to be pissed off with dh & dd re vr entrance exam..

[wintertimeisfun]

dd has gone for a music scholarship which went as well as it could have (audition, went really well in that she thinks she did well) and she either gets offered one or she doesn't as she did as well as she could however she has to also pass the academic exam which was today. we don't push so she wasn't tutored (unlike most of the other kids sitting it) and again, as long as she had done her best we were happy with that.

i did buy her a bond verbal reasoning book as vr is different to the usual stuff she does at school and thought it good she was made familiiar with it. she barely did much from the book and told me she (quote) found it easy. to get to the point (sorry..) she has just come back form the exam and told me she found the vr really hard. i am pissed off as she did fuck all in preparation re vr as i went along with the fact she told me she found it easy (didn't push her to go through the vr book).

dh is pissed off with me, thinks i am being unreasonable as (quote) she did her best, which on the day i am sure she did. however, i am pissed off with him as i think he has shown bugger all interest in this whole process and that (yeah right..) if she was offered a music scholarship she wouldn't get in if she had failed the entrance exam.

i don't like feeling pissed off about this but i am. tbh i doubt she would get a scholarship, she is of the standard but again, up against seriously pushed kids of which she ain't but it is the principle. i think she would have found vr a little easier had she of spent some time on the bond book i bought her. what do you lot think..

x-posted with everybody there! Too slow on the old keyboard these days.

YABU, she did her best. If you wanted her to do better then you should have put in the effort to help her yourself or organise a tutor. It's done now, be happy with her efforts.

I think yabu because in your heart of hearts you wanted to be able to say how wonderful your daughter is to be offered this scholarship with no extra tutoring YET she obviously did need some!

I think this is all round YABU but there is nothing you can do now it is done when will they let her and you know if she has been successful or not

nah nah. wrong path there red. i'm not one of those mothers who lives to show off about her 'wonderful' daughter, i'm not a showy type. this has naff all to do with anyone else. as it would transpire you are right about one thing, she did need tuition it would appear with regard to vr. i accept that i obviously should have been firmer when it came to her doing a bit more work on vr prior to the exam. i must reiterate that i wouldn't have minded her coming home saying how hard vr was IF she had done a bit of work on the bond book and yes, i know i should have encouraged it. her getting a music scholarship isn't to impress the neighbours ffs. this has nothing to do with impressing anyone .

Yabu am afraid.

Let it go now.. It's annoying but at least she got through the exam without major disaster just wait and see.

Good luck to your dd.

what newyear said and surely they will decide on all the results not just one part

thanks new. tbh, we can't really afford to send her there easily so if/when she doesn't get in it will in part be a relief but we wanted to give her the chance as she loves music and is bloody good at it. the local comp' is a good one and are still happy enough if she ends up there :-)

I think it was really mean and irresponsible to send your DD to this exam with no proper prep. 11 plus verbal reasoning is like nothing they do at school and it does need some practise for timing and technique. I've seen plenty of adults really struggle with the questions on first sight. It must have been horrendous for an eleven year old to be sat in a formal exam hall, which is a stressful enough experience when you are prepared, struggling with the paper.

If you really want your DD to go and think she may have got the music scholarship I would contact the school and explain that your daughter has never seen a VR paper before and see if there is any way this can be taken into consideration. They might do so in the interests of their inclusion policy.

tbh, we can't really afford to send her there easily so if/when she doesn't get in it will in part be a relief but we wanted to give her the chance as she loves music and is bloody good at it. the local comp' is a good one and are still happy enough if she ends up there :-)

If you desperately wanted her to go to the private school you would have tutored her. It sounds like you are more comfortable with the comp.

mystery - thanks for putting the boot in. you make it sound as if i had literally done fuck all re vr. admittedly i didn't exactly go over board but i bought her a book of which she did some. she hadn't never seen it before as you imply. i don't know anything about vr so in my ignorance how could i have known about the issue of 'timing' and 'technique'. i wasn't aware that i was being 'mean' or 'irresponsible' and it certainly wasn't my intention. not every mother is as knowledgeable as you apparently are on the subject. she feels she did well in the english and maths, both subjects of which she is very good at and in top set at school. if she fails the academic side then it wasn't meant to be and was probably because of the vr and yes, i will feel bad about it and blame myself

i don't know anything about vr so in my ignorance how could i have known about the issue of 'timing' and 'technique'

So why did you expect an 11 year old to take responsibility for getting her head round a technique she knew nothing about? Just handing her a book was never going to work.

They are not that bad... Based on English. If she is good at English it will be ok.

YABU...I am not trying to kick you whilst down but you sound like you have no idea of what it entails to get a child through a selective process such as the 11+ and if you yourself were clearly unprepared, there is no way you could have reasonably expected a 10 or just turned 11 year old to be, especially in the absence of parental support and more pointedly in the absence of direction. I would have felt terrible had I steered Dd in that direction with making sure she was as prepared as possible because we all know the state school system does not attempt to nor its curriculum designed to.

