Immense pressure on child?

[Wouldyoubehappy123]

I’m a trainee teacher and I tutor Year 5 girl outside of my school and I’ve started to feel quite uneasy about how her dad treats her. She scored incredibly well (90%) on a paper we worked on together yesterday and he responded with “why not 100%?” which made her cry. He laughed it off and told her she wouldn’t be upset if she just stopped getting things wrong, then walked away whilst she was crying with her head on the table. Mum is quite meek and doesn’t offer any support etc when dad is around. I was quite shocked and didn’t know what to do, it was awful.

She’s incredibly kind, funny and hard-working, but she often gets really tearful when we’re working together and when things aren’t perfect but won’t take a break, comfort herself or accept reassurance from me. It feels like nothing is ever good enough for him and he’s always looming around, looking over her and nitpicking at her answers. I’m not sure if this is something I should be worried about from a safeguarding point of view, but it doesn’t sit right with me because of how upset she is. She’s often teary but this is the third time she’s properly cried during one of our sessions after dad has criticised her. 😞

I have asked my headteacher for advice but wanted to hear thoughts here too. I’d like to keep working with her of course but feel like I should contact the school directly about it to let them know she’ll need some extra reassurance/support.
what do you think?

Is she a pupil at the school you work at?

Could you have a joint meeting with the HT, her class teacher and her HOY and see what they say about it and about her generally?

No she’s not at my school, that’s the tricky part.

Ah, that's a problem. I'm not au fait with 'inter school' info sharing but my only suggestion would be to speak to your own HT and see if they are aware of a process to advise the other school of your concerns or if they would simply contact the other school directly. Good luck and well done for trying to help this child.

Yes this is worrying. Do you feel able to have a discussion with both her parents and tell them you're concerned about how much pressure she is feeling to live up to their expectations? You could phrase it as it would be good to take the pressure off her as she will learn better if she can enjoy it more and that feeling under pressure will be detrimental to her learning. Rather than blaming the father, you could say that she seems to put pressure on herself to want to please them and live up to what she believes are their expectations.

Tackle it with the parent from the angle that praise, encouragement and support is needed to keep the child calm enough to do the test?

When mine did the Kent test there were children crying and not able to undertake the test.

I dont think this is anywhere near the threshold where it would be acceptable to break confidentility and share this as a safegurding concern with her own school.

That is child abuse but probably doesn't qualify as such in the eyes of the authorities

I'd definitely contact the child's school and have a chat with the safeguarding lead. Every bit of info is important when safeguarding children. They could have other bits I'd information that will paint a bigger picture of what's going on.

Isn’t this emotional abuse?

This is emotional abuse and it’s likely her school will have noticed the expectations and her reaction. I would contact the DSL or headteacher and say that you would like to raise a safeguarding concern.
It doesn’t matter that one individual thing isn’t enough for someone to do something. Lots of individual things can add up to a very troubling situation.

you don’t owe any parent confidentiality???

Any child in an abusive home should be protected from this

of course let the school know

this is emotional abuse

Different parents parent in different ways. Some parents do adopt a high pressure approach. Some kids thrive under this (my grandparents definitely parented my mother and her siblings this way) others don’t. Some kids thrive under a low pressure softly softly approach, others don’t. In an ideal world every parent would match their parenting style to the child they have, but it’s not an ideal world, and I do think a mismatched parenting style for child (too much pressure, or not enough support etc) isn’t great but it also isn’t abuse.

I have a lot of mates who educate privately and are big into the super high pressure tutoring etc world. Some kids do thrive in that environment. Others not.

All you can do is step back from the role and let someone else take it on. You can’t change the parent’s style.

The idea this is abuse is just daft. It might not be great parenting but reporting it anywhere I think would see you laughed out of the room.

Poor kid. Does he think he's being funny or is he actually genuinely bullying twat? Making a ten year old cry over the pressure is awful.

Not that I condone his behavior in any way.

Out of curiosity what actually happens to children that have parents like this? Do they end up going off the rail as teens or grow up as insecure adults who strive for perfection?

It's not nice for you to see but it isn't a safeguarding issue. All you can do is keep reassuring her that she's doing really well.

Emotional abuse is definitely covered in safeguarding training (I did my update recently), and this is what's happening. I would ring NSPCC to ask for advice and would ask about sharing the information with the child's school.

My parents were both like this

Out of curiosity what actually happens to children that have parents like this? Do they end up going off the rail as teens or grow up as insecure adults who strive for perfection?

