AIBU to think challenging school rules can harm children’s resilience?

[Teenytinypineapple]

AIBU to think that many of those parents who push back against schools and their rules are completely oblivious to the damage they're doing to their children?

The children who do the best are those whose parents instill in them that they should conform. Yes, that will cause difficulties at times. Yes, there will be things they don't like. But that's life. That's how children develop resilience.

Whilst little Timmy and his Mommy are complaining about the school sending him home for wearing the wrong shoes, little Jimmy has learned to suck it up, wear the damn shoes, get his head down and realise it's up to him to make the most of his education.

Right? I spent the first 20 years of my life perfecting being a Good Girl and the next 20 years unlearning much of that programming. Mindless compliance on arbitrary rules is NOT a good thing in the long run.

That doesn’t mean a free for all or dangerous practices but getting a detention because your red pen ran out in class is foolish in the extreme.

This depends on what you are referring to. I think generally it’s preferable to be a challenger rather than a sheep when some methods/ rules are really outdated and need to be challenged. But other things that are basic rules of behaviour and respect, homework, timings etc we should expect our kids to respect and follow.

However regarding resilience I do think that some parents interfere too much in certain aspects of teaching that inhibits resilience. Examples I can think of is complaining about a teacher being strict with no real understanding of how else are they going to manage a class of 30 8 year olds! or their child getting sat next to a more challenging child and immediately putting a stop to it rather than just letting it happen and see how your child copes with it etc. I saw so much of this in primary school that felt like wrapping their children in cotton wool.

I think it’s more that in comp, you have a much bigger group of parents who think that eg fade hairstyles or multiple piercings are acceptable that you have to legislate for, because otherwise the environment becomes unpleasant. Or that homework is an optional waste of time, or that it’s ok to take a day off school if you don’t feel like it, or that Cheese Strings, a Peperami, a bag of crisps and a Wagon Wheel is an acceptable lunch.

Not many grammar school kids will have parents who believe these things so they don’t have to lay down the rules so very clearly to give the kids a fighting chance.

I wish to God at times we hadn’t moved from our old area that had educated parents and grammar schools, it’s a real eye opener here (and I went to comp myself.)

Ridiculous OP.
We took our DD out of a top performing school where she was being hot housed and became very stressed. At the time, other parents told us that we were not helping her resilience and were teaching her to "run away".
In fact what we were actually teaching her was that you do not put up with nonsense and have the power to change things.
She has a first class honours degree , two masters and a fabulous senior management job now.

where Do you live?

I always think people yapping on about grammars like you are sound so parochial/ insular.
You know they don’t exist in 95% of the country? most of the uk got rid of them in the 70s and “comps” are just “schools”

Its situation specific, surely?

Kids trying to get their parents to bend any rules which they don’t like: yes that’s massively entitled and probably not helping children develop their resilience.

But I don’t believe in blind obedience for its own sake and it’s important sometimes to be able to identify when a rule is counterproductive or unfair. As a PP brilliantly put it: conformity has its place but you don’t want to get to a state where it’s never challenged. Some rules are really silly and should be challenged.

For example: my DD’s school mandates that all kids have to participate in sports day which I personally think serves no purpose other than ritual humiliation for about 75% of kids.

I am hardline on most school rules (uniform/attendance/homework) and those things are non negotiable because I totally understand why they are there. I won’t force her to participate in something she finds humiliating and I think is pointless just because the school says so.

Rules are made to be selectively broken. You need to have a good reason to break them. But unquestioning obedience is not a universal good.

The majority of children thrive on rules and routines. Children with chaotic home lives for example feel safe and secure in school because they know what to expect. I'm a primary school teacher and the kids that come in with the wrong shoes, late homework, arrive late etc feel anxious and stressed. On some occasions they can be told off/reminded of the rules which obviously has a negative impact on them (though I don't agree with this as it's the parents fault and not the child's). I understand that not all rules should be followed blindly and parents should speak to the school on important issues. Having and modelling respect for the school and parents supporting the teachers is in the vast majority of cases beneficial for all especially the kids.

You lost all credibility when yous started comparing school rules yo a genocide?
Schools very seldom make pointless rules-why would they make work for themselves? Just because you do not know the reason for the rule does not mean there isnt one.
If you send your kid to a school you agreeing to follow the school rules. All the rules not judt the ones they personally happen to sgree with. It's hard to think of any job or area of society which isnt subject to rules and standards.

I genuinely had a parent say to me recently that the best way to deal with their child’s swearing in school was just to ignore it, that’s what they do at home. They were were worried that by having sanctions in place for this in school we were drawing attention to it and making it worse, as well as negatively impacting the child’s self-esteem. This was for a 10 year old.

