Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Do you teach your kids or let them discover things for themselves?

76 replies

FHOJfinf18 · 05/05/2021 15:33

Had yet another fight with DH over our different parenting styles - we have a four-year-old. I clearly take the approach that one of my jobs as a parent is to teach my kid stuff. So I do try to check for milestones - see what we should be teaching our kid etc etc - this could be from learning numbers to riding a bike, doing zips etc etc etc.

DH on the other hand, just thinks that kids need to learn about the world by themselves and follow their interests. So in practice, he really doesnt go for any formal teaching, but he also wont think about teaching DC how to ride a bike (or even get them one), swimming, using knife and fork, or any other life skills.

This has always been a bone of contention between us. I find it really hard to have to keep up with where DC should roughly be at and trying to teach them stuff. I also dont want to be the boring one who always tries to push DC to doing new things or do school when the time comes. But i feel like if i don't then DH certainly wont bother.
But what do you do at home?

AIBU - kids just learn stuff themselves
AINBU - you are your child's teacher.

OP posts:
Fixitup2 · 07/05/2021 09:35

I’ve had family and friends assume nursery/school will teach their child what they need. Including doing toilet training and how to behave. The parents even said, we can’t wait for him to go to school so he can learn how to behave. Ridiculous. Their child is always in trouble because he wasn’t taught early on.

I haven’t thought much in ages for doing things as we’ve always just given the opportunity. Balance bikes from 2, pedal bikes after that with stabilisers if needed. DC2 hadn’t learnt to ride without stabilisers at nearly 6 and I was really worried so booked a lesson with a teacher and that was sorted in one lesson. They wouldn’t do it for us. Swimming we’ve done since babies. Colouring and drawing from as soon as they could hold a pen/crayon. Dressing has been expected since they were 2.5 with help for buttons/zips etc.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page