Coming from a culture where this type of pressure is absolutely normal, the honest answer is that the majority end up totally fine. Most are very successful by society's standards and in high earning jobs. I know about 30-40 peers who grew up like this and 3 people crashed out completely (think addiction/rehab/serious MH issues). About 5 ended up distanced from their parents due to not being able to live to expectations and undiagnosed ADHD/ASD almost certainly played a role there. I think those stats aren't much different to any random group of young people in the same sample size. Everyone knows at least a few people from their class at school who ended up with a difficult life.

The remaining percentage all have fairly good lives. There will obviously be hidden MH struggles but lots of people also have those who weren't pressured as children. A few became self-made millionaires, lots of the girls started off in good careers and are now SAHMs. Most are close with their families and travel a lot. Nobody is on benefits and nobody has any criminal records. I personally don't condone this pressured type of parenting but I feel there is a tangible result that may only be apparent many decades down the road.

It’s not daft.

Teachers get training on emotional abuse and safeguarding. I taught for 25 years. We had loads of stuff on this.

Out of curiosity what actually happens to children that have parents like this? Do they end up going off the rail as teens or grow up as insecure adults who strive for perfection?

It depends on the child. I was brought up this way and thrived, as did my brother, probably because we achieved our father's expectations. One less academically able sibling is a very insecure adult. I was never afraid of exams as I was confident in my ability to do well in them. This confidence has helped me to successfully tackle difficult/unpopular tasks at work. Strangely enough, I was not motivated by money but by doing well in my job. However, it still pisses me off when I get things wrong, but I don't dwell on them.

It's tricky because I see this behaviour from parents at dd's school. Their families are all about hierarchy and respect for elders as far as I can see. The DC almost seems like they are under a military regime and the expectations are high.

The latter! Every time I land a ‘win’ I can only see how it could have been better. My mum’s words ‘never rest on your laurels’, ‘you’re only as good as your last job’ and ‘aren’t you upset you didn’t get *insert better result here?’ are always at the back of my mind. Good is never just good enough for me - I always think someone is judging me for not being better.

In my experience, even those who appear to thrive under this kind of parenting are always secretly crumbling. We’re just too perfectionist to ever show it.

EDIT: Oh, and both - went off the rails at my first uni AND grew up into an insecure adult people pleaser. Eight years of therapy and counting. The standards rarely just stop at academic grades - hobbies, appearance and friends also come under constant fire or mockery…it’s a bloody joy. My self-worth has historically been tied to my achievements: how I look, how good a result I get, how my house and garden look to others. I feel for the girl, I really do.

My father was like this. I self harmed and ended up as an adult being treated for BPD/EUPD and CPTSD. i have OCD an an ED. I had a mild learning issue (dyscalculia) which he said was just bad behaviour and sinfulness (religious upbringing) . He would threaten me with violence or laugh at me and mock me. I was fat and he hated me for that.I did end up damaged by it. But he was also violent and i experienced SA and peer bullying, so i suspect it was just part of the equation but I do remember the suicidal ideation and eventual attempts were a lot to with my dad.

i know i'm painting him like some kind of monster but he wasn't always bad. but i felt unsafe at times and still struggle with a deep sense of shame never being enough. I've come a long way with DBT therapy but I still struggle and i feel unemployable now (i do have physical disabilities also which doesn't help) but in spite of 3 A-Levels and a degree in Law, my MH and physical issues meant I didnt hold down a job. My dad used to tell me alternately how clever I was and that there was nothing wrong with me and I needed to try harder, and then telling me I was useless and wouldn't even get a job as a cashier. I'm nervous of men and jump out my skin when the phone rings. I never got a good grasp of my abilities and due to my perfectionism would often had a ridiculoulsy high grasp of my abilities, aiming for high flying careers that were too much for me and crashing and burning (I was recovering from ME/CFS when I was applying to study law, my teachers warned me it would be too much for me) but I wanted to be good at something, to stop hating myself. I wanted my fathers approval) or just feeling hopeless and having very little confidence to try new things.

My sister, awaiting ADHD assessment and I were told we were bringing shame on the family for having "problems" and forbidden to speak of anything like this. he actually told my sister who had a breakdown at 14, that he was going to cut her to pieces if she told anyone. He had a knife as he said it. We are in our 40s now.

I've been told this kind of parenting (parents that put you on a pedestal and then scapegoat you when you fall short) can create narcissists.

Could you arrange to meet at the local library for your sessions going forward to give you both some space to be able to talk to her more about this. I would consider contacting the school so they know what is going on - often times teachers get told to focus in or out on a student, or to reduce pressure or h/w etc according to their circumstances. It doesnt have to be abuse for the school to want to know or act upon it accordingly.

@PennyInATizzyAgain thank you for sharing your experience of this and educating me. I am so sorry that you had the upbringing that you had.