She didn’t lose credibility, it’s a good point. Surely you understood what she meant?

of course schools make pointless rules. Why do you have to wear a blazer year round? Why does the skirt have to be 1 inch below the knee? Who can’t you have more than 1
ear peircing? Why can’t you have coloured hair? The list is endless

I agree strongly with this. Adults aren’t expected to stay in jobs and relationships that are a very poor fit and making them unhappy. By all means encourage kids not to give up too easily but show them that they have choices and can do what’s right for them.

Related to this: because I was a stickler for rules, I used to get very angry indeed about whole class (or even whole year) punishments, because of the actions of a few, especially when they knew who it was. When one of these was imposed (whole year group had to sit in silence instead of playtime), possibly for the third or fourth time that term, I loudly made my feelings known: I was nine at the time. A teacher took me aside to calm me down, and I raged and expostulated through my tears. She refused to back down, but I like to think she privately agreed. Later, I managed to beat the system: when I knew that the whole school would be “practising lining up” instead of playtime, I asked my teacher if I could stay in the classroom and work. She was bemused, didn’t suspect my motive, and allowed it. Victory! So the excessive roolz and blanket punishments didn’t teach me conformity; they taught me to be cunning and devious.

Lobbying via the governors or PTA or in some other way to change the rules if you think they are wrong in some way, is sensible and perfectly valid.

Just ignoring them or taking about as much notice as a certain former pupil at Eton did is not reasonable.

It's nothing to do about questioning the status quo, it's a out rebelling for the sake it it. The former is productive, the latter is destructive.

Take the school uniform as an example. If a parent think that the school is being to strict about it. Fine. Get in touch with the PTA, get other parents to sign a petition, do some research that evidences that school that adhere to a strict uniform has a negative effect on children. Discuss these with your kids, teach them lateral thinking.

That is totally different to teaching your kids that they can break rules, that they don't have to respect the people who impose them, that they just have to think a rule is stupid to oppose to it.

Sadly, the latter is exactly how parents go about it and that just teaches children to be rebellious. That will take them nowhere, certainly not a place where others will respect them.

They can get new jobs, or go to employment tribunal. Or if you need the job you deal with it until you find a better one. And not many jobs these days still have pointless rules about dress code etc.

But as long as school rules are meaningful and sensible it's not a problem is it? Plenty of counties also don't routinely enforce uniforn

DS had little respect for most teachers, because he thought they weren’t very bright. He did get to university, where he really respected his university lecturers for their depth of knowledge of the subject. He got a first and they asked him to stay on to, become an academic. He chose not to, after seeing his post grad friends trailing around the country on short term contracts.

He entered our profession instead, where he passed all the exams first time, and is now earning 6 figures. He works 70 hours a week normally, and anything up to 20 hours a day, when he needs to. He is always rated in his performance reviews as “performing above expectations”.

Im glad you got my point which was about the dangerous of conformity and raising children to blindly do as they are told, believe authority and never question anything 🙄
I think some posters lack critical thinking skills

He sounds awful

Doing well in a career doesn't excuse behaving like a stuck up little prick at school does it

we can literally see the damage conformity at all costs has done. People have gone along with insanity rather than confront it.

Sensible points.
Common sense isn't so common, though. On our local socials, parents who have chosen to have children, despite never making any money to pay for things for them, are complaining despite being offered free uniform-their little cherubs shouldn't have to wear second-hand! While apparently grammars and private school have second-hand uniform swaps and sales regularly!
Wonder how many of the whining parents whine more when teachers leave/are off with stress, and they actually have to look after their own kids for a day (or at least moan about staff being off)?

He was usually right and his teacher was wrong. It annoyed him. Why shouldn’t a child question it?

Anyway, he saw how DD1, his much younger sister’s batshit school did stupid things constantly to her - like putting their boys with behavioural problems in mainstream into her additionally resourced unit, when the LA criteria specifically excluded children with behavioural problems, because the unit children were vulnerable. One of them indecently assaulted DD1, aged eight. DD2 developed an eating disorder as a result, and the effects are still there in DD1 and the people around her have to deal with it! Absolutely batshit!

Then, the school decided to put DD1 into mainstream classes, without support to force her to develop independence skills. She couldn’t understand what the teacher was saying, couldn’t read the material and didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing. She had a multi disciplinary assessment at a specialist school, who said she had profound problems with verbal reasoning - faced with a problem, she couldn’t reason her way to a solution. All she could do was burst into tears.

Why then did a mainstream school mess about with a child, placed in a special unit, because she couldn’t cope in mainstream at four, never mind age nine, when they didn’t know what they were doing? Absolutely batshit!

The head was all over The Sun eventually, for watching gay porn on his work computer, and appointing personnel, without DBS checks at another school! He was struck off.

DS had little respect for most teachers, because he thought they weren’t very bright
I bet he still think and act the same around people who have the misfortune not to as bright as he....I bet is a lawyer!

I don't consider unthinking obedience to be a helpful thing to teach children, no.

Goal of parenting is to raise functional adults, not obedient children. How to appropriately challenge rules that seem unjust is part of that.