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..

it seems there is a lot of pre exam preparation now and so if you weren't aware it was really needed then its neither your nor your dds fault.

To be honest, I HAVE read all your posts, and you are coming across still as very "but I bought her a book, why should more be expected of me?". Coco is merely (rightly imo) pointing out that if you thought it was important that she worked through the book you should have had a look at her progress yourself.

How hard would it have been to glance at the book and see how well or otherwise she was doing with it?

Since you didn't feel it was necessary to do that, it is unfair to blame anyone else for the work not being done either.

Everyone else has hashed all this out now.

I'll just repeat that 11 year olds are pretty small and there is a reason we don't let them perform brain surgery. Those reasons probably apply to this situation, and why it's a good idea not to leave stuff just to them to sort out. I wouldn't let one deal with my mortgage or investments, either, to be honest.

So ... where have you been living if the whole tutoring lark has passed you by until this moment? Midsomer? Am v. curious.

For what it's worth, it doesn't matter, so chill and forget stressing at the two of them, and yourself.

But .. stop making your dd responsible for stuff that is beyond her age-level of responsibility. My parents did that to me as a child and it really, really sucks.

It's not fair to criticise parents who do help their dc though, then blame dd for not coaching herself... Two opposing views there.

oak fwiw i did look at her book/talk about it with her after every 'session' she had working on it. there is also a table at the back of the book that she would fill in that would chart her progress as to how well she had or hadn't done. we would always talk about it after she had worked on it. sometimes things are always literally black and white (clear enough) within a post. i didn't show no interest/not get at all involved when she DID work on her vr book, i just didn't do nearly enough which is all to clear and this i regrettably accept. I just hate the occasional bitchy MN special when some posters come over as being a down right bitch. i can take criticism her on MN as you can see from my posts, i pretty much immediately acknowledge that i had made a big mistake however most posters were more 'helpful'/constructive in the way they put their views over. there is always one that seems to be a piece of work. something about the headmistress slap on the hand put down that got right up my nose. i have been a responder to posts on 'am i being' on MN for years but i don't like to respond to posts by being an outright bitch unless they have. not my way

I can understand your frustration with dh - mine always rolls his eyes and tries to avoid listening to them read and do their homework. I know he would like them to go to grammar school but it will all be up to me to prepare them.

Do you know what the academic requirements are for the music scholarship? She might just need to demonstrate that she is reasonably academically competent. If she is particularly gifted then she might have the music teacher on her side. You said about grammar school so it is possible that some of her potential rivals have already gone there for private education on the cheap. It is probably though the same exam designed to identify the academic scholarship children, hence being rigorous.

Yabu. If she said it was easy should have still set her the tests to so under times conditions to see how she did.

You decided not to tutor her on principle and now you're pissed off that she didn't sufficiently tutor herself.

My friends son went for the grammar school entrance(one of the countrys' top grammars), no home tutoring. He passed with the top mark through innate ability. He left a year later to go to private school on a scholarship after a frustrating year repeating work he had already done in year 6 and below All the heavily tutored boys struggled/weren't up to speed to continue into year 7. His mother thought the school would be the best place for him as he is a intelligent boy and his peers would be bright but many had only been tutored to pass the entrance and struggled.
I do get what the OP means. Hindsight is a wonderful thing though. I did do prep with my DC but unpressured, no tutors couldn't afford them anyway, just books. They all were given places either scholarship or bursary.

So she HAS been tutored then for her 11+?

Take a deep breath and admit, whats done is done.

I wondered how long it would take for the 'competitive' card to be played!

Why is it that people who don't put in as much work accuse the rest of us who have to because we aren't naturally as good as we would like to be of being 'competitive'?

It's good to learn that you have to work to be your best, that people who are seen as triers are to be admired. That life can reward people to work to better themselves and there is no shame in that.

Why should we who feel we need to try, and do work hard to achieve, be belittled and put down as 'competitive' and this seen as a bad thing?

Atm the jobs market is very competitive. Those who are seen as the best and with the right attitude will generally do better although I appreciate life isn't always fair

The best thing any parent can do it to teach their children how to enjoy life and how to be the best they can by working for it.

If not tutoring for the 11+ is mean, and sending a child in who will not pass is poor parenting then hell 90% of the parents in northern ireland must be failures.

We all do the 11 plus. The only stressed children we get are those with stressing parents!!

I think you just need to let it go now, and make sure your DD understands that she did her best and that's the most important thing, and that whether she gets in or not it isn't a big deal. Don't let her see that it is a big deal to you or you could really knock her confidence.

I still remember the fear and pressure of taking entrance exams age 11, it's horrible!

wintertime OK, your last post just tells me you are stressing. That counts as preparation. You've all done your best. It's probably going to be fine.

But you honestly do sound as though you deal with stress by "blamestorming", ie. off-loading blame and responsibility for stuff onto others. Not fair to do that to other people, especially children.

I know you are going to think I'm a cow, being needlessly horrible, and how can I possibly tell just from a teeny snapshot of your life but ... that's it: it is a snapshot. The VR thing scarcely matters. It's probably going to be fine anyway. But the stress-blaming thing is not good.

