..to think that having a child who is average is fine. And that having a child who is advanced does not actually reflect upon anyone

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...I have a staggeringly bright boy. i have another boy who has severe SN. I have a DD who is so far so average.
trhey are nice people. they are well mannered and very kind to each other. Loving, polite and affectionate.
I am not responsible for their IQ's - that is down to god the universe and genes .
The bright boy is not nicer than the boy with SN. My gorgeous average little DD is not of less worth than her more able brother.

Why are we all so obsessed with our kids 'smarts as if that is some holy grail bestowing health wealth and happiness.
And why do some of us seem to want to derive some vicarious kudos from the talents that their kids got from god knows where?

When did that start ?
AIBU that a whole generation of parents are going to be looking at their offspring in 20 years time wondering why they are just as averagly happy as everyone else ?

Don't know about violin - I only do piano teaching. It's this series of books - starting with this starter book and going up to quite tricky exercises. I think this particular series is just for piano, but there may be a similar range for violin.

I've got four children, none of them geniuses but all with their own strengths and weaknesses. I don't mind admitting that I do enjoy their highs when they happen, but I'm also really pleased when they have a friend to tea and manage to play without falling out, or even say (the odd) kind thing to each other.

I hate all this testing at school, I think it's a waste of valuable education time and it just makes the ones who need extra help feel not as good and gives a pat on the back to those who don't need it. As ds1 aged 14 pointed out to me from Have I Got News for You last week, 'you don't make a pig fatter by weighing it'.

In the 60s and 70s when I grew up I think 'average' was more positive than now. Every school has to be 'good' or 'excellent' and when it comes to parenting it isn't enough to be 'good enough' (apparently). Parents who have jumped through endless hoops to get careers themselves are just used to measures of achievement and it starts with the scans! It's really hard to get away from it all, it's just life now. However, I try to put all these things in perspective and I think that if children have friends and possibly the odd other interest outside school (but for fun and enjoyment not competition) they will probably turn out all right in the end.

Favourite piece to impress people is 'The Piano' by Michael Nyman. 'Tis terribly romantic and swirly!

I used to find the exams pretty daunting to be honest. I enjoyed practicing and perfecting the pieces and scales etc, but the day of the exam was always butterflies and sweaty hands.

If I hadn't really loved learning I think taking those exams could have been quite harmful for my confidence. As it is, I think they were a good preparation for all the other nerve wracking things I've had to do since.

Thanks tortoiseshell, I had a search and they seem to be only for piano. It's a good idea though, will see if there is anything of that type for violin. Might not work well with a string instrument though

I find overtly competitive parents quite hard work actually. I say "overtly" because really and truly we're all competitive to a certain extent. We all want our children to "do well" which by and large means "doing better than some/ most/ all other kids", which is in fact statistically impossible (not everyone can be above average).

What is more healthy is encouraging each and every child to develop their own personal interests and talents, whatever they may (I'm just thinking here about the genius film director Francois Truffaut, who at 12 was a neglected delinquent truant who spent most of his school days tucked up in the warmth of Parisian cinemas; just looked what happened to him). It will imo give them by far the healthiest result and outlook on life.

NSRR - ds1 plays 'Jack Sparrow's theme' which is equally impressive!

Exams can be good or bad - some kids really need the push of the exam, others just crumple. That's where the teacher needs to judge what the best thing for the pupil is.

I thought it seemed really sad, the way that Rebecca's mum was going on about what set she was in. She was 7, FFS. Though of course (with reference to another discussion on here) she may only have said it for the cameras and never have mentioned it again.

Is the Mini Book before the Primary Dozen a Day? DS2 (7 in August) has started learning the piano. He is Very Keen and apparently has a Very Good Ear (to me, it looks as if he has two lovely ears!) which means he plays everything by heart. We are gently encouraging him to read the music. He likes scales and that opposite direction hands thingy.

QUITE

I am rather hoping DS isn't too bright - DH and I were both bright but incredibly awkward children. I cherish the hope that average children are easier to manage

Well as the parent of a nearly 4 year old who is still attending the local mother and toddler swim sessions with me (normal upper age limit 3 years old) and who is probably still the least confident in the water in the whole class, I know all about 'trying not to compare with other children at the moment'

I in fact do not really want ds to be too bright. My general experience of bright people (with the exception of my dh who is a professor at a university and one of the most content people I know) is that they are unhappy. I want ds to be happy in his own skin and to develop the habit of having a a positive outlook on life (unlike me who has to really work at that )

On the other hand I do want ds to have the opportunity to try things out and see what he likes to do and where his interests lie. I say this because as a child I did none of these things. My parents were loving parents but they did not see the need to particularly encourage us to develop sports/hobbies/passions in life.

I have felt the lack of this to this day. of course I can take things up now but most things are more difficult to start to learn as an adult. I want ds to have the opportunity to learn where his strengths and talents lie at a young age and to practise those.

Dh seemed to manage this without undue help from his parents who were very similar in this respect to my parents. But for me it was more difficult. I'd have loved to have learned to play tennis, ride a bike or been encouraged to learn a musical instrument when younger. The opportunity to do these things was never really presented to me as child.

I was never sporty at school so was never able to make the 'school team' but I did enjoy some sports and would have liked the opportunity to do them more outside of school (where the whole emphasis was on the girls who were 'good at sport).

