How difficult is it for high achieving academic parents to relax and not push their children?

[spokette]

I ask because DH has already mapped out the degree courses (Maths)and universities (Oxbridge) that DTS will be attending and they are only 3years and 11 months.

DH and I both have PhDs in science subjects and DH recently achieved an MBA with distinction.

DTS start school in September and I want them to thrive in terms of their social development as well as academically. I know that DH wants this too but he wants them to be top of the class. He already has plans in place to tutor them in maths himself. He means well but I think he needs to accept that DTS have to develop at their own pace and they may not be scientifically inclined - they maybe arty!

I'm v academic and DON'T believe in pushing your children. I'm v relaxed with them (eldest 9) because I think if you have natural intelligence then you will do well if you are encouraged to find learning interesting.
I suppose they will be brought up to think that being educated is normal and desirable, and will understand that to do what you want in life you will need to jump through some hoops, but apart from that I'll let them find their own level.

yurt - you managed to say what I wanted to say, but in a third of the words. must be the Oxbridge science training

Both dh & I are well educated & I work in a very academic environment.
DS1 is very able & we have had to ask the school to hold back on studies & allow him to be a child.
DS2 has complex disabilities & learning difficulties.

I believe in celebrating your childs achievement however big or small that may be.
A positive loving environment that allows a child to chose his own future must be healthier than trying to push a child to follow the parents dreams.

I think I can sort of understand where the OP's husband is coming from.

He wants his twins to be happy.

Degrees from Oxbridge in maths make him happy

