to think getting a private tutor for a four year old is insane?

[mslucy]

I am rarely shocked but heard today that an old friend of mine is thinking of getting a private tutor for her son, who is one day older than DS.

She is a very successful lawyer and only sees her kids at the weekend.

She is already forking out £££s on private school fees, so why the feck she needs a tutor is beyond me.

Shocked and saddened. Want to kidnap her poor ds and take him home to our slightly haphazard household so he can hang out in the park with his mates, watch TV, play video games, read stories, chat to his parents, go to school cake sales and all the other things normal four year olds do.

Has anyone else heard of anything like this?

I don't understand what the issue is. An average parent does educational activities with their child outside of school time - reading books, art and craft and a bit of basic Maths possibly through weighing things out etc.

If you work long hours you pay someone else to do it, like a tutor.

It has nothing to do with the standard of the school - schools are not wholly responsible for a child's education.

OP is Captain tight judgeypants, and a school bake sale sounds like hell on earth. As does video games for 4 year olds.

I think what a child needs and wants at four/five varies hugely from child to child. In fact, when I think of my DD last September and think of her now, her educational needs and wants have changed massively eg this morning "Mummy, no, don't dry my hair with the hairdryer, I want to do taking away" would never have happened six months ago.

Scottishmummy, advising the OP to 'tackle' her friend was a joke. What I mean is that if she's so convinced that her friend's son would be better off watching TV and playing video games than seeing a tutor, then maybe she ought to tell her friend so and see what the reaction is.

good succint summation there milly.

henritta,thanks for clarification.dont think op and legal mum are in much contact thread suggests hearsay info

And SofaQueen: indeedy, indeedy. And then again, there are the SAHMs who send their children to private schools, and wouldn't think of hiring a tutor because they want their four-year-olds to have fun and freedom instead. Ah, I'm talking about myself there.

scottishmummy, it would seem not. As you said earlier, not such good friends, then. Which makes the OP highly qualified to have an opinion about this other family's arrangements.

I would like to say that I hate walking into households that are chaos with kids running around feral like and video games full blast. All that flour and sugar all over the kitchen when making cakes and paint splattered about everywhere. Not to mention the clay being flicked around. Makes me cringe.

However a tutor at 4 is rather OTT IMO.

It is quite common round our way for parents with children in pre-prep to get Kumon or a private tutor, and bear in mind the private preps all give homeowrk, every night and in th holidays.

I suspect the tutor is to get the child through the homework.
I cannot think of a more dismal way of life for a 4 year old. The preps round here are manic about neat handwriting, and yes, by the age of 7 the kids need to be 2 years ahead of their biological age to pass the 7+.
Thus, any child that is not super bright, needs massive amounts of homework and repetition to get past the 7+.

Also, the class sizes are likely to be 14-20 children in a private prep and thus the child is not going to be starved of teahcer attention.

It is mad, I met a bloke recently who had had a massive argument with his brother because his brother's idea of good parenthood was to get his children into Haberdashers. That was the pinnacle of parental achievement according to him, his brother disagreed on the basis that HE went to Haberdashers and hated it and wasn't going to put his child through that. Consequently his brother accused him of being a bad parent and they had fallen out. Their children were 1 yo and 9 months at that time.

So yes, there are people who think homeowrk plus a tutor is what is needed, but I feel desperately sorry for those 4 year olds, who will probably have preferred to go to the park.

Milly, how often would this boy be tutored a week to have accomplish all those things with the child? Surely everything you mentioned could be done by his nanny?

Ds had a tutor when he was 4. He started in reception and lost all his confidence. I bumped in to his old nursery teacher and said how hard he was finding the change. His reading had gone from being reasonably good to only being able to recognise the letters in his name. She came once a week to reinforce what he had already learnt at nursery and help him with his school reading.

I felt guilty about doing it but he absolutely loved seeing her an enjoyed the sessions. We stopped after about three months as she had other commitments (she was doing a further degree). I wish we had continued. Ds improved with her but the improvement didn't continue. He is now in year 1 and I am paying for extra tuition in school as he has been classed as SEN - only in reading because of memory problems.

I work full time (and I'm a 'high powered lawyer' for what it is worth) and I am sure some of my friends are judging (ds is at private school too). I have already had friends saying 'Are you sure he has SEN?'. Like I would deliberately make it up .

But surely 4 is too young to worry about educational attainment?

Perhaps I'm naive but I'm rather unhappy about dd1(5) getting homework at all. I thought reception- or primary one - was all about getting used yo being at school, improving social skills and an introduction to Reading and number work. Fortunately she is very keen to read and do her homework.

