In laws telling DD she would never make it to university.

[Getbackinyourlane12]

Hi
this is more of a rant than anything else ! In laws have 8 grandchildren and the eldest has just started university ( not my DC )
my eldest has just started secondary school and so a while off yet !
DD was over at grandparents the weekend and came back a little upset questioning me about university and getting upset that she will never be able to be an Occupational therapist.
I asked where this has come from and it turns out during the weekend her cousin was talking about her new life at university and DD took an interest and said she wanted to be an OT. She is 11 so I’m aware this can change 🤣 her nan then went on to tell her that I am not setting her up for the reality of her future. To get in to university you will need to do well in your GCSES for college and then well in your A levels and unfortunately your ability is below that. What ?? She’s 11 😭😭 this has all come about because they are all huge academics and asked daughter when she got her sats results what they were.
not to drip feed there was huge health impacts and other factors than meant her primary education was not your average !
she is now able to attend school more and is a great school with great results for children who need a smaller environment but are academic.
I spoke to the in-laws and the MIL said I was misleading daughter and it was better for me now to work towards more an enable goal and have a plan for her that is realistic and not a pipe dream.

she’s 11 😭she’s a tough cookie and in my opinion extremely smart !

Your daughter will exceed all expectations, she will go to 6th form/college and a uni of her choice,
Granny sounds jealous, i hope you and your daughter laugh behind her back, and for fun do research on her dream occupation, books and charities, .. she will be fine.

Oh I'm so sorry! She's 11, been through a lot already and showed so much determination. Maybe controversial but I don't take any notice of SATs 😂So much can change in the next five years. All the best to you and your daughter

What a nasty thing to say to your daughter and her own grand child. There would be blue smoke coming out of my head. I think your daughter has done very well and will have no problems getting into uni. Time to keep grandma at arms length now. What a horrible Grandma to have.

Nothing like setting low expectations for kids from the outset… :( ffs ignore them.

Vile. They wouldn’t be seeing my child again without dad being present. How could they possibly think that’s ok, these are the type of comments that stick. I had similar things said to me as a child and they still affect me.

Haven't RTFT so sorry if this has been said before.
I'm an OT. When I was looking at doing my degree, universities were looking for passion and a good 'why?' as well as good grades, it's the why that keeps you going when things get hard. But also a lot of NHS Trusts are going down the degree apprentice route where you actually get paid to do your degree while working in that field. There's absolutely no reason why your DD can't be an OT. Good luck to her.

If DD questions again, I would laugh it off and say "Grandma's wrong, she hasn't been to uni in X many decades. I am not sure how she would know anything about uni nowadays."

Also you don't need to be academic to be an allied healthcare professional, you need to be hard working.

And I would remind DD that IQ is only one measure of intelligence and it's not worth much in life with emotional intelligence and a sense of humour.

MIL is being a toxic s*!!

Load of shite, my son never done great at primary but really excelled in high school left with his A Levels.

Your daughter did amazingly in her Sats - surprised she even managed to do them! Keep her away from her bullying grandparents - like totally away. I have CP too. At GCSEs I got 4Bs and 4Cs - my family managed to work out that this was FAB despite the fact that I had dropped 2 subjects because of work load and that my cousin (2 weeks older) got 8A*s and 4As!

Even IF she didn’t get the grades (and how can anyone possibly know at this age) there are other routes into it now. I did an Access to Allied Health professions course which is the equivalent of 3 A-levels and Occupational Therapy is one of the degree courses that accepts it!
Also SATS don’t necessarily correlate to GCSE performance- my daughter got very high SATS scores and even got 100/100 on the English but now she is at secondary English is one of her “worst” subjects and she is only around a middle achiever
Grandparents can be awfu- mine used to comment on my weight 🙄

As a primary school teacher I can vouch for the stupidity of judging a child at 11! I can think of numerous pupils who were well below average at that age but who went on to achieve high class degrees. One in particular could barely write a sentence in Yr 6 but now has a 1st class degree. My own daughter was very poor at Maths at this age but is now happily juggling stats for her PhD! Your daughter will make up the time lost to illness and show them what's what. I'm so sorry she experienced this knock to her confidence.

She’s only 11. Lots of kids have unrealistic expectations at that age, they want to be doctors, astronauts, tech billionaires etc, no need for granny to rain on her parade at that age.

How toxic! My own mother was like this with me. I ended up being the only child of hers to actually go to university and graduate!
Your Daughter has plenty of time. Society tells you that you have to pass GCSE 16 and A levels 18 and go to uni. But guess what? You don't. University accept people of all ages and you also don't even need to go at all. Many apprenticeships available nowadays which means no university debt and they are earning well before their peers. I would keep a distance they seem vile.

My eldest struggled to access education from early but was diagnosed with autism which enabled her to attend a special needs school. From that moment she finally flew (i.e. aged 11 and in year 7). My mother might have been the same except that I very firmly put her in her place. My daughter is now 25, has a BSc in Psychology, an MSc in Clinical Psychology has a full time job in the field and has just applied to do her DClin (Clinical Doctorate) so that she be a fully qualified clinical psychologist. Having put my mother, very firmly, in her place the only other wobble was when I made the mistake of saying that maybe looking at Cambridge was going a bit too high. She asked me if I didn’t believe in her. I gulped, learnt my lesson took her to Cambridge, which she didn’t like, and have never made the same mistake again.

I am raging on your behalf and I am a stranger online:

Tell your daughter that yes education is hard at times. However the best students are not always the ones who are the cleverest. It can be the ones who apply themselves and recognise their weaknesses.

