To worry I'm not pushy enough

[cherrycrumblecustard]

I had very pushy parents and I always vowed I wouldn't be the same, but I'm worried I might be setting my DC up to underachieve or fail.

I don't insist on homework being done, and I don't really ask/fuss about levels or anything like that. I guess that's okay for primary but should I try to get more involved as secondary looms closer?

You may have managed ok, but your child might not, do you really want to take that chance? Is they don't get those very important Maths and English GCSE's, their job prospects are limited and you will be bankrolling them for much longer.

But if he gets a detection and you need to collect him, them you are the one who is going to have to deal with it. It's about supporting the school too.

He's cleverer than me. I don't imagine he'll have a problem getting his GCSEs. Like I say I'm not NOT supporting him just not making him sit down and do homework.

Collecting him would be s minor inconvenience to me I was just pointing out it could put some families in a very difficult position and I think it's sad the school aren't more compassionate to that.

Welcome to the real world. Most schools are on public transport routes. We are rural so the students rely on the school buses.

They do get advanced notice of after school detention. It is never on the same day.

My children live in a very supportive home. I generally don't believe primary school homework is effective though. Reading, baking, doing enriching leisure activities yes, Washing the car yes. Primary school homework yes but only if you want to. Which they never do. Mine faithfully complete secondary school homework though as they know they would face detentions. They are all predicted level 9's.

DD didn't get much homework at primary school. It was more a case of learning her times tables and spellings for a weekly spelling test. Both of which I think are very important.

I think the central problem is that in your opinion:

1. Homework is stupid.
2. Homework doesn't help.

Neither of those statements are true. If we give examples of other kinds of homework you say, oh that's not homework. You have a very fixed idea of what 'homework' is. Work set by the teacher for home. How is readings that you have to do at Uni any different? Just because YOU didn't see it as homework (because you had more autonomy) doesn't mean it wasn't homework.

You also have this idea that you have to force him to do it. Or stand over him. No, you can sit with him. Discuss what he is doing. Read up stuff together. Make it part of a learning experience rather than 'homework'. That choice is YOURS.

Learning is never useless. Practice is never useless. It might be boring but that's life. It is up to us how we find ways to make it challenging. Does your son do anything that requires regular practice? Like play a musical instrument? My very young son is musically gifted. I don't know HOW because I am not. And I am not into music at all. But he is. It means he has to practice. 90% of the time he does so willingly although there is a 10% when he doesn't and when I remind him of the value of practice, no matter how boring. He does it grudgingly but does it. And I often video his practice sessions so he can watch and see what he could do better. But also to show him how much better he can get with practice. Now here's the thing. I can do all the additional stuff- take him to concerts, expose him to music, be supportive but at some point if he wants to do well at something then he has to do his music 'homework' and his practice. And it is an important work ethic to learn.

I know what you will say. Oh but music is fun, maths and science isn't. And therein lies the problem. You have identified certain kinds of learning and certain forms of it as boring and unnecessary based on how YOU found it.

Not exactly, no.

The point is, if my son comes home and says "I've got homework." I don't start with the, what is it, when is it due, sit down now, I'm going to sit next to you when you do it" way.

Maths and science can be fun so DH tells me

The point is, I'm not actively preventing or discouraging my son (or my daughter but she is nursery age) from completing homework. Both children do extra curricular activities, DS is doing really well in school, he is happy and he is keen.

But I don't go on about it. I only mention it if he does. I don't insist weekends and holidays are given over to schoolwork. I don't make him practice his maths. If, when he is in secondary school, he forgets to do something I won't give him a hard time over it. I won't be high fiving him him or anything, but if he's been told off and got a detention in school that seems a more than adequate response to forgotten homework. I won't be ringing up the school asking that he gets more homework or saying not enough homework is set or similar.

All that I meant by this thread is that I think it's possible to actually cause problems for children at university or in the adult world by being the one driving them: ergo when you are no longer there, they can't motivate themselves. This was largely what happened to me and being totally honest I do struggle to do basic things at times.

I am totally supportive of the school and believe me if my DS ever said (not that I think he would) I'm not doing that homework for mr Jones, he's a stupid bastard then I would go bananas. But that's very different to 'oops, busy weekend and left my homework on the kitchen table' a couple of times which I think most kids do occasionally.