I would question how much extra tuition at age 4 is about the parent's need to have a child who achieves academically/ gets into the fashionable school rather than a childs need for extra tuition - at age 4 ffs

it is all about balance,we can all swop anecdotes of chaotic houses,video games,flaky mum.or the avaricious pushy mum tutoring the bejesus out her kids

in everything a balance.education should be a lifelong interest and joy.not a chore or hated task

Henny: sorry, I was addressing the point about not all working mums are gung ho on tutoring their kids. I too am a SAHM and have the same feelings as you.

In terms of tutors to get kids through homework - I don't think so. DS1 is in a very academic pre-prep which pushes kids towards the highly academic preps, and homework is NOT a big deal. Yes, there is some, but I don't think you need a tutor to write diary entries during holidays, spelling, and 1-2 short worksheets a week.

if a child attends school at 4 then yes one should be vigilant and interested in educational attainment eg literacy,numeracy,art,and all the social stuff too

homework is to enhance retention and depth of learning.it is graded and time limited for different ages

Mollie, this is absolutely NOT meant to be critical of you in any way, but if I were you, I would be asking the school why your ds is not making suitable progress. By classing your ds as SEN, the school is essentially abdicating responsibility for his lack of progress. They are putting the emphasis on him and not themselves. There is ample research that says that if children are taught reading through a systematic phonics program that ALL healthy children will learn to read.

I agree op, its insane.

Noone has actually told us what this particular tutor does. So I'm finding it hard to get my judgey pants on on the assumption that he must be hothousing her in some inappropriate way. Perhaps there is some concern with this particular child. Perhaps they do some fun activity together.

My Mum started teaching me English when I was 5: we spent maybe 20 minutes per evening doing that. It was good fun and absolutely did not interfere with the many happy hours I spent playing in the mud (incidentally, it didn't get me into Cambridge either, but then that wasn't the object). If she had not happened to know English, somebody else could have done the same thing and then been called a tutor. It might still have been fun for all I know. And might not have taken much more time than the 20 minutes we spent.

I absolutely disapprove of hothousing children. But we don't seem to know much about this particular household.

'Mollie, this is absolutely NOT meant to be critical of you in any way, but if I were you, I would be asking the school why your ds is not making suitable progress. By classing your ds as SEN, the school is essentially abdicating responsibility for his lack of progress. They are putting the emphasis on him and not themselves. There is ample research that says that if children are taught reading through a systematic phonics program that ALL healthy children will learn to read.'

Ample research, neolara? Ample enough to outweigh all the other research that says different?

I agree with you scottishmummy, but isn't that just called good parenting?

Unless the child has special needs a tutor at this age is quite ridiculous. Children quite naturally develop at different rates and if a four yr old cannot read or write his name this is no indication that he won't be able to in a couple of years time. I have seen it time and time again. Children go into reception with a whole range of abilities and most come out at a similar level.

And I agree with OP. If Mum feels her child needs extra support, she should be giving it to him herself.

SQ - no worries! It's interesting to hear about your DS1 and homework. My DS is in a similarly highly academic prep which pushes the children towards top boarding schools at 13, and it's interesting to see that he gets far less homework than he did at his last school (again, a pre-prep - but not so academic). His teacher said at the start of the year that children of his age (7/8) should go home and play, which I thought was very sane of her.

I'm also glad to see that DD (Y1) only gets homework at weekends (acres of nightly reading aside...) - though I'd also be more than happy for her not to get any at all. She would object, though - she can't get enough of it.

SofaQueen, I will speculate on nanny question.

The woman who looked after my 2 kids when I was at work when my children were little, really, really loved my kids. She was the best person to look after them. But, by her own admission, she is not the sharpest pencil in the box. That was fine for DD, who was a pre-schooler and just needed love, talk and play, but not for DS who was 5 and geeky. He needed someone to do codebreaking with him.

I would not have ditched my perfect childcare just for a bit of educational stuff. I did educational stuff with DS myself, but if my hours were longer, I might have got the childcare person to take DS to a tutor or Kumon or whatever.

Maybe this legal woman has similar predicament?

He has problems with his visual sequential memory most likely as a result of him being born 7 weeks early (was very very poorly when he was little). However looking at him you would never ever know he was prem. He was tested at my request and has the ability of a 9 yr old but an absolutely crap memory. It helps as now his teacher understands that he is listening to her but simply does not remember what she has said. I wish I had pushed for more intervention at reception but the test he had couldn't be administerd until he was 5.5 (which was last month).

He has been taught phonics since he was 3 (started basics at nursery as he was deemed to be ready - unusual for them to start so young but they considered him to be very bright). When he was tested at school and diagnosed it was a lightbulb moment for me and made a lot of sense re the difficulties he has been having with reading and following instructions in particular.

Agree with MillyR.