DH putting too much pressure on DS’s education

[artylondon]

Good morning everyone - it’s my first time posting, looking for some advice.

My DH and I live in London with our lovely DS, 12.
Of course I’m biased, but I’m really proud of DS, who is a friendly, generally very happy nearly-teenager. He is bright and really articulate and engaged in conversation, but he has never been very focused at school or particularly interested with more fact-based subjects like Sciences & History. No learning difficulties, but he has always struggled with Maths particularly.

However…my DH has always been much more concerned by his academic record. He’s from a very posh, very high-achieving family, where everyone is Oxford-educated and went to the same very intense private schools. He thinks DS needs more focus / structure / tutoring to do well. This is particularly intense where we live (much more DH’s natural background) where a lot of parents pay for tutoring for exams and entrance to competitive schools. I’m sure Mnetters are familiar! It’s coming to a crux as DS moves to senior school next year.

DH’s family are also, I think, putting a lot of pressure on DH to do this and are paying for school fees. I obviously want a good life for DS too, but I think it’s fine for him to enjoy his strengths and just to get what he needs in school to live a full life when he is older.

I’m from a much more ordinary background and this feels ridiculous and too much pressure, but it feels incredibly normalised for people like DH.

My DH is otherwise close with DS and they have a really good relationship. This is the main point of tension.

Does anyone else have experience with children showing strong interest in a subject or skill from an early age? DS, for example, would always gravitate so strongly towards arts & crafts as a toddler, and he would be much less focused in reading. DH would do more reading with him, while I would do more art and messy play. DH is convincing himself that he just didn’t manage to promote reading / focused work enough to DS. He’s worrying he didn’t present learning as fun and interesting, whereas doing art with me always clicked so easily for DS.

If that makes sense! I haven’t tried to force anything on him, honestly. He has just always had a really, really strong preference for art. My parents just think he’s turned out like me.

@artylondon so has he actually had thorough screening for any SPLDs?

Some children don't have a clear easy to spot profile more of a spiky one that won't get spotted without a proper assessment which would take several hours.

My DD is dyspraxic but taught herself to ride a bike at 3, amazing runner. Can't throw/catch and it impedes her processing speed academically. Not diagnosed until after she left school when I paid for the SPLD assessment.

I understand it might sound worse from these posts. We are quite different in some ways, and do have some different priorities, and backgrounds. But we do love each other!

What does your son want?

I have one child who is very bright, he could be an Oxbridge candidate if pushed, but, you cannot push him, he cannot cope and actually does better if the foot is off the gas pedal.

My other is less academic and enjoys another pair of eyes to look at problems from a different angle.

He is bright and really articulate and engaged in conversation, but he has never been very focused at school or particularly interested with more fact-based subjects like Sciences & History. No learning difficulties, but he has always struggled with Maths particularly.

Have you had him assessed? Because a child that is very bright and articulate but is getting average grades is a red flag for some sort of learning disability.

My DD has severe dyslexia and her “boredom” at academics, facts, dates was a mask for having trouble reading. If you struggle with the reading, then it is very fatiguing to also try and remember the facts and academics. Her maths she similarly struggled with because she’d read a 2 as 5 and at times if the answer was say 58, she’d write 85.

Once she was diagnosed at age 10 and support put into place and she had two years of cognitive tutoring, her grades went up to match her abilities when learning through oral communication.

Maybe we should, but when DH has asked, teachers (and a genuinely leading specialist we know socially) have just said really, really unlikely and said he is just worrying over nothing really. Honestly no motor skills issues/ signs of dyspraxia. He picks things up quickly when he focuses but gets bored easily. And we are quite obsessive with screen time, so I don’t think it’s that either. It seems to me like he’s interested in the world, and intense school exams and exam technique are putting him off learning to an extent.

E.g. he’s always asked lots of questions about things, he’s curious, he’s confident and chatty and articulate with adults. Which makes me worry less about him.

Surely you shouldn’t need to pay private school fees then tutor a kid for GCSE maths.

