to help DD win election for school council? (light-hearted)

[Balaboosta]

AIBU to help DD (6) with her speech for tomorrow's school council election? She showed me what she was going to say - "I am nice to people, I can project my voice, I am determined, I am nice".
Turned out that she doesn't really know what school council does, doesn't really have a reason for wanting to be on it, has nothing in particular that she would like to change about the school, only that there is something going on that's good to win and she wants to win it. Well, she is six.
By bedtime "we" have ripped up her first effort and turned this into a focussed election campaign promising that if she gets elected she will get the school council to campaign to improve the school dinners - complete with a good, very simple, three-point speech.
We have discussed the fact that she still might not get elected but "at least she will have done her best".

So - Supportive parent, coaching DD in life skills and helping her attain her ambitions, or pushy, manipulative mother, Machiavellian even? Absent, preoccupied, self-absorbed, hands-off DP buggered off recently; am I overcompensating for his lack of leadership?!

I might add, that I will not personally be disappointed if she does not win. My emotional investment is in helping her to be focussed, which she wasn't being, rather than on the outcome. I'm a bit worried too that if she was to be elected, she would have bitten off rather a lot to chew by promising to improve the school dinners...

conceals true agenda which is that the school dinners have got really really bad and I really really really don't want to do packed lunches

Oh God, I'm going to get flamed, aren't I?

:) I wouldn't worry too much, it sounds like you were trying to 'focus' her which is a positive thing. If she seemed upset by any of the coaching I'm presuming you would have stopped so dont be too hard on yourself. I think 6/7 is hard because you're tying to help them be more 'adult' for want of a better word, without squashing the 'child ' bits out of them in the process - sorry if that doesn't make sense :)

So no, I guess for me ywnbu in trying to help her.

Nah do it. Can't hurt and could help her focus on something really positive - and who cares if it's secretly your agenda, if the school meals are crap someone needs to say something. Sounds like if you've recently had a break up it might be a good idea to take her mind off things too. YANBU OP, sensible I think. Wishing her luck!

Be glad you are in The Uk. My daughter wanted to win class president past year so she wrote a rap, a speech about how she was the

Only honest candidate and wouldn't make false promises on unrealistic hopes like early dismissal and ice cream parties. Then we made rosettes with 'I voted 2012' on them and she wanted campaign treats (lots of kids were bribing for votes) so she took a basket of chocolates with her name on the sticky labels. Since we had gone that far I thought what the hell, and made her a tee shirt and cap for her campaign. She won by a crazy amount... And came home thoroughly disillusioned the next day when she realized class president is a meaningless title with no power to actually do anything.

I persuaded her to let someone else have a go this year so she isn't going to run. It is all completely crazy.

Her ideas were about setting up a club for the whole class so nobody would be left out or bullied at playtime. She did that so it wasn't a c

Implore waste of time. Goddamn this iph

Iph

Popularity contest entirely.
Think making them make speeches is worse because there's always the class where you hear "6 brilliant speeches and 1 stands up and says "I' want to do it"-or refuses to do a speech at all and wins.
I would stop it, or produce several commitees so that every child got a chance of sitting at one.

Phew - thanks. My parents were very hands-off and never prepared or coached me properly for anything so I wasn't sure I I'd gone overboard.
cleo nailed it about identifying the difficulty of encouraging the child to focus without stifling the "child". With DD that is soooo applicable!
Well, what happened was... That she decided this morning not to go in for it and I was supportive of her decision. I'd much rather she did that than stood up and simpered "I'm nice to people vote for me....."
And there's always next year.

Sorry Cleo - I meant to bold your name not cross it out!

My DS apparently promised that sofas and X boxes would be installed in both playgrounds if he was voted in as school council leader

It worked as he won in a land-slide victory but I'm not sure if he may have a revolt on his hands when his classmates realise the playgrounds will most definitely not be getting a make-over any time soon

My dd just told her class that she would always be available to listen to the pupils ideas to improve the school, to tell the teachers the ideas at the council meetings and hopefully some ideas would be used by the school.

She actually won - think the others realised that the other candidates might not be able to fulfil their promises but at least dd's were potentially achieveable.