AIBU to ask Wtf Is 'Child Led'?

[JustDanceAddict]

Seeing this a lot lately - what does it actually entail.
If my DCs didn't want to get up for school cos they're tired, is it child-led to keep them off school?
Mine know unless they are illthey are going in, as I have to go to work when tired, etc.

I will listen to my kids' reasons to do x,y or z but if I don't agree they will not be doing it.

I have let DD (15) off a couple of optional things and have regretted it as in the end it wasn't right in the circumstances that she didn't attend.

Surely it's all about compromise, but some things: school, family events, etc. are non-negotiable (barring mental health issues around school before I get flamed).

similarly, the fact that schools don't HAVE to operate on asking permission to go to the loo (something I have never personally seen happen in either a home or a work environment) doesn't make any difference to the fact that this is indeed the way they operate.

If schools and nurseries weren't run the way they actually are run then probably DD would be in school.

puddings is one element of our lives that is utterly adult led. There would be cake 3 times a day otherwise....

Morphene - you are being obtuse. Of course you can go to loo at work etc, but you have a set time to be there & leave and have to get permission to leave early for an appointment or for leave. That's what I meant about 'wander in and out'. You can't decide when to rock up to school, and likewise for work. Also, lunchtime is your recreation time at work and same at school.

Teachers can't have kids running in and out of classroom for toilet. Those in need of having to use the loo urgently due to medical issues have a toilet pass. Afaik when mine were little, in reception, they could go to loo during the day, but only a couple at a time as they could t hold as easily.

I have heard of child-led weaning, which as far as i can gather is a way to martyr yourself by letting your child make an absolutely appalling mess of your kitchen.

I suspect that like most things in parenting the best approach is a balance - children aren't oracles and they are often wrong, but where you can accommodate rational preferences it is better to listen to that then be absolutely strict and inflexible.

Why would it make a mess?

Green tulips - we call that a homework menu. It's brilliant. I teach Drama and only set one piece of homework a term. Pupils choose something from the menu that they want to do. One of the home works is to design a set. I've had everything from a drawing, to a lego model, to a set built in mine craft. One kid emptied their bedroom, built a set with their furniture and videoed it to email to me. Not sure how pleased their parents were but he is a pupil with ASD who usually refuses to do homework.

op many jobs do allow you to rock up whenever though. The kind of creative or self-reliant self-directed jobs that will likely still be requiring humans to do them in 20 years time.

It is highly unclear to me that schools are training our children in anything they will actually find useful in the world they will find themselves in 10/20 years from now.

homework menu sounds really good though! A solid idea.

I don't disagree with it - however DS was tasked something similar and decided logo was the way to go - his sister had spent hours with paint glue and card board

The following year - same homework (this is displayed and a prize given)

Nearly every child used legs - we set the trend and the teacher said weren't very happy!!

So works both ways

It means you're a much better parent than anyone else

parentier than thou

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I repeat the homework menu's because they relate to the topics I teach in each year. So yr 7 will have the same menu as the previous yr 7. I've never had any issues with it. Just really creative ideas. One pupil designed a costume by raiding her dad's wardrobe, dressing up and videoing herself describing why she'd chosen the clothes she had for that character. It's so much closer to what they might do in the industry. Much more interesting than 'do a poster' and makes marking a pleasure because it's fun. I teach 180 pupils in each yr group at ks3. It's much nicer to ping them an email back in response to a video and record their grade in my mark Book, than it is to write 'good work' 180 times on a poster. It probably takes me longer to be fair, but the outcomes are so much better.

Morphene your post implied that:
At home - your child leaves the table when full. Leaving everyone else sitting at the table.
At nursery (which I disagree with) your child was made to sit still until they had finished everything on their plate.

And my post said that both are missing something, my implication being that it is not nursery per se that is failing your child but this particular nursery's poor attitude to finishing food.

Nursery should be asking children to stop when they are full. So yours is a bad nursery, not The System.

I find it a bit odd/precious/defeatist to say there is one difficulty in nursery therefore there will be no more school for your child. Rather than talking to the nursery, you assume that all schools and nurseries are like this, that there is no changing them, and that you might as well quit now.

I also keep hearing home ed or wannabe home ed families making a decision on the basis that they don't want to disturb their child's learning which they are choosing to do in the morning at home (or their sleep) to take them to school. That again seems to be spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar - half an hour of something the child chose, prevents a whole day of new horizons that the child wouldn't be aware of if they go to school.