But asking what homework there is and when is it due is not being pushy. That's the thing. It is showing an interest in what he is doing. At some point there will be the odd weekend that has to be given over to school work and he might be reluctant and might need a prod or a 'want some company while you do it?' sort of motivation. Again that's not pushiness.
Finally, if he forgets something you don't have to be Tiger Mum but ask him what might help him remember next time. Organisational skills are learned not inherent. Again if he forgot his gym bag or something you might give him a friendly reminder. Why is homework different?

It would be a very odd parent who actively prevented their child from doing homework. But all children need a gentle push to do many things (this morning's getting dressed battle involved me reminding DS several times that he needed to stop playing with his willy and get dressed- JOY). I think you have this view of homework that is as I said, quite oppositional and a result of your experience and you find it easiest not to engage with it in any form, because it brings up your own bad memories. There is a huge gulf between 'I am not preventing him from doing homework' and 'I will insist he does it at the cost of a huge family argument'. A huge gulf. And you don't seem to have any middle ground in it. Perhaps because there wasn't when you were growing up.

With me, my parents were curious. Knew what I was doing. Often sat at the table doing their work while I did mine. Would ask me before I left the house if I had taken everything. Would often ask me on Saturday mornings if there was any work/tests I had to prepare for. It was part of ordinary family life. My sister was in medical school and living at home so she would sometimes sit down with her books after lunch, and if I was faffing she would say 'oi you, done all your work?' As I said, it was part of the fabric of life. In your case it wasn't and so you are struggling to see how it could be.

Haha cherrycrumblecustard I don't think many parents on here get what you"re saying.

I'm reminded of the David Bowie song where he talks about homework 'let's put it on the fire and take the car downtown'...

The sentiment being that the child/person is more important than the results they get at school, so don"t get overly stressed about homework.

So many of the posters on this thread with kids on target for level 9 - yup that's great. But believe me, it doesn't work that way for everyone. Not every child finds it possible to sit and do revision or homework without it feeling like torture to them. Not all respond to incentives or reminders or withdrawal of privileges. Or even to detentions!!

You can take a horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink. cherry whatever you do someone somewhere will tell you it"s wrong, you have to do what you think is right, and go forward from there.

You may be setting your kids up to 'fail academically and in life' in the eyes of others on this forum but at least your kids will be happy and balanced and won't be having a nervous breakdown just before their final exams at uni when it's all become too much.

time it is incorrect to depict undergraduates as a high risk group in respect of breakdown/suicide.

All the evidence shows that as a group they are not.

And my years of experience tell me that those who cope well during finals ( which the majority do) are those who can just grit their teeth and get on with it.

cherry it seems to me that you're setting yourself up for the worst of all worlds with your views and behaviour on homework.

You're utterly rigid in your thinking of it. Your behaviour towards it is completely inflexible ( decisions made years in advance).

And yet it worries you that you're not pushy enough.

That really is daft. Have the courage of your convictions at least and live contentedly with any consequences.

I'm with GetAhairCut and Luchi, who make excellent points.

And there's a disturbingly unthinking parallel being set up on this thread by some posters between children who succeed academically at school and university and unhappiness/stress/poor MH. To be very direct about this, you don't have to be desperately stressed and unhappy to be successful - it's perfectly possible to be happy and resilient and do well.
Your attitude to your child's homework is not a choice between creating a whimpering wreck with an Oxford First and a chilled, blissed-out dropout.

I'm not setting a parallel and I don't think the OP is either - why so extreme? I was trying to say that not all people are suited to being university students and that it could be unwise to be overly pushy to make them do it.

I didn't say that All Students will have a breakdown in their finals! Ludicrous

As an academic teacher, I see a lot of unhappy youngsters with MH problems. Ime there is absolutely no correlation (either way) between how much revision they do and their level of unhappiness.

Unhappiness stems from long-term MH issues, or newly developed MH issues, from inability at coping with the grown-up world, from a feeling that you are out of your depth academically, from personal problems (family, boyfriend/girlfriend, financial), or from an unhealthy lifestyle (poor diet, lack of exercise, drinking, drugs).

It has very little to do with whether you have got used to incorporating a certain amount of revision into your daily routine alongside cleaning your teeth and taking your daily exercise.

Otherwise, the depression levels of music students would be astronomically higher than those of any other students.

