I am not a parent but was a child kind of in this scenario, my mother never bragged or let on, if anything she downplayed mine and my brothers ‘intelligence’.
The middle class parents of some of my primary school classmates however did brag, x is so sporty, x is so clever, x is going to a grammar school. When I outperformed all of them at GCSE and A Level they were visibly shocked.
I’ve always found middle class parents to be obsessed with their children’s achievements, particularly middle class mothers, many of whom do not work and have relatively little achievements (just an observation, I do not want an argument). It’s almost like they live through their children.
My mother was a SAHM, but working class and not obsessed. She was also a second generation immigrant.
I am now a nurse, a career seemingly looked down upon by many middle class SAHMs, one of whom told my mother ‘so it doesn’t matter that she got better GCSEs and A Levels if that’s all she’s going to do for a living’. Luckily I don’t give a toss about others opinions, and think my mother in this respect has taken the right approach.
One of my friends was this clever, sporty, genius (according to her mother). She actually painfully struggled through primary, and I used to have to let her copy my spellings in the spelling test because she got so upset. Turns out she had dyslexia (diagnosed at16) and had been too scared to tell her parents her struggles. This kind of attitude puts a lot of pressure on children.