Should my child have learnt what I refer to as essential life skills at school?

[SunriseSunsetFullMoon]

like resilience and emotional intelligence?
Situations that arise out in the public domain (educational establishments) that lead to confrontation or bullying or disappointment - is it all my responsibility as a parent to solely educate my child, or should the schools be doing it in the classes?
Some educators see what's happening and appear to choose to ignore the situation, and missing an opportunity to teach better behavior as well as incurring the consequences of ones actions. Or is that just to hard a job for them? And if it is - why?

AIBU to expect immediate consequences for behavior that creates fear or annoyance in others?

Has your child learnt how to critically think through situations - not to rebel, but be responsible and making informed choices. I can only do so much from my point of reference - surely the education system has more to offer than what I can see and have experienced with my child.

Would be interested in your thoughts and experiences.

Any reason why you’re not engaging with the thread you started then?

I’m not actually sure why you are asking the question.

If my children behaved badly at school I would consider that entirely my (and my child’s) responsibility to correct.

I really can’t imagine turning round and telling the school that they had “missed an opportunity to teach better behaviour”.

Similarly I expect teachers to maintain standard discipline in class but if another child behaves badly then I would consider it the role of their parents to correct.

I expect the school to educate, it’s up to my husband and me to make sure that our children are decent human beings.

I thought one of the ideas of universal education was to try to deal with problems associated with poor parenting.

Not sure how that is achieved as parents are required to be so much more involved than 30 or 40 years ago, which just exacerbates inequality between those who have parents who are involved, and those who don't.

I saw it as mine and dh's job to teach our children resilience, responsibility, critical thinking, logical thinking, independent decision making and consequences from their decisions. We engaged them in age appropriate debate from.an early age and tought them to see someone else's pov.

Why on earth would it be someone elses job to do this.
As parents , its our role ( or it should be) to teach discipline from an extremely early age. However some people think discipline is a bad thing when it only means to teach. In the case of our children its showing what is and what isnt acceptable way to behave.

No.

I do think schools should develop critical thinking skills, which are needed now more than ever but the rest you refer to us down to parents.

Why have children if you're going to leave teacher of all the essential life skills to strangers?

confrontation or bullying or disappointment - is it all my responsibility as a parent to solely educate my child

yes

Even if the school had to handle this, most parents would disagree with the way it's taught anyway. Not everybody believes in the "be kind" cop out.

Exactly this.

If we care about breaking the cycle and improving outcomes for disadvantaged children then of course we should look at a rounded education and developing every aspect of the child

as it's essential for anyone studying, yes absolutely, but that's part of academic education.

I would hope that parents do teach their children about resilience and emotional intelligence, if they wait until they start school at 4 or almost 5 years old then that's a lot of missed opportunities and will be a bit late in some cases!

PSHE is statutory in schools so it has to be taught. Primary schools, from my experience are particularly effective at teaching resilience, kindness, integrity etc. I might add though that too many children, again from my experience, would be role models in PSHE lessons and could all talk about kindness, kind words and hands, making good choices, being a good friend etc. etc. And 5 minutes later they'd be causing havoc in the playground or smacking Mum on the way home.

So in answer to your question, it is taught in schools but the responsibility for a child to show and live these behaviours lies firmly at the door of the parents.

Like setting up kids on homework apps took absolutely ages at home then half the time they forgot passwords etc and it logged them out.

At primary school they never had to remember passwords for anything and work was done in homework books and handed in then marked.

Then suddenly they have to get used to tech. Maybe schools could introduce this much later - say Y10/11 along with kids not having smartphones until then. IT lessons in Y7-9 being taught how to use it.

DD1 had to use Teams at home in 2020 - I'd barely seen it myself at work at that point!

I'm far from a Luddite but found the app blizzard on DD2 starting secondary school in 2020 unbelievebly difficult. Their cohort was born just as smartphones were invented yet they were expected to have the familiarity of someone working in an office for the last couple of years.

There was a thread on here recently about emotional resilience being taught in schools and I was shocked how many were saying :
ridiculous !
id pull my kid out ,…
sick of hearing about developing resilience, there should just be more support !!

it made me think we are doomed …
people want to be supported / rescued / fixed and have no sense of agency / responsibility

Universal education was mainly to increase productivity of the country, not to stand in for neglectful parents.
Schools are now expected to be social services as well as schools.