Tell your educationally elitist in-laws that some individuals take a different path to achievement. That while the current neo-liberal system does not provide for all learners during the compulsory education period, kinesthetic learners tend to excel at post compulsory education. Occupational Therapy is a kinesthetic skill therefore requires kinesthetic learning.

Yes, occupational therapy is a
kinesthetic type of job. It heavily involves using and understanding body movement and position (kinesthesis/proprioception) to help patients regain or develop skills for daily living.
Occupational therapists use kinesthetic activities in several key ways:

• Hands-on therapy: OTs often use physical, hands-on techniques, such as guiding a patient's movements to improve range of motion or fine motor control after an injury.
• Movement-based interventions: The role involves designing and implementing movement-focused therapies and activities, such as specific exercises, games (e.g., ball toss, puzzles, climbing), and simulations of real-world tasks to retrain motor skills.
• Activity analysis and adaptation: Therapists analyze everyday activities and adapt them to a person's abilities, which often requires a deep understanding of the physical demands and body mechanics involved in tasks like dressing, cooking, or workplace functions.
• Use of equipment: They train patients to use assistive equipment or adaptive tools, which requires the physical demonstration and practice of new movement patterns.
• Physical demands of the job: The nature of the work itself can be physically demanding, requiring OTs to bend, lift, push, pull, carry objects, and help with patient transfers, which involves their own kinesthetic skills and physical stamina.

In essence, occupational therapy is centered around the therapeutic use of everyday activities and movement, making it a highly kinesthetic profession for both the practitioner and the patient. (yes I was lazy and used AI for this definition)

I make these statements as an educational researcher, who heard these types of abhorrent messages as a child. It turns out I was struggling to access learning partly due to being deaf and dyslexia (moderate). I returned to education at 23 and I am now a Doctoral candidate (yes that is correct I am in the top 1%). Yet as a child I was labelled educationally subnormal. With irony, I cannot learn kinaesthetically and my practical skills are limited. Wishing your daughter the best for what ever future she decides for herself. She shows compassion for others at a young age wanting to be an OT.

This really makes me angry. However on a positive note I can give you two examples; my daughter who was told by a primary teacher (yes a teacher) she was stupid because she didn’t understand the maths at age 7 and my daughter-in-law who was told at age 16 to pick a B option university because she would never get A’s. The former got straight A’s at A Level and is now a qualified primary teacher and the latter got a distinction for her Masters and is now completing her PhD. They both said being told they were not capable actually motivated them to prove the educators wrong which I’m sure you would agree they both did spectacularly. So tell your daughter not to accept what her grandparents told her and prove them wrong too.

OP I failed my A Levels, did an access course and got onto a BSc in Occupational Therapy. Teach your daughter that anything is possible

OP, I feel for you. FIL once asked dd1's make cousin what he wanted to be. A footballer. Good on you boy he says. Asks dd1. A lawyer. Ooh, you'd better think of something else. That's very difficult. 15 years on cousin is not a footballer. Dd1 got a great law degree and related MSc. She chose to career change and is very happy.

More worryingly, when ds was diagnosed with dyslexia aged 8 the headteacher told me I'd need to "mourn the fact he'd never go to university"! Aged 8!! OK, he didn't go to university (his choice) but worked hard and bought a great 3 bed house with his girlfriend (now wife) at 25 without help from the bank of mum and dad.

Keep your dd away from these people unless you're there to intervene!!

7 years. She has 7 years. No one needs to say anything less than encouraging until yr 9 at leat and I’ not sure even then.

Thanks to mental health and undiagnosed ND, DD nearly failed English and Maths at GCSE mocks but managed great grades with hard work and a tutor who believed in her.

She is now at uni, had a great 6th form and really enjoys doing subjects she loves and has plans for the future.

SATS is absolutely not an indication what can be done 7 years later. Often SATS is taught to pass the tests I found.

I hope your DD is recovering and can continue health wise.

It's not wrong thinking about alternatives but maybe in Y9 when she has to choose GCSE options, not 2 months into Y7.

SATS mean nothing and are used as a measure to rank primary schools.
Your DD has amazing scores when you think of her journey. She shows resilience and determination in bucket loads. With your support she can achieve a degree in whatever her chosen pathway is later. Universities are not just looking for grades now and support services on the whole are more robust at uni than at school. And I work in admissions at a high ranking uni. Wishing you both all the best- you’ve got this.

My son was a victim of the Covid years - never sat GCSEs, so his were predicted then didn’t really take to 6th form and ended up dropping a subject. But he still managed to get to Uni because he had a passion for what he wanted to do, has held down a supermarket job for the last 3 years which he’s ported to our home town and he graduated in the summer with a 2:1. He’s now looking for graduate roles whilst earning money in the supermarket. It can be done and don’t listen to anyone who tells you any different, everyone who wants to go to Uni most certainly can if they want to.

11???!!!

Even without the massive extenuating circumstances your daughter has, you can’t reliably judge a child’s performance and 16 and beyond by their performance at 11. My academic friend’s younger brother had his parents tearing their hair out until he was about 14 and decided he wanted to be a doctor and went on to do just that. He’s now a surgeon.

Your daughter sounds amazing, I think they’ll be sorry they doubted her. They are a prime example of academic smarts not translating into everyday smarts.

How dare ANYONE close a door on an 11yr old child?! Never mind a grandparent.

FFS this would give me the absolute rage

That’s disgusting, children need positive encouragement, I hope your daughter is ok after this , I’m sure she has the ability to achieve anything she puts her mind to , best of luck