Also, according to your reasoning, music students would be the ones incapable of managing their own work, because they are the ones who have almost certainly been made to do monotonous exercises on their instrument day in and day out whether they felt like it or not. You can't learn an instrument any other way.

I take students from all over the faculty of humanities (and sometimes beyond): I invariably find that the music students are the best at organising their work and self-managing. Possibly drama students would be equally good, but I don't get those.

So many of the posters on this thread with kids on target for level 9 - yup that's great. But believe me, it doesn't work that way for everyone. Not every child finds it possible to sit and do revision or homework without it feeling like torture to them. Not all respond to incentives or reminders or withdrawal of privileges. Or even to detentions!!

You can take a horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink. cherry whatever you do someone somewhere will tell you it"s wrong, you have to do what you think is right, and go forward from there.

You may be setting your kids up to 'fail academically and in life' in the eyes of others on this forum but at least your kids will be happy and balanced and won't be having a nervous breakdown just before their final exams at uni when it's all become too much.

time, you are assuming, though, that only 'non-academic' children struggle with the discipline and self-motivation needed for homework/independent study, which simply isn't the case. And also that 'non-academic' children who aren't headed to university don't need to be able to work independently or grasp that sometimes dull tasks need to be mastered on the way to achieving a desired goal.

I'm not assuming anything.

Give me your magic solutions PLEASE as I have tried everything with my 2 eldest and they are soooo reluctant to do anything and have no motivation for schoolwork AT ALL.

Thanks - as I know I'm not alone in this, and it would help many others

time there is no magic solution.

All parents can do is try different methods and pass on successful ones to others ( which may or may not be successful with different children ).

If I've learned one sure thing through parenting my DC to almost adults is that you have to stay nimble. You have to keep reassessing. Rigid mindsets have little place at the table.

If I can give any advice based on my experience to date it would be to ensure DC get into healthy habits as young as possible. And one healthy habit is to knuckle down. Anyone who wants to get good at something ( be it sport, music, dance, you name it) will reach a point when this is essential.

How do you pass that healthy habit on?
Believe in it.
Lead from the front. Give clear examples of doing this.
Also, present it as a non negotiable, like good manners and good hygiene.
Accept that there will be times when you have to 'bang on'. So what? That's part of being a parent. Consistency is key.

It all sounds like a bit of a non-problem if your son is doing his homework by himself and doing well at school. Personally my aim is exactly that - to have self motivated children who take responsibility for themselves. You are lucky or perhaps your hands off approach is in fact beneficial for your son.

However, many children need help to learn this skill and there is a big difference to being 'hands off' to allow your children to develop their self reliance and avoid 'looming over them' (which I personally think for the right child is a great approach) and in actually messaging that homework is not important or doesn't need to be done. Even if you personally think it is pointless (which I query) I think you are playing with fire to allow them to substitute their opinion with that of the teacher and opt out when they choose. This may or may not impact academically but could also breed an attitude problem further down the line in school, university or indeed work life.

But what do I know - my child is only 4 😂

And he doesn't always do his homework 😱

Yes that's right. No magic solution. But the habits have to be set early. There was a thread once about what is the one habit you would try to inculcate early and several people said: reading and a love of books. To that I would add a dose of curiosity. Not all academic work is endlessly fascinating. There are no magical ways to learn the times tables or to learn basic spellings. There is an element of perseverance involved. (Same is true of learning to cycle or swim but those are seen as 'fun' and seem to cause less angst).

So I would say that normalising learning as part of the everyday is key. I had a friend who was v proud of how non pushy she was: I refuse to teach my child the colours she would say. Erm. But what's wrong with learning colours. It helps if you can tell a kid to pick up that red sock and put it next to the blue one? But the same friend has been teaching her kid to ride, swim and cycle from a v young age. So that's the first thing. Don't set up a dichotomy when they are v young between 'learning' and 'fun'.

Then suggesting ways they can engage with stuff and think more broadly about issues. While reminding them that not everything is always fun. And that's okay and that's life. Some of that work ethic has to be modelled. And again is true of not just academic work but of other things like chores etc.

My parents weren't hugely fussed about my actual results but they took an interest. They spoke to my teachers, took on board what they said and were generally supportive. They also reminded me constantly (and no the teenage me, didn't stop rolling my eyes) that there was no shortcut to success, blah blah. And there was lots of praise for effort for things I found hard. So I was quite poor at maths so a reasonable score in maths was always commended on more than top marks in other things because my parents knew how hard I had worked for that.

