Dreaded school report show offs…

[Newbubs]

Anyone else hate this time of year where everyone boasts about their childs amazing school report?
ive never really had a nice report for both my dc,
ds had mild asd & possible adhd and dd is just generally not nice - eithet spoilt or anxiety which makes her behave horrible at times.
i just feel like the teachers never seem to like my kids,

Like a pp said by the time they hit teens it all goes very silent!

OP, my DS has ASD and ADD. He has just finished a masters received with distinction and is about to start a PhD after being offered three.

He never got a good school report. He just needed time to grow into himself and it wasn't the same timeline as most other children!

Do they give your child their SATs results? Good grief.
DS is at a specialist school and won't do SATs.
DD however is in Y3, struggling with Y2 maths, and will probably find it all very stressful even without knowing the results (doesn't help that there are DCs in her class who tell her how good they are at things, the usual 7/8 year olds not having a filter but she takes it at face value).

I think you just have to take it with a pinch of salt. Very few are awesome at everything, their parents just choose to share the things they excel at. A perfect example is the mum of a boy from DD1's class: she posts photographs of the entire report on Facebook showing 'exceeding' across the board and some great comments. However, I also know that at nearing 9yo he still can't ride a bike or swim, both of which DD learnt to do at 3yo, nor is he great at teamwork and cooperation. He's not advanced in everything! I also spotted that some of the glittering and quite specific praise of his personality that his mum had quoted was an exact copy and paste on DD's report, but kept quiet about that rather than shatter the illusion!
I tend to choose to think the best of it though, that they are sharing their pride and excitement rather than bragging, whilst I also feel secure that we all have different things we're good at. That way you can share in their celebration and not get bogged down.

If there are truly no good comments at all in your DCs' reports OP, you need to speak to the school as I would be very concerned they aren't taking the time to really know the DCs. There must be something good to say across academic results, effort, team work, the arts, sports, friendships etc, in the same way there should always be something mentioned to improve upon (because even Little Miss Exceeding-in-everything doesn't know it all/isn't perfect!)

Ooh I just remembered, I watched ICT with Mr P's video about using software to write his reports... maybe play "spot the report writing software" with your mum friends??!

I also spotted that some of the glittering and quite specific praise of his personality that his mum had quoted was an exact copy and paste on DD's report, but kept quiet about that rather than shatter the illusion!

Ha- this.... and I'm pretty sure DD's music report refers to the wrong child. Hopefully it was double copied rather than a switch - otherwise some musically gifted kid's mum will be in tears by "X is somewhat tone deaf and appears not to have a musical bone in her body. Consider rap??"

What kind of language is used in the reports? Is there anything positive?

I have a child who is always 'exceeding' and a child (autistic) who is always 'emerging' but both always get glowing reports full of praise for their efforts and achievements.

My autistic child is significantly behind the expected level for everything academic, but he is always given credit for how hard he tries and all the things he's genuinely very good at.

I would question the teacher personally if the reports were that bad. Reports are an opportunity to highlight the good stuff as-well as point out areas for improvement.

Well it starts at post natal and baby groups though, doesn't it? Mary can hold her head up already, Jonny is crawling so soon! Susan is sleeping through at two months....
It doesn't mean anything. And early or good achievement at school doesn't predict how well they'll do in life. But it's an acceptable way of saying how well one is doing as a parent I guess (not that it really does) - reflected glory.

OP, no one gets out alive from school report dramas llamas, whichever end of the scale your kid falls. Mine does OK normally and I never breathe a word about it but there’s always some nosy bugger who wants to know the details and it pisses me off having to politely deflect the questioning when they’ve already plotted the classroom ability tables in their head and want to have some petty battle with a grown ass adult over a maths test.

Comparison is the thief of joy and I’m sure your chn are loving and fun. See if there’s any advice in the report for next year that you can help them develop their academic and social skills with.

I have kids with SEN too and it’s a repeated sadness when other kids are apparently achieving with ease.
On a side note my daughter has ASD and that presented as anxiety and bratty behaviour. DD was relieved to finally get a diagnosis at 21; it’s been a huge boost to her self esteem as her difficulties finally made sense.

Rather than moan that other kids have good reports, why not consider why yours do not. Asd, anxiety and adhd are not excuses, one of my DD's has asd and anxiety the other adhd, both got good reports. You say your dd is behaving horribly at times, work on that (spoilt you mention easily solved)

so is it anxiety or being spoilt? Either you can work on.
Teachers don’t base their reports on if they like a child. And not all parents are seeing wonderful reports. You’re not alone! The boasters are just twatty show offs! Ignore.
All children have something you can be proud of. What’s yours?

