Do children with pushier parents achieve more?

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Do you think that children with pushier parents achieve more? I've always gone along the 'let them be children' route, but am now wondering if in fact I should have being doing more English/maths with them at home. Both my eldest two are very bright imo, and ds1 can read fluently at the end of reception, but I just wonder if I should have done more with him at home. Dd is just 3, and knows half her letters, can write her name etc, but compared to a lot of children of friends is behind. Now I know that the important thing for starting school is to be out of nappies, able to talk, and to sit still - she's fine at all that, but I don't want her to be 'behind' simply because of my failings as a parent. She's starting school in September 07.

What my children are fab at is imagination - they are both highly creative, and what I'm hoping you'll all say is that that's because they've been allowed to play and not been pushed!

Ideally I agree Jimjams, but i think there's a lot more to stability and happiness than that. Your psychological and emotional background is very complex. My parents split up when i was 18ish after a miserable 5 years (or more) following a very happy childhood. I think that did more to screw me up than any educational factor. I think stability has to be offered on many levels, but parents aren't perfect, they make mistakes.

um from other posts electrica I thought your father pushed you as a child and that as an adult you found it difficult to acheive your potential

I agree with Jimjams but would add also a secure and happy home

DH found some research once which claimed to show that the most typical home background for geniuses was for the mother to have a drink problem and the father to mete out arbitrary and inconsistent punishment.
However we are agreed don't want dd to be a genius, we just want her to be happy (ahhh!) Pity as I could probably manage the alcoholic bit.

i don't think he pushed me, i loved reading, in fact I got very frustrated when he tried to hold me back. Later on I found it a bit repressive as he had a routine he was reluctant to break, and i certainly dont think my brother ever enjoyed it as much as me (I suspect he's dyslexic).

i think my not achieving what I feel is my potential is a combination of factors, but not due to early reading in itself. I had some useless teachers who just couldnt cope, two of whom actively bullied me (to the extent one of the other mothers rang my mum to tell her what had been going on), and later on my home life got pretty dismal. I still do have an interest in education though- I'm never far from a book, but I've come to the conclusion that I'm not an essay writer but more of a self-teacher.

Potential is in itself a thorny issue- is my perception of my potential correct? Maybe I would never have got further. I work currently as a commercial consultant on a national fire and rescue project for the DCLG- a lot of people would be proud of that, its perfectly rspectable, but I never feel like I've done enough. Again, maybe thats part of my nature, I change my feelings on this a lot. Still though I have that nagging feeling I could have been more.

In short: who bloody knows?!! lol

I think my original post was more to illustrate my experience of being advanced by the time I got to school.

"Pushy" is an emotive word. Some parents barely talk to their children who watch TV all day. Others restrict TV use, talk to the children and read them stories. Obviously the latter children are likely to do better but having had 5 children over nearly 22 years I do think a lot of how they are is genetic as well as environmental so no one should really be overly worried about it all.

In our case there were entrance tests at 5 for schools which tend to be 1 - 2 years ahead of state schools throughout primary level so you need to make sure you buy into that system, have a child with above average IQ but even then none of their schools needed them to be reading at 5 and they all said they could tell who was coached and who wasn't. One our children got a place at a school at 7 and we certainly gave her practice papers and helped her learn times tables but not in an aggressive nasty way.

If they're in a school where everyone is of similar academic ability they tend to go with the flow which is part of the reason we chose the schools we did and luckily it's all worked out fine so far.

I suspect one reason my daughters are now at 2 good universities is partly because of our help with them at home to get them into good schools in the first place, although once they were about 11 I did take a view it was up to them and I have never once looked at a piece of GCSE course work for example never mind helped with it for any of the older 3.
But despite all that I like them to have lots of time to play and I think it's a day well spent when it's been in the garden building dens.

I think that it depends what you mean by being pushy.
If pushy = asking & expecting a 6~7 yo to always be the best of his class, to succecced in competitive entrance examination for a private school and put a huge pressure on him to enter because otherwise' he will have lost his only chnace in life to succed', then no t is not right.
If pushing = pushing your child to make the best of his abilties, then why not. As long as it is not seen as a constraint, it will help , not be detrimental.
As a child, I learn the letters at 2.5~3 yo by watching Count Down and I was able to read and write at 5yo. I enjoyed it because it allowed me to read a lot and I though that was really good fun. No pressure, no bad consequences for me later on.

Oh, a word of wisdom from my mum who was primary school teacher. When parents were coming to see her asking what kind of homework they should with the child, she would tell them :
'Take the time to speak with your child, ask them what happened at shool, what they have been doing.
Involve them in the house chores like setting up the table correctly.
That will help them more than more reading and writing at home. They do that at school all day'.
Some parents looked horrified and then asked 'So what kind of exercice do you recommend? Shall I seat with him to do some reading for 1/2 hours each evening?' Obviously, they found my mum's proposal just too hard work....

PMSL at ask them what happened at school today

typical conversation goes

"hello darling boy, missed you so what did you do today?"

'dunno'

what did you eat for lunch?

' can't remember'

what was your favourite thing that happened?

'don't know'

who did you play with?

