To think that there is a worrying rise of The Pushy Parent?

[ShutTheDough]

I visited my friend last week who has moved to Cambridge and happened to meet some of her friends. My friend is very down to earth and I would say has a very relaxed style of parenting. I was quite surprised about how much they invested in their children. Not saying that's a bad thing obviously but it all seemed like alot of pressure on the children. One of them already had the careers set out for their DC.
It just seemed all a bit intense tbh.

My DC who are currently on the Xbox think I am being pushy when I occasionally ask them if they have done their homework. I think they would tell me to have a lie down if I ever started talking about wanting to improve their ‘cultural capital.’

building cultural capital

Weeps.

I dunno, muscle memory is pretty cool.
I did various types of dance + gymnastics from 9 to 18 and it means I have pretty good posture/balance. Although, the ladies at yoga tease me because I still do 'ballerina hands' unconciously.

Playing a musical instrument especially a social one like piano or guitar is nice even as an adult.

@reefedsail that is such an excellent point! A huge part of my social network right now is my sports team. Which is something my mum put me in against my will and I have strong memories of being at a camp hating my life every second. Now it's my primary hobby.

There is so much exaggeration and hyperbole on this thread sadly from people saying stuff like ‘let kids be kids’ ‘I can’t believe they’re not allowed time to just play’ ‘it’s awful they don’t get any downtime’ without knowing any poster’s individual circumstances/schedule. Almost to discredit the idea that extra curricular activities are beneficial. It’s a total straw man argument unless you know personally a family where the children are involved in activities every spare hour of every day outside of school. In reality plenty of families make it work just fine balancing school with two or three additional hobbies while still leaving hours each week to just relax, ‘be’, experience boredom and resolving it, and so forth. It almost sounds like people are trying to justify to themselves why they don’t facilitate extra curricular activities, by writing it off as damaging to kids or implying that picking a couple up instantly fills every hour of the week.

One thing I’m keen on is getting kids to think about what they may like to do in the future and ensuring they have at least a basic idea of how they’d go about achieving that, as the door to many professions slams shut if you don’t take the right GCSEs and A Levels. When I was at school (a really awful state school on a council estate) there was never any mention of careers, it was assumed you’d leave and just get a job in a salon or cleaning offices, so it took me a long time to figure out what options for careers were out there and even longer to find out how you get into them. I don’t care what my children end up doing for a living but I do want them to have options open to them and that means talking about the different jobs people do and how they got into them etc. neither of our sets of parents went to uni or really had careers and they struggled for it financially: we managed to get into professions so hopefully we’re well placed to ensure our kids know that’s an option open to them!

The problem with that argument is we never see all the other now adults who spent their entire childhood being pushed to competitive tennis (and to have any real chance of success it is pretty all-consuming) but didn't ultimately make it

I’ve worked with a couple of people who have represented the UK in sports, and either been injured or did not win the gold so we’re essentiallu dumped. They are people who had been pushed to succeed their whole life. Succeed = win, ergo don’t win = failure.

These people have struggled with many aspects of life since competing because they were raised to win at all costs. Lovely, lovely people who didn’t deserve that level of pressure.

If my son (still in utero) doesn’t end up at Eton, I shall leave him on the hard shoulder of the M11.

Duuno why you've got a problem with that HostofDaffodils. It's just a way of describing having a set of skills which enable you to fit in/ find people like you and get on with them.

That seems to be pretty fundamental to being happy.

@edgeofheaven - yeah, my mum made me do grade 8 violin and I didn’t play it after I finished school BUT it gave me confidence that I can learn an instrument (string work was useful learning the ukulele), I can read music and do basic piano with my kid. I’m not naturally musical but managed to get a merit in grade 8 - that’s quite a confidence boost for me (though at the time I couldn’t wait to quit!)

Like most stuff in parenting it probably depends on the kid. Some kids are anxious and need reassurance and scheduled time to chill and to do nothing. Others would sit in front of a screen all day and need to be timetabled activities to make sure they are healthy and get good social interaction and do their school work.

Unless you're training them for to be professional musicians or olympic athletes, lots of those extra-curricular activities at such a young age are pretty much a waste of time and money.

I disagree.

I took violin lessons from the age of seven, which taught me not only how to play and read music, but also how to appreciate and understand music more deeply (which has led to a lifelong love affair where my main enjoyment is music, going to gigs, have many friends made via music, etc), how to work as a team (orchestra), how to persevere when things get tough (when you think you just can’t learn a piece but keep going week after week until it’s mastered!), peripheral vision and teamwork (from being in orchestras), emotional intelligence from experiencing different emotions from music that’d have been outside of my typical daily experiences, and so much more. Not to mention the sheer enjoyment of playing music. Personally I think out of all activities the one I most wish to make available to my children is learning an instrument, especially an orchestral one. It opens many doors and teaches so much.

I think that if anyone used the phrase ‘building cultural capital’ in company, they would instantly alienate themselves from a large proportion of those people. Ironically.