Sometimes no-one is to blame. There doesn't have to be anyone who cops it for things not going according to plan. Just because we, as adults, haven't managed to control everything perfectly, it doesn't mean that everything is dreadful, and our children, friends and partners are rubbish. It's just things not going entirely the way we hoped. And that is (usually) quite a small thing.

I think you are not being at all unreasonable to be pissed off with your husband. He has done f all to help and is now blaming you. That's crap. He is at least 50% to blame. Agree with thumbwitch re the rest.

However, I do also absolutely understand the utter frustration of trying to get children to do the work they need to do to succeed. I am very anti grammar schools and private schools so we haven't had to deal with this specific situation. But I really do want my children to get some GCSEs and the level of nagging needed to get my extremely lazy teens to do anything school work related is soul destroying. So much so that their dad can't really cope with taking it on and we often have the witch mother/fun father thing going down. I hate it! It is so wearing and this makes it tempting to believe them when they say they can do something easily/have completed the work required and will be fine. It is rarely true though.

Winter - your last post gives a different story from the one I got from the rest of the thread. Now it looks like your daughter DID do some work from the book, and you checked it was done. So perhaps it is just that the paper she sat was genuinely harder than the tests in the books? Again, nobody's fault. Just life.

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

Spectacularly missing the point there! I am blaming you for blaming your little girl !!

OP, you originally said that she didn't have tutoring but actually she did. It may have stopped six (five?) months ago after sitting the grammar school exams but she will still have done verbal reasoning and would know how to do it. You also suggested that she didn't do any work from the verbal reasoning book but now you say she did and you checked it.

I have a feeling that you might live in the same area as me (going on time frames and other things you have said) and if that is the case, I don't agree that everyone will have continued with tutoring after the grammar school exams had finished. It sounds as if you did a lot of preparation for the exam (no less than we did anyway) and despite what you say you are no less competitive than the majority of other people who enter their children for these exams.

Anyway, you can't really go on whether or not she found the exam hard. It could be that everyone found it hard and the pass mark will therefore be low.

Tutoring is not necessary for a bright child especially with VR and NVR, but a bit of practice to familarise themselves (and to work against the clock) is highly advantageous

now the dust has settled i see things clearer. you lot are right, i certainly should have been more on top of the vr situation and for this i feel saddened. i tutored once (for grammar months ago), hated the process, didn't tutor for entrance exams just taken as maths & english are all fine. i do think i am being a little too hard on myself however, i have helped her more than i initially let on (ie checked the vr book after she had done a session) etc but i just ain't the 'professional' mother type who ie spends hours/weekends etc working with their dc, not unless she genuinely needed it. I'm talking about the type who do loads of timed test papers, etc.
3bunnies different for each school but one of them has to be grade 5 first instrument (merit or distinction).
joysmum i agree with you in that it shouldn't be criticised if a parent helps their child, i think it is an admirable thing actually and i am not brilliant at it, i do my best. when i use the term 'competitive' i refer to the mums who (locally for grammar school) literally kept their dc's in most days in the 6 week summer holiday doing timed test paper after timed test paper, this i am not exagerating.
coco44 sorry for my rather rude outburst yesterday, i was being overly off and rude which wasn't called for, just being over sensitive
whatever5 redbridge essex...

You should have helped her. you should have at least tested her

I think you gave her a disadvantage and sadly the penny has just dropped.

What I actually meant was the pass mark for the vr etc paper - they may be using it as a tool to ensure that she is capable of doing gcses etc without necessarily expecting her to be a genius. I imagine for a music scholarship a good audition and a distinction for example at grade 5 even if the exam was not top marks would trump a person scoring slightly higher on the exam but not as musically gifted. The exam will be the school's standard exam designed to ensure that all children are generally capable of achieving marks that won't 'let the school down' but also to identify a few high fliers to offer academic scholarships - as you aren't after one of these she might not need such a high mark.

I hope that whatever the outcome she gets a school that is right for her - do update us.

pumpkin - sadly you are right. i must add, she had a bond folder with individual timed test papers which she did as well as a separate bond book of timed tests. i didn't intentionally give her a disadvantage. i genuinely don't know much at all about vr thus i didn't know about/understand the importance of 'speed'/etc. as i have said, i did my best as i saw it at the time. we never seriously thought that she would get in as she is only going for a scholarship and not standard entry so that narrows her chance down HUGELY anyway. she seems to think she wasn't that bad with the vr, found the second half harder. i don't know if they grade it in the same way as the local high achieving grammar. they also take into school reports, interviews. dd said she thought the maths & english were easy :). as far as we are concerned, and always were, she will probably end up at the local state which is still good as it is a good school. doesn't hurt to try.

thanks 3bunnies . no idea!! re what they consider a vr pass. i am assuming it isn't anywhere as near as when trying for the grammar which has unusually high levels. dh went privately oddly enough to the same school. he said (not in a horrible way as he is a nice person....) that there were alot of people there who were the opposite of clever. he doesn't know how they got in although he did add that these two particular boys had an extremely wealthy father and said they all assumed that their father had offered funding for the school. i wonder if someone can buy their way in for their children who aren't clever?