I think you are both a bit unreasonable really. Your husband needs to get his head round the fact that his son is just not as academic as he’d like and that Oxford will probably be off the cards. On the other hand life will be harder without having at least good base level
exam results in literacy and numeracy so not unreasonable to push him a bit there.

I think the main thing I would be doing is not choosing an overly academic school. He sounds like a child of moderate ability who, entirely naturally at 12, isn't that keen on flogging himself to death for grades. A school focused on very little but academic results, with maybe a few performative extra-curriculars on the side, would not be the right choice, and I wouldn't be colluding in stuffing my square-peg child into the round hole of dh's family values and traditions. I'd choose a school with more of a focus on the whole child, perhaps one that has a bit of a track record in art, and then, having taken the immediate pressure out, re-look at what needs to happen to get solid GCSE results that reflect his potential as a whole child (intelligence + interest/inclination + study skills). I've one who is the 'top grades with literally zero effort' type (and is now doing a very hands-on apprenticeship-style training course because he's found a vocation) and one who is perfectly capable but has a history of applying himself just enough for the grades he's OK with. He's also somewhat ND so the only way there has been to largely back off. His grades have improved as he's matured and he'll get what he needs for his next steps. He's had a difficult time with one subject and we've always said that we would intervene with tutoring if it looked necessary, but it's picking up. I do think that ideally your dh has some lessons ahead in parenting the child he has rather than the one he wants, while you might need to watch that you don't miss the point at which some extra support might be warranted in terms of enabling him to get a sound basis for future choices - ds' choices, though, not your dh's by proxy.

Looking at it from your dh's perspective, it can be really hard to set aside the opportunity to study at a prestigious school, the kind that people know the name of or that comes at the top of the school league tables. But sometimes we have to do hard things if they're the right thing for our children.

I've just been through a similar process with secondary applications and decision making as dd has narrowly missed the 11+ mark she'd need to guarantee a place at the hyper-selective, top ranked grammar school I went to. Due to personal circumstances she would probably get a place through an appeal but the more I've thought about it, the more I know that wouldn't be the right route for her. It's hard to set aside all the what-ifs that might crop up in the future and it seems counter intuitive to give up on the chance of sending her to one of the top schools in the country. But the school we've put as first choice on her application feels like a much better place for her to learn and grow. It's about playing to her strengths, not what the grandparents/other school parents think is "right". I tell my rambling story because this decision (which now seems so obvious) didn't fall into place for me until the last few weeks even after a year of 11+ homework and school tours when I was hoping and hoping she'd be able to compete for a place at the "best" school. I've had to change my mindset about what school means for her as an individual, and also reassure myself that she'll clearly still be able to play to her many strengths at a school where the average grade is lower than an 8. I don't know when you need to apply for places moving on from prep school but hopefully at this point in y7 your dh has time to go on a similar journey.

On the flip side though, coming from a family that leans towards creative careers... It's fantastic to be nurturing your son's interest and ability in art, but also important to be realistic about how he will support himself without his grandparents funding him through big opportunities in the future.

Also wasn’t being clear here - he’s been assesed with no LDs, (privately because DH paid for it, the school did not at all recommend it) but he hasn’t been through a deeper ’ assessment of the type described by a previous poster. He does understand when he focuses. I just don’t want to push him into being something he isn’t. Like I wouldn’t force my very sensible academic DH into being an actor or a graphic designer!

Has he done any of the pre- tests? Most of the boys in DS’s year had done these in Year 6 and had places dependant on CE scores.

Part of what you (or your in laws) are paying for at a prep is the steering towards the appropriate Year 9 place. Your prep head should have a massive amount of experience and be able to say “For your Tommy, St John’s would be a cert, Dulwich would be a good fit and Wellington would be a stretch.”

I’m really surprised you’re getting GCSE predictions in Year 7!