And yes some of this is down to the personality of the child. My sister works incredibly well under pressure. She can knuckle down at the last minute and revise vast swathes of material. If I tried that I would have a nervous breakdown. I work much more methodically and need a much more structured revision schedule. So the week before the exam when my sister was going bonkers I would be propped up flipping through notes. We both did equally well but that was down to our personality. I still don't deal well with last minute stuff and she is the queen of winging it.

The point is, if my son comes home and says "I've got homework." I don't start with the, what is it, when is it due, sit down now, I'm going to sit next to you when you do it" way.

And nobody is expecting you to start interrogating him the second he mentions the word homework ... but what is wrong with your response being "Oh, what is it?" and letting the conversation flow from there, instead of immediately dismissing the homework as worthless rubbish? Perhaps he is telling you about his homework because he wants you to have input and show some interest?

You've gone straight for the extreme over-reaction of assuming that taking an interest = being overbearing. When I came home from school my parents would show interest in my day, and as part of that ask if I had homework, that wasn't them trying to be pushy, but them trying to show interest in my life. They knew everything I did out of school time, especially at primary school, since they made the schedule and decided what social activities we did etc - so school was the one thing they had no active part of. They dropped me at the school gates at 8:30 and collected me at 3:30 and those seven intervening hours' activities were a total mystery, unless they asked me to share it with them. So when they asked me "Get any homework today?" it was their way of asking what I had been doing at school and also helped them plan our evening, whether they had to allow time for homework or whether we could do a few non-essential household errands on the way home. It also meant they could keep an eye on my interests and what I was struggling with,since I would bounce out of school with the news of an English or History project but would be slow to reveal that I had Music or French homework because I struggled and I had no real interest in either subject. That meant my parents could be more supportive of my homework on Music or French days but leave me to it on English or History unless I asked for help.

All that I meant by this thread is that I think it's possible to actually cause problems for children at university or in the adult world by being the one driving them: ergo when you are no longer there, they can't motivate themselves. This was largely what happened to me and being totally honest I do struggle to do basic things at times.

And you cause just as much problems by being totally indifferent and not driving them at all. Children don't just start motivating themselves, it's part of growing up and is something they learn how to do as a process with both positive and negative consequences.

My parents were the one who intitally motivated me in life as well as school, and then scaled their involvement back as I got older and developed my own driving force as part of the wider process. I didn't just start motivating myself to learn, my parents fostered a positive attitude to learning and education, encouraged the things I was interested in and supported the things I struggled with so I could feel an even bigger sense of achievement when I did complete them. Through that support and guidance, I learned to see the bigger picture that I couldn't improve if I gave up the second things became difficult or because I had no initial interest. I learned to motivate myself to do things because they needed to be completed and not just because I liked it.

They also gave me consequences - if I finished my homework early then I got do another activity (eg baking cakes or ride my bike in the street with my friends) , but if I had rushed my homework to a substandard level just so I could bake the cakes or ride my bike then I wouldn't get to bake or ride my bike after doing my homework any more. If I got a difficult project in a subject I didn't enjoy and I told my parents about it as soon as I got it, they would do whatever I asked them to help me; if I lied about it or put it off till the last minute, then they wouldn't help and would leave me to suffer the consequences at school of not having done it. That taught me to be honest about work I had and instead of burying my head in the sand and pretending it didn't exist, I learned to motivate myself to get it over with early so that I could get extra help, if I asked. If I did well in a test then I would get praise and perhaps a treat - chocolate cake for dessert, first choice of TV show after school etc - but if I failed a test purely because I did no work to prepare for it, then my parents would be disappointed and I would have to stay in and they would help me to study for the re-take instead of whatever other activities I had planned (from Juniors, my school would have you do the test again during a lunch break the following week if you failed it first time, both as a consequence of failing and to see if you had actually improved in understanding enough to pass)

Your child is going to have to do many things in life because it is necessary and not just because they want to or interests tham and you do them a disservice if you set up a system whereby their only motivation is that they want to do it and if they suffer consequences from outside entities then it doesn't matter because their parents won't care anyway nor will they change their behaviours.