There was unfortunately not really enough time, money or inclination in my family for us to be able to do these things. I don't want this for ds.

tortoiseshell- I have to disagree entirely with you there. Children don't need exams to learn things. They need to feel joy in learning. Otherwise they are merely enduring 13 years of compulsory schooling.

lazycow- he'll get there! My son was just the same. Even at 6 I had a hard tine prising him off my arm in the baby pool! Now at 14 is perfectly competent to swim his way out of danger.

As a teacher, I completely agree with you. And, as has been proven time and again, someone with a high IQ may not be blessed with much emotional intelligence at all and end up less happy and more frustrated than an 'average' person. Success in life (whatever success means for you) is very far from solely dependent on smarts!

duchesse - if you read the post it says 'SOME children need exams'. And that is perfectly true. I have a girl who is doing fantastically well - she is working for Grade 7, and is in Y8. She enjoys the piano, plays lots outside lessons. But the thing that motivates her more than anything else is the exams - knowing where she is, what she's working for, and having a quantifiable 'position' in her music. That's what motivates her. Some children would give up at the thought of an exam.

I was an 'exam' kind of person - I liked doing them. In music although I did go through them quickly I don't think they were so motivating, but in school they definitely were, and at university I much preferred the 'exam' system we had in the 2nd year to the 'assessment' system in the 3rd year - I focus much better on a 'date' to work for.

I also think that a lot of children actively suffer from helicopter parenting. If they're going to develop preternatural interests in anything, they're going to do despite anything. I do feel that benign intellectual neglect is a healthy stance compared to hover parenting. I don't always manage to step back myself, and get it wrong more often than not with my own children's interests (ie showing too much of a (vested) interest in what they're interested in), but I think I'm managing to start standing back a bit more as years go by.

Duchesse

Absolutely - They do need to feel 'joy' in learning. For some children school can be the best way to do this but for others they find school induces the opposite of joy in learning.

Thanks for the reassurance on the swimming. I try to just keep plugging away and ecouraging the achievments he does make.

He is improving and relaxing a bit but it is quite slow. It is a lesson in patience for me which is no bad thing as it isn't generally one of my strong points.

tortoiseshell- that's great. But does she actually enjoy playing the piano is more what I'd be interested in knowing. Grade 7 is neither here nor there if the only reason she is doing is to notch up another exam success doing something that is for her own personal development.

I used to live in SW London and found the competitive parent thing terrifying; dd was obviously bright but we were so poor we could hardly afford food (another used-to-live-in-cardboard-box-in-middle-of-road moment there ) and I couldn't send her to the ballet, music, maths, karate, etc etc etc the others were going to. If her behaviour wasn't perfect I was looked at with horror or disgust; I was clearly inadequate and contemptible. I was ostracised by a huge crowd of the other mums, and ended up on ADs and in counselling.

We moved to a small town in East Devon, and I remember so clearly apologising to a mum collecting her kid after a playdate because dd and the other girl had had a bit of an argument, AND THE MUM WASN'T HORRIFIED AND DISGUSTED!!! Kids are kids, she said, that's what they do, she said. I cried. I am horribly proud of dd now, instead of being anxious all the time because her behaviour isn't perfect and she doesn't do all the extra stuff. She's not missing out, she's enjoying being a kid.

IMO now, these competitive parents are only doing it all because that's how they make themselves feel better - by making sure that those others (like me) are known to be worse in the only really quantifiable aspects. Which, of course, are less important than the non-quantifiable bits. Silly bints. Their kids will all be into drugs and rebel and drop out, and spend years in therapy when they're grown up, and not want to come home at Christmas. (Bitter? Me? Let it go, let it go!)

Lazycow - my ds1 has JUST moved up from the bottom group in swimming - he took 2 years to click with it! But he honestly clicked overnight - went from not swimming at all to swimming lengths of the big pool over about 3 weeks. Your ds will get there!

I have found through my own obsevation that alot of these high achievers at school, especially private school, come out and rebel because they have been so pressured into achieving so much. I know girls who have come straight out of private school and got pregnant straight away!

It's a shame really but it shows if you put too much pressure on kids they are just being set up to fail later in life.

barnstaple- that's part of why we're so happy being in East Devon! The pressure-cooker of SE England was becoming unbearable. Soooo much better since we moved here.

duchesse - she does enjoy it - she takes every opportunity at school to play, plays for fun at home. Definitely enjoys it.

I don't think you can say that someone who finds exams useful to motivate them doesn't enjoy the thing itself - everyone is motivated in different ways, and as I said above, that is where a teacher should be able to guide the pupil.

As another example, I had a girl learning with me when I was covering a maternity leave. She had requested to give up before I started, and was completing her term's notice. I got her playing more jazz style things, popular songs etc, and we worked on how to read from guitar chords etc. She retracted her request to give up and I taught her for 2 years. At the end of which she got a holiday job playing the piano in an old people's home. If I'd tried to get her to do an exam, then she would have curled up in horror.

I do think that exams are good motivators FOR THE RIGHT CHILD. It doesn't meant that they don't enjoy what they're doing, but it can focus their practice so that they move forward. Which doesn't always happen if you are just playing for fun (although obviously I aim for children to enjoy it too). And moving forward ultimately makes it more enjoyable as they can play more challenging and interesting music.

I have two distinctly "average" children and one "bright" one. the bright one is 6 and just done SATS. She does enjoy exams and is good at them but I still think it's utterly inappropriate for a 6yo - the school doesn't make a big deal about SATS and the children are not at all stressed but still dd2 comes home knowing exactly who in the class is doing well, who got low marks, who struggled, who sat the extra papers.