Hello. I understand and empathise with what you are describing. I am somewhere between you and your DH on this, trying to find a balance but it’s so hard! My DD sounds similar in some ways to your DS. She naturally gravitates to making things, writing stories, music etc. She loves school but does the minimum. My background is that I was pushed quite a lot to do well and in some ways it had positive impact because it has led to a good job and while I’m far far from wealthy I have a reasonably comfortable life. But the flip side of that is I always feel like I need to be striving which again is not necessarily a bad thing but I often have a sense of not being quite good enough, that I can’t just ‘be’. So while I want to encourage my daughter to strive and work hard, I also don’t want her to feel like she’s not enough. It’s all a bit more complicated than what I’ve described, but just to say that finding the right balance is hard.

Hmm. I thought about trying to articulate this in my previous post, but I wasn't sure how to. But this makes me think I should. Your dh seems to think - not unusual, I guess, for a product of a family with a long history of being near the top of the social tree - that anything can be obtained/achieved/forced with the right methods/application. If he'd 'presented reading as fun enough' he would have produced the little prodigy of his imagination. I'd read a child enjoying arts and crafts as a child enjoying arts and crafts, and as long as he was being read to (reading to my dc is very much my thing - but our youngest has developed an interest in and aptitude for art that really seems to have come from nowhere), I'd be content with that. I wonder if your dh could be struggling a bit, in an ego-driven way (I don't mean this badly - we all have an ego) with his son 'taking after' you rather than him? Coming from a family with strong ideas about how People Like Us should be, and possibly a male tradition of educational privilege and achievement, it may be that this is difficult for him particularly with a son. If so, that does need laying bare and working on.

Your latter description sounds like ADHD, not your classic make presentation but picking up things quickly and getting bored.

Classic line for most of us is "failed to reach their potential".

DH’s family are also, I think, putting a lot of pressure on DH to do this and are paying for school fees.

This is the problem - as soon as you have grandparents paying school fees, they have an "ownership" of how well the grandchild is doing at school. It's a recipe for disaster in many cases.

He loves art, making it and also visiting galleries with me (and DH, but DH…obviously! thinks contemporary art is not really art…etc). He’s interested in the world and creative. We’ve also been to the theatre a lot which he’s really enjoyed and been totally focused on the shows. He also does some sport, and he likes being with friends. I’m relieved that he’s not really interested in computer / video games. For me, all of this is positive.

I agree with this post re discussions with the current school regarding secondary schools.

And I'll add all three of my children developed interests/vocations/aptitudes early that aren't mine (two of them are tangentially related to interests of dh's but not to the extent the children are engaged with them) and that did require me to do a bit of recalibration - I'm a MC, musical, Oxford humanities graduate and I did have to adjust a bit to their interests/talents not being as cerebral as mine. But I actually feel very proud that they've had the space and backing in their lives to acquire and develop interests that are all their own.

@artylondon I don't know if he has any sen needs or not. To me it isn't clear from your post but just wanted to say that I'd asked every teacher my son had from nursery up to year 5 about possible sen, they all said definitely not. We finally got him assessed and he has a huge range of things. From autism to adhd and lots in between.
Teachers don't always know!

Having a child that lacks focus as a natural skill and a child who doesn't have a natural ability for the sciences - then a tutor and more support in these areas is a good thing.

It depends how it's been done - screaming and berating a child for poor results - not ok. Providing support and extra help, is a positive.

but DH…obviously! thinks contemporary art is not really art…etc)

There's nothing 'obvious' about that. Your dh sounds as if he has a bit of a limited worldview. UMC parochialism isn't any less parochialism for being UMC.

Your DS sounds like a charming kid. A small amount of 1:1 tutoring might help with difficult concepts, and I imagine many of his friends will be being tutored in the lead up to ISEB. Which secondary schools does the Prep School suggest for him and where do your DH and the GPs want him to go?

Thank you vrey much for this clear-sighted, kind comment. You sound like a really nice parent! As a result of this thread, I definetely see the point more of extra support for a ‘sound basis for future choices’. I think I had seen this as unnecessary before.
This is how I feel, as his mother: "He sounds like a child of moderate ability who, entirely naturally at 12, isn't that keen on flogging himself to death for grades.”
It’s also the sentiment the more sensible / moderate teachers have shared.
I really feel that children are individuals too, who approach things differently, like your DC.