I hope your Dd has done enough but if she doesn't get in there is always 13+ entry and at least you will be aware of the work that needs to be done in advance of this. Try and not make the waiting period for results about you and your disappointment.

thanks for your post nessus. i must reiterate however that i wasn't pissed off because dd found vr hard overall. i was pissed off because she hadn't done much work from the vr book i had bought because she kept telling me she was good at it/liked vr. and yes, i now know that in hindsight i shouldn't have left her to her own devices. my point is quite simply that if she had done more from the book vr book, even though i now know it wouldn't have been enough i wouldn't have been pissed off that she had found it hard out of principle. she said she found the maths & english easy. perhaps if she does well enough in her music it may not matter so much. she may not have done that badly in the vr. at the end of the day i don't really think it matters. i am not one of these mothers that lives and breathes their dc going to any school other than a state one. the only reason i wanted her to go to this one is that a/dh went there and b/it has a really good music department :)

Agree with nessus however ridiculous it is, specific training is required for vr, over and over again. My son would not have got into the academic school he is at we're it not for yes, a tutor showing him how it is done. Therefore It's unfair because I don't think it's an accurate measure of intelligence but tbh I chose my son over my principles.

whilst i agree/understand what you have said i must add that i didn't knowingly send dd to the exam today thinking she would find it really hard. it is clear that i remained blissfully ignorant with regards to vr and all its complexities and thus, because dd said she found it easy/liked it, i didn't know it would be as hard as it was. i too would have probably swolled my principles and sent her to a tutor if i had known then what i now know, either that or certainly been involved/made her do alot more. as it is, we have just sat down and had a lovely chat. it doesn't sound as if the vr was all bad but it is what it is. she feels she will do fine whereever she goes school wise, and i believe her too :)

Ok fair enough, but no need to be pissed off. She has learned a valuable lesson that she maybe needs to prepare more when it comes to competitive situations.

My dd would moan about how her maths marks weren't as high as she wanted despite being able to do the work easily in class. After a couple of times she realised that she did actually have to revise unlike some who are able to retain it and that when she did she got the marks she expected.

I think you and your DH should have ensured she did the necessary preparation. 11 is ok for some responsibility like washing dishes or mopping the floor but big things like exams are different.

YABU to blame your daughter for this. You didn't need to send her to a tutor but you could have ensured that she did all the exercises in the verbal reasoning book and not just let her decide that it was easy (it probably was if she only did the first couple of pages).

Hopefully she will get in anyway though.

YABU to think she should have done it left to herself, as others have said - I did actually get into a selective school without tutoring, but that was 30 years ago and the game is very different now.

YANBU to be pissed off with your DH. If he thought she needed more help and knew you weren't doing it, then either he needed to raise it with you earlier (if he doesn't help with homework because he genuinely doesn't have time) or he needed to pull his finger out and do it himself. I'd be really pissed off with DH if he criticised me after the event for the way I'd done something, having said and done nothing at the time when it would have made a difference.

Next time if she says something is easy just ask her to finish/ still revise whatever it is.

Don't be ridiculous! You can't expect a little girl to prepare herself for entrance exams! How dare you blame her!
Why on earth didn't you do something about it

coco44 you sound like the EXACT sought of parent i HATE. i live in a very competative middle class area and it is attitudes like yours that make non complying parents like myself feel awful and i do feel awful actually although i really wouldn't want to be anything like you. i haven't discussed everything about myself when it comes to my dd's education. she was tutored once a week for a long period of time when she sat for the local grammar. something i HATED as it went against all my ideas of how i think it should be but i did it anyway due to pressure from people like you. i vowed that when she sat for the two local private schools which was 6 months later that she wouldn't be tutored anymore. the local grammar is famed for being one of the hardest 11+ exams in the country so we figured that the exam would be alot easier than it was for the grammar. according to dd it was, apart from the vr. i acknowledge that i should have made her do more work on the vr but how dare YOU talk to me like that implying i have done nothing for my dd and that i had put her in some 'awful' situation when it was nothing like that. she wasn't particularly bothered at all actually when she came home as unlike alot of the poor bastards sitting the exams who had such pressure put on them by their 'caring' parents, she hasn't had it drilled into her that she HAS to get into a private school/pass the exams. i hate the way that parents like YOU have hijacked entrance exams that would once have been based on natural ability instead of who has been hot housed the most. there was a time when one didn't have to be so tutored as half the people in my family, including my dh, were privately educated and cannot recall a time when one had to be so ridiculously prepared for an entrance exam. And if you had read any of my fucking posts apart from the first one you would have read that i take alot of the blame now and that my only beef with her had initially been that she lazily said that she didn't need to do any as she found it easy. we are very close and have since spent a lovely evening together chatting. she admitted off her own back that she knows she could have made a bit more of an effort whilst i completely acknowledge that i should have made her do more. unlike alot of children, she actually looks forward to exams as she finds them exciting. i didn't put her into a position that she hated, she enjoys exams, even ones that she finds hard.