Child-led parenting =/= parenting.

many jobs do allow you to rock up whenever though. The kind of creative or self-reliant self-directed jobs that will likely still be requiring humans to do them in 20 years time.

So by deciding now that your child will never learn to keep to a strict timetable, you are deciding for them at the age of 4, that they will never become a doctor, teacher, engineer, barrister, or indeed almost any other job that relies on interaction with the public (and that isn't very likely to be superseded by robots, either)?

drspouse My post said "'eat if you are hungry, stop when you aren't' at home" which implies that you stop eating when you are no longer hungry. Any further activity you added in on your own - incorrectly as it turns out.

I do acknowledge the potentially wider horizons that school could deliver however I am very concerned by the shit tonne of gender stereotyping it delivers though.

One exceptional thing about our local HE group is that all activities are mixed age and mixed gender. Any hint of 'that's for girls' gets policed immediately. The mantra is everything is for everybody who wants to do it. By contrast the gender segregation in the playground at our local school is all but 100%.

How have I decided that my child will never learn to keep to a timetable?

I haven't banned them in perpetuity?

Is it possible that you are mixing up not being able to adhere to a timetable aged 6ish without massive emotional upset with never being able to?

When she is better able to cope with switching activities we will introduce more structured stuff and things that have deadlines for turning up.

Just because I haven't taught her differential calculus yet doesn't mean I never will....

Again, schools promoting gender stereotyping is a problem with that school not a problem with the concept of schooling.

Bear in mind that your DC will also need to socialise with children whose parents have told them that A is for girls and B is for boys, though. And they need tools to deal with that.

When my DS came home age 4 and told me he didn't like X because it was for girls, his nursery keyworker and I dealt with it.

When my friend's DS (at the same school as DS) came home and said he was told he couldn't wear purple trousers because they were for girls, school stamped on the idea firmly. And my friend's DD (again same school) has almost exclusively male friends. Sounds like you've looked at one school and decided they are all like that, and that no school can ever change? Yet I imagine that the school my DS and friends go to was still giving girls cookery and boys woodwork lessons in the not too distant past (the nursery hasn't been open that long).

God I hate the phrase "poor form". It's so...home counties...

Morpene tbh most of your posts just have this undertone that no school could ever be good enough for your kid. Just admit it and stop trying to do these long explanations.

Well, I'm not completely convinced either that children need to be in school for 9am every day from age 4 - but you did say that "there are lots of careers where you don't need to keep to a timetable" implying that you had decided it wasn't necessary to ever learn to do this.

But if by 6 you struggle that much with a timetable I would strongly suggest some SEN. And I know the record of managing school with SEN is poorer than for typically developing children, but I say this because it is pretty unusual not to be able to manage aged 6, unless parents have "told" them they "won't manage".

Again, not all schools are for all children, so it's likely a problem of that particular school - if it's been given a good try, for a decent length of time, with parents properly encouraging and not saying "oh you know dear you don't HAVE to go to school if you don't WANT to" in the tone that implies "I'd really rather you didn't sell your soul to the Man at 6 so please tell me you don't like it because I will like that".

I assume you are also a trained Maths teacher? What about the other topics she would need to learn if she wanted to become an engineer or a doctor?

most of your posts just have this undertone that no school could ever be good enough for your kid.

Nail. Head.

It started meaning that young children would explore more and take their own lead in their play e.g. child-led play/learning. All good stuff.

Some people have taken 'child led' to mean that they won't discipline their child, they'll let their children discover manners, allow then to behave how they like in places because they're just exploring the environment, they negotiate with their child from the age of 3 and then seem surprised when their child gets to school and has to deal with rules and boundaries. People who take this approach think they are superior parents and think nothing of calling teachers over the years asking why their child has been sanctioned when 'they were just...'

The thing is that I live where I live, and the local schools are what they are. Also the best local nursery (according to ofsted) was where we got 'eat everything or you can't go play', and where they basically told us DD was doing fine when every single time we went to pick her up she was in a corner crying silently to herself.

So yes, maybe not all schools/nurseries are as shit as the ones I have the option of using.

I suspect based on national statistics that the problem of gender stereotyping is endemic in the system though, and not a local phenomenon at all. I mean, find me a state school where the proportion of the A level art class that is female is equal to the proportion of the physics A level class that is female....

TBH I think my DD has a fantastically better chance of becoming an engineer if she continues to HE than if she goes to school.

My worries are more about if I can support her if she decides to do something more off the academic beaten track...