this. A pushy mum forces her children to do extra work (even if it stresses the child and the child does not have any time to relax), will push the child towards excellence even if the child isn't really capable of it and will overwork her child. Some children just aren't A grade pupils- with a lot of work and support they'll be comfortable B grade pupils, pushy mums often fail to see this and so the child becomes stressed and feels like a failure. I would say that i'm a supportive mum; DD is a very intelligent child and I support her in any and every way, but I don't push her. I expect (if she carries on working as hard as she currently does) she'll go to a Russell Group uni and do a traditional degree: she's not Oxbridge material but she can definitely do very, very well for herself. I think it's wrong when parents force their dreams onto their child, and can cause a serious breakdown in the relationship.

This is an interesting article

www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/nurture-shock/2009/11/20/how-not-to-helicopter.html

seeker Thu 06-Jun-13 12:49:45
This is the point Xenia always dodges. Who is listening, encouraging, helping the children while the parents are off earning megabucks?

People with really good jobs are able to be flexible so that they are home a lot. There are careers which don't go well with being a parent. And there are career which do.

People keep saying, as if it were an unassailable truth, that the DC of pushy parents can't develop self motivation.

On what are they basing this?

I'm the product of a pushy mum and am absurdly self motivated. I've been highly successful (didn't crash and burn at university when I had to fend for myself) and have loads of things on the go...

My DC too are self motivated. In spite of my pushiness !

People seem very rigid in their views, of the opinion that the way they are parenting is the only method that will come good. They are doing just the right amount of pushing/encouraging. Any more is too much!

Talk about only seeing the world through the prism of your own experience!

The way I see it, there are parents doing it in all manner of ways. I know loads far pushier than me. They have nice kids. Cool kids. Happy kids. It's all good.

Exactly.

Russians I think a lot of people are now embracing flexible working. I believe xenia works from home. I do too. Even DH who is quite traditional about the necessity of being present in the workplace, comes and goes as he pleases.

Times change .

I agree word. It is all very subjective, that's why I wanted definitions.

I mostly know parents who want the best for their kids and encourage them as much as they are able, according to their sphere and possibilities and income etc with both a clear eye on the realities of life and a love for their children.

I know two mothers who might be called "pushy" - both schedule their children to death, every minute usefully accounted for, but one does it with love and great caring, and one with sanctions and dire warnings.

The kids of the first one are busy, happy and fully engaged in loads of activities, the kids of the second are resentful and unhappy and behave badly whenever possible.

So maybe it depends on the kind of "pushy"

Wll exactly. That was my point. We are all either self employed or high up our firms. Some organisations are trying to be enlightened at all levels, true, but ultimately the higher up you get in many professions (not all, of course) the more self determination you get. So Xenia's mantra of getting the best job you possibly can being a good thing for you as a parent is pretty sound advice.

wordfactory Fri 07-Jun-13 08:19:22
"People keep saying, as if it were an unassailable truth, that the DC of pushy parents can't develop self motivation.

On what are they basing this?"

Some of us teach in HE and see many, many students every year.

Of course some are pushed and it is right for them and everything works out fine.

Others have not been pushed and didn't need to because they were natural self motivators so that also worked out fine.

But there are always a few for whom being pushed by their parents has been disastrously wrong: either because they simply became dependent on the constant encouragement and support to the point where they couldn't do without it, or because they were encouraged to have unrealistic expectations and ended up blaming themselves when they couldn't live up to them.

The problem is that when things do go wrong, they tend to go very badly wrong.

Which is why I, for one, keep repeating that the most important thing is to know your own child and what makes them tick. Horses for courses.

Your mother may well have been subconsciously are of something in your personality, wordfactory, that made her way the absolutely right one for you. Or it may have been luck.

yy cory

knowing your child and having a good relationship with them is the key I think

everything should follow from that

Hully I think it depends a lot on the parents and their relationship with their DC.

We all know unhappy kids from relaxed parents don't we? We all know unhappy kids from pushy parents too!

If you have a good relationship with your DC, you can parent in lots of different ways and the kids will be happy. Especially if the parents are happy. Good moods are catching, no? Optimism spreads.

I do think the motivation thing is complicated. I do happen to know several families with highly-motivated parents and DC who do not have "normal" relationships with motivation - some of the DC work incredibly hard but only to meet parental/institutional expectations, and eventually give up/become extremely patchy from the sheer grind of pleasing others all the time. Other children are über perfectionists with the classic symptoms (anorexia, self-harm) and others still drop out entirely.

cory - "they were encouraged to have unrealistic expectations and ended up blaming themselves when they couldn't live up to them." Yes, this. The parents also blame the DC - they did everything possible to further their DCs' ambitions and are blameless...

cory I too teach in HE (though part time). I teach at Oxbridge and also somehwere much less selective.