Why on Earth are some people being snotty about the term ‘cultural capital’? Do you know what it means? It’s the right phrase for what the PP wanted to convey.

Social/cultural capital is one of my favourite things to talk about (sociology student)

I still have friends

I think being a little pushy is fine and should be the norm for all parents. Children need an element of pushiness in order to persevere and succeed imo. I wish my parents had been more pushy with me.

Yeah, I will concede that it is a bit of a wanky term. It's a feature of the new Ofsted framework, so I suppose becoming normalised for people with the misfortune to be spending their summer implementing that.

I suppose I do have a problem with micro-management of children's lives. It seems wrong to me.

Yes, if a child is lonely and unhappy, you'd want to work out. If they were bullied and marginalised at school, and then talk to their teacher. Or it might be that in those circumstances I'd look at clubs or actvities that might make them happier or where they'd come into contact with other children.

I've also wanted to make sure that our house is a place where friends are welcomed - even if I've liked some friends rather more than others.

But I think it's also about knowing where to stop.

Beware parents who do 'stage manage' their kids lives particularly in the teenage years. My DD18 has had a gilded education by anyone's standards. I've introduced her to every hobby and interest that I could have done. I've been a loving, caring mum. However, over stage managing produces a lack of resilience, insecurity in a young person that we and she are now grappling with....and I mean big time.

hostofdaffodils

I think the tragedy is that we cannot be certain of this, because of larger political factors that can only be influenced by attempts at collective action, which threaten to take us into a kind of instability this country hasn't seen since World War II

You can always count on someone to take it all back to brexit. What a staggeringly ill informed view.

I honestly think that one of the best things I have done for my daughter within the last few years is to get her dual citizenship. I know that she can get out of the UK and go and live in another - perhaps saner and more civilized country

Congratulations for posting something so incredibly negative, you risk derailing a very interesting thread.

Perhaps you are not very well travelled, or are limited in outlook however at some point you may stumble across the real facts.

The truth is that the UK is still one of the most, if not the most desirable places to send a child to school. We have the best universities in the world. It is a shame that this all seems to be entirely lost on you, despite so many people moving across entire continents just to educate their children here!!

The biggest challenge your children will face is overcoming their mother's deep seated negativity I am sorry to say.

I’m astonished also that anyone would consider the U.K. to be an undesirable place to raise a child! Have you ever read the news, been to other countries etc? We’re phenomenally fortunate.

Lots of people would have gone on and do go onto having rewarding careers without the extra push from parents.

But I agree better to have parents who care rather than not as long as its not for how they look. I know shallow family who praise dd to High heavens... One dc for good job, other has good jib but not good enough

Congratulations for posting something so incredibly negative, you risk derailing a very interesting thread. Perhaps you are not very well travelled, or are limited in outlook however at some point you may stumble across the real facts. Just for info.

I'm a well-educated and reasonably well travelled university graduate with a breadth of outlook that comes from wide reading, a mixed heritage, a diverse group of friends etc.

I'm highly aware of the funding pressures on state education, caused by Govenment spending cuts. Lots of teachers jobs have gone in the city where I live. Some schools are now closing at Friday lunchtimes.

Meanwhile the rise in unaccountable academies has often led to heads paying themselves - and families - a huge amount of money, while under-investing in the children

My background is also one where one of my parents came here as a refugee. There has been a rise in racist incidents in the last few years which is directly related to Brexit.

Language teaching is undegoing decline. School libraries are under-resourced. The curriculum is narrowing. There's a rise in relentless testing which makes some children feel like failures.

A lot of staff are leaving UK universities as a result of political uncertainty. UK's involvement in prestigious international research projects is also lessened and universities are already slipping in terms of international rankings

So while my daughter had a good state education and has recently graudated from an excellent UK university, the future isn't looking great at the moment for UK education generally. (I don't think a dash of extra-curricular Mandarin is going to solve this one.)

More broadly a lot of industries are starting to relocate. So I believe that by ensuring that whatever happens, my daughter can work in the EU27 countries, I've done something that may turn out to be extremely useful.

Mrs grammatus I think so too.
I've been hands off with my older dc since year 2. She does own hw off her own back. Top achiever. Not helped by us except of course for providing books, museums, interesting trips and that sort of stuff but I've never ever stood over her doing hw.

This thread is making me feel really unsettled. My two DC are still it bed (it's 11am) and I am worried I should be playing Boggle with them, or driving them to fencing club.

I had the complete opposite of a pushy parent. I’d have atleast one day off a fortnight & we’d go to Pizza Hut & shopping (she was a bored stay at home mum), she never once asked about homework and I never really did it and was constantly getting in trouble over it as I wasn’t exactly disaplined. I luckily ended up with most A’s/B’s due to being reasonably intelligent but I’m just saying it can go either way OP & I do think some pushiness is needed.

host

I don't know how many dc you have but I also found it easy to talk books, watch amine, go to theatre, listen to stories, etc with dc 1. She's avid reader.
Second dc, not interested, doesn't like library or stories 😂😂and I can't tie her down and force her to listen. Your lucky.