Also now it seems to be going the other way. Don't embrace tech! Don't let them have phones and devices! And then in secondary schools it's all apps for homework. What are parents meant to do with all these mixed messages?

Life skills are taught at home- by parents and family.
Although seemingly parents these days can't even teach their kids to go to the toilet or clean their teeth ... so there is that.

Would you not have started teaching these skills before they get to school?

State schools have always done that from the start.

Children can develop their resilience through doing hard things at school but the mindset to do so is developed at home.

It’s not a teacher’s job! They can create a warm supportive environment certainly but it doesn’t fall on them when parents can’t be bothered.

Have they? No PSHE when I was at school. You behaved or you were out, followed the rules or you were out. If didn't matter what your background was.
No pastoral team.

I don't think state schools have ever had to pick up the extent of poor parenting to the extent they do now 🤔

Not at all. If children are in neglectful or abusive families then they should be supported. If children need additional support to overcome disadvantage then this should be provided, e.g. help to access higher education if no one in the family has experience of university.

But the state cannot and should not be the de facto parent in every child's life. Parents are there to teach children emotional intelligence, resilience, manners, morals, communication skills, social skills etc.

Don't bloody have children if you don't want to do that.

Kids don't start school until after they are 4- the foundations for these skills should have been built by parents long before they get to school, and they should continue to build on them with their kids right through teenage years... You can't wait until kids at school to start to teach these things...

People are always banging on about what schools should be doing. Then when teachers reply, saying either 'Yes, we already do that!' or 'Ok, so which subjects would you like us to ditch from the current curriculum so that we can make space to teach <car repairs/tax returns/gardening/self defence/mortgages etc>?', they tend to go a bit quiet.

at work, will interact later.

It's absolutely the parent's job and not the school's. I agree there. But that's all idealistic dreaming spires theory.

We don't live in an ideal world, we live in the UK, where 1 in every 6 children are growing up in emotionally, physically and sexually abusive households. Witnessing domestic abuse, severe MH crisis, addiction, etc. Personality disorders. Parents who only had the child out of social pressure, coercement or because they're sadists who wanted a minature punching bag. There's a Baby P, a Victoria Climbe and a Star Hobson on every street, in every class.

With no one to model those wonderful life skills and other things that angelic middle class parents seem to assume are imparted to every child by delightful, emotionally intelligent parents... What happens to these kids? Half will replicate the abuse, the other half will struggle the rest of their lives with immense lack of worth and MH issues. And thus the country spirals into

Every other kid is self medicating now. acting out, acting up. Or drowning with no one to help them. GPs are seeing 17 year olds with Ket bladder urinating blood. This shit happened in the 50s and 60s yeah, there were always problems. But we're not in 1965 anymore. Their future should be looking brighter than the past.

Remember Matilda? The Dahl book/film seems almost mild compared to the lives of children marred by what often passes for parenting now. But the theme still applies. It takes a village to raise a child. Everyone has a duty to other people's children, whether they like it or not. That's part and parcel of living in a society. You don't get to shrug and simper and say 'its not XYZs responsibility'. Without Miss Honey to act as a counterpoint to her horrifically neglectful parents, where would Matilda have ended up? Every child deserves a Miss Honey.

And that's why we need a community intervention service of some kind. It's a lot to ask of teachers, and they shouldn't have to be the ones who implement it. So everyone needs to say enough is enough and start metaphorically smashing apathetic people in the face. We need more eyes and ears looking out for kids and building them up from the ground up. Many teachers are of course school bullies themselves who never grew up, they need to be weeded out of the system and binned.

What we don't need is the 'I'm alright Jack, not my problem, my little Johnny is fine' attitude that has lead to what we're seeing now - total breakdown of civility and children as young as 8 attempting suicide (and succeeding).

Bullies need to start getting put in line. Good kids need to know we have their backs. Cowards and spineless people who look the other way need to be kept far away from children. Otherwise we end up with a lopsided late stage neoliberal world of Trumps and Murdochs who think they can crush everyone else into dust.