@MsTSwift

My adult dd has a friend who is very clever.
When they were at school ds’s friend always did brilliantly at everything. Dd had to work twice as hard to be half as good.
Friend’s mum would humble brag and point out things my dd was good at which didn’t help because her dd was still better.
The mum messaged me just after Christmas asking after my dd who was heavily pregnant.
I rang dd and asked is friend pregnant.
yes, what made you think so?

I just knew by the mum’s sudden excited interest in my own dd.
Obviously her dd had told her at an early stage.
It did amuse me. Competitive parents never change.

My daughters report gave a largely positive report, together with a few improvement areas, for a sport she has never participated in

Ignore, ignore, ignore. I met some friends at the weekend and at the start of the night they were all bragging about their kids and their achievements. By the time the beer had kicked in, they were sharing stories that in fact they were annoying teenagers who never did as they were told, were rude, disrespectful and generally not getting A* in their exams. The biggest bragger of all actually admitted that her DD had failed her A Levels last year and wasn't going to university after all. It is all bonkers and Fakebook has a lot to answer for. 😀

My daughters report gave a largely positive report, together with a few improvement areas, for a sport she has never participated in

Yes! Apparently my DD is a very talented viola player. Her teacher said so in her report. She swears blind she’s never picked one up, though (and the lessons were news to us!!).

On the other hand, my son is terrible at socializing...

Yep I'd trade DD being top of the class in academic things for her being comfortable and confident socially. If she was struggling with reading/numbers I could help her with it at home but I flounder with trying to support her to be sociable, confident, kind, polite etc.

Someone was asking how you know where your child is ranked.
When my dd was year 2 (now year 6) her and her friend were always being told they were top three. It meant they then put a lot of pressure on themselves going into the Juniors.

Did I really just read this?

On a list of unhelpful things to say to a parent of a child with SEND, you’ve really hit the jackpot.

I mean as if they haven’t tried to work with schools and GP, and if your child isn’t developing typically of course we know that it’s unhelpful to compare but it’s really fucking hard not to as your child grows and the differences between them and their peers becomes more apparent (it’s actually often how we realise what the issues are).

DD's school don't have a fixed 'top three' but I know that for maths and reading they have a separate table for the kids who are beyond going over the basics and they do slightly more challenging work.

The kids aren't aware that this makes them 'top' and I think the language the school uses about it is quite careful. School haven't told me that DD is being given different work to the majority of the class. It's only because DD told me that I know.

DD is aware of who is better than she is at Maths and at hand-writing and just says matter of factly, 'Timothy is better at numbers than me' and doesn't seem competitive about it or to be upset about it.

Long may it last because if you go through life needing to be 'top' at everything, somewhere along the line there will be some harsh disappointments.

These are the same parents who put up posts on here time and time again slagging off school sports day. The one day some kids get the chance of a confidence boost. I dont listen to these people when they cant cope with their kids not being advantaged for once and i dont listen when they bragg about how little Timmy managed to do so well in class.

No matter how much you tell yourself not to compare, it's hard not to feel deflated when someone is braying about their child's achievements. I only tell family members (the ones who are interested - most aren't!) We're in NI and most children do transfer tests to ascertain if they will go to grammar or secondary school. Thankfully there wasn't too much boasting or comparing in DS1's year group, but I can already see a more competitive scenario unfolding among the parents in DS2's class and he still has 2 years of primary school to go. I will try to ignore it all!

I do see on here a lot, parents declaring that their children are in the 'top set'. I hate that expression. To my ears it sounds so smug, but maybe that's because I never hear it in real life.

I also spotted that some of the glittering and quite specific praise of his personality that his mum had quoted was an exact copy and paste on DD's report, but kept quiet about that rather than shatter the illusion!

Haha yes i spotted that last year. The mum was reading out the report to me just to make sure I knew how amazing her dc was (and in case I hadn't seen the fb and insta posts) and I spotted it was word for word the same as my DDs.
I wasn't going to say anything as clearly the mum needed it, until she said 'it's a shame littleraging isn't as gifted or popular isn't it?' so I happily brought her down 😁

I'd be looking at adhd in girls & the difference in presentation.

Ignore everyone else's opinions. One of the advantages in being older is that I can see how things turned out over time. Illuminating.

Lol. Love reading these.

I got a very short, generic first report and I can't help but feel it's something copied/ pasted on a few of the other kids' reports too.

I actually love reading reports when mums post on social media to brag. Haha. It gives me a good idea of what is done at other schools/ for teacher favourites, etc.