I suspect that there are far more products of pushy parenting at the former than the later . Yet, I don't see numbers of DC being unable to cope.

Yes there are some. This can be due to all manner of factors. Being pushily parented hasn't been a stand out factor.

At the other university (where we have a much bigger drop out rate) one of the main issues is laziness!!!! All those supposedly self motivated students who don't turn up to lectures/tutorials. Who don't do their prior reading. Who don't hand in their essays on time.

Is there more to motivation than, "Do you want to work in Sainos?"

Sme of the parents I know think that I am very pushy, some of them think I'm incredibly lax. Where they lie on the spectrum depends on (a) how well they actually know me and (b) which of my 3 DC they know best/have the most to do with and in what context. And how well they know those kids.

I am in fact almost as lax as it's possible to be but with the proviso that I don't mind facilitating stuff if the kids want to do it. And two of my kids are incredibly driven, and I don't mind paying for their stuff and DH and I don't mind driving them to rehearsals etc. DS is not very driven at all, quite the reverse andim hoping that he changes soon but I can't force him to be that which he is not. He does do a bit of music - actually, he's pretty good on the clarinet and sax and he isn't bad on the guitar, and he is happy to noodle around on them and call it practice, but he doesn't much go for, you know, joining things or performing (unlike his sisters). So he doesn't do that. The one thing I have done with him though, because of his dyslexia, is to facilitate his access to literature and drama through other means given that unlike his sister he isn't living with his head in a book a lot of the time. So that means audio books, lots more theatre trips than is probably 'the norm' especially given where we live, and lots of BBC and Hollywood Shakespeare. Which he loves (he requests all this stuff but I could definitely put him off or say no, but I don't, I say yes and I suggest other stuff to try and whet his appeptite). Consequently he is doing well in English despite being severely dyslexic and at parents evening last night his English teacher said that he was the 'best read' boy in his year, despite rarely 'reading' a book (she approves of my strategy and has suggested it to parents of other dyslexic/reluctant readers).

Bonsoir I accept that there will be DC like that. Of course there will.

But I think an equally big problem is the underperformace of too many young people.

Didn't we used to call that "training" word?

We all need training in how to do stuff successfully.

I don't think good moods are always catching, to be fair. I am pretty much an optimist, enjoying life and learning immensely, and tending not to worry about things. I have a depressive daughter. Depression runs in the family but tends to skip generations.

There are still things I can do for her: I can teach her life skills that will help her to handle what she has. I can try very hard not to worsen any tendencies she already has and teach her techniques for recognising unhelpful thought patterns and dealing with them. But I can't magically turn her into me. She is herself and that is what she has to live with. (And there are positive traits that go with her personality that I do not share.)

It is a comforting thought that you can mould your children. But I suspect it is a balance between nature and nurture; when it works it is because the preconditions were already there.

Which is why I keep coming back to being sensitive to your children's personalities.

Dd and I have a very good relationship. But I have had to learn that what works for me doesn't work for her. And conversely what works for her would never have worked for me.

Russians - I also follow the books-through-other-media strategy, not because my DD is dyslexic but because she is bilingual and I want her to be exposed to a lot of English and high quality films and lots of shows etc are one way to do so. She is also incredibly "well read" and talks about Macbeth, Hamlet, Pride & Prejudice etc with ease and pleasure (as well as all sort of children's books).

Don't you just look at what you've got and then work with it to produce the best results possible for it?

Are their parents who genuinely start with what they want and then try and squash kids to fit it?

Russians I'm dyslexic and still listen to lots and lots of audio books. I do read too, but it's slower. I also find I can unpick the structure and minutae of a novel better when I'm listening.

I'm a writer too and I dictate the first draft of my books!

cory depression is an illness. Of course it's not going to be affected by anyhting other than treatment. But moods, normal every day moods, are highly communal!!!!

Hully - no. I react. Quite often at the last possible minute (or 5 minutes later). I certainly don't do 'planning' or 'strategising'.

But you're reacting to the reality of what is before you. Not squashing it into something else.

wordfactory, I absolutely agree that laziness is a big problem! I doubt there are any academics that would not agree with that

though even there, sometimes when you delve into the mysterious absence of a student or same student's essays you do find a student who is in very bad shape and struggling on the wrong anti-depressants but feeling too low to actually let their tutor know

not in the majority of cases, certainly not, but there are several cases every year and I suspect there are more that we never find out about because the students simply slip below the radar

plagiarism cases ime are almost invariably about a student who feels they are on the wrong course, unable to live up to expectations and terrified of being found out

very few bright but lazy students plagiarise ime