'don't know'

"Did you see any elephants?"

'Mu-ummy .. don't be silly .. there aren't any elephants at school'

one of my friends is firmly of the view that all children can peform at an "exceptional" level ie respond well to being pushed for 5 years and after that they get bored and rebel. He bases this on his own experience of excelling at school from 12-17 and then muddling along at university because he'd lost interest.

I have no evidence of this but it sounds eminently reasonable and quite conveniently justifies my lack of pushing primary aged children - after all, I don't want them peaking at 10 and then coasting - I'd rather they saved their 5 years of brilliance for GCSE, A level and university entrance.

its all to do with how clever YOU are
not much else makes a difference iirc - thats hwo the stats go i n freakanomics
cna dgoand look if oyu like
thick poeple have thickc kids

readign to them makes NO difference whatseoever

I have that Freakonomics book, I must read this bit as everyone keeps referring to it. Its only one viewpoint though, its not definitive fact. i suppose it just sticks in my craw a bit- i think its a little 'Brave new World' to suggest that intelligence is pre-determined. If that's so, why don't we start separating kids out into bankers and binmen from infancy? A lot of families just don't have the opportunities to shine and i think its easy to be mistaken as 'thick'.

i was reading the other night about how gardner suggested 7 types of intelligence. These range through spatial, verbal, emotional,physical etc. Children who excel in reading may not be good at sport (as i know from bitter experience!) or whatever. Usually everyone has one or two primary intelligence types but these may not be recognisable through traditional education.

at the very notion of sifting infants into bankers and binmen

no child deserves to be condemned to work in a bank, however late he learns to read

oh that would work cod, thats why very intellignet people have kids with learning difficulties ffs

It all depends on what is considered as pushing. I've taught 3-10 year olds to dance and the good ones were the ones who actually wanted to be there. The ones who had been taken there simply because their parents wanted them to be there were miserable and shuffled round at the back - I felt really sorry for them.
Encouraging someone to reach their full potential and aiding them in doing so is different from 'pushing' someone to achieve simply because its what you want and its a fine line. My mum really pushed all of us to achieve educationally because it was an opportunity she didn't get when she was younger and all it did was encourage us to rebel because what she wanted did not match what we wanted. We've all ended up fine in the end because she saw that all we needed was the support and encouragement to believe in ourselves and our ability. IMO children simply need support, stability and cheerleaders to remind them how great they are and give them that self belief to want to achieve within themselves not a stickler making them feel that if they don't do all these different things in comparison to others they are a failure etc.

I've noticed that the really pushy parents at dd's school seem to be trying to live their lives through their children, pushing them to succeed at things they wanted to be good at as children

I think it's different at secondary level. Parents seen as "pushy" are those who will complain, bang the table and make a fuss if their child is put in the wrong set, or is rarely given homework for a particular subject, or work is not marked regularly, or they have a continuous string of supply teachers ..

IMO children of such parents do end up getting a better deal (the deal they deserve), because of the reputation of their parents, and the teachers' desire to avoid the fuss and confrontation. It's not "right" of course: every child should get the same "good deal" ... but they don't.

In a similar way many parents of SEN children have to be very "pushy" to get the services their children need and deserve.

yes I am the complete opposite with my two i scream at people to get stuff for dd and am as cool as a cucumber about ds who is a mini genius

I guess there's a difference between pushing the institution to deliver rather than pushing the child?

My Mum was a pushy mother with very high expectations of me. I being a bit of a perfectist really who is also a bit dsylexic decided if I can't achieve then I won't try and left school underachieving. I understand where she was coming from the problem was always if I did well in an exam, for example, the response was always why didn't I get 100%. Pisses you off really.

I'm thick and both my boys are very bright!
I'm not pushy, but if they show an interest in a particular thing, I'll encourage them (until they move onto the next passion) It's good for me too, as I am now know more about geology, volcanos, evolution, space, chess, whales, dinosaurs and, erm, Yu-gi-oh than I ever learned at school

That all depends on what you mean by achieve. I aggree with you realcam. It is nearly always to do with received glory. I have never come across a happy and relaxed chid of pushy parents. Anxious, pressurised and miserable. The parents can never see this of course, it's so sad. The children just aren't like children. They might achieve higher initial academic levels but beyond that I don't know. They certainly don't appear to achieve well in other areas .
As with all things in life moderation is best, too lttle or too much parental interest does not help the child to become a confident and well rouded adult. But for some parents all that matters is education and how well their child has done at this that and the other.

When I was tutoring i woul say the pushy parents were the ones who were nevr happy with either what i was doing with thir child, o what their child was achieving. If they were getting A's, their parents wanted them to get A stars. And frequently these kids would have an array of tutors for different subjects. I used to say up front that I didn't set homework because I believe its overloading kids who are already under incredible pressure to pass exams (especially since the ridiculous AS system). I think it puts them off. Instead I would work with them on what the school set them, but even then, a lot of the parents wanted miracles and overnight too. Interestingly, these parents were usually also the worst at paying promptly or saying any kind of thankyou. They often didn't seem to have an understanding of their child, or of what they wanted from the tutoring.

I need to cut my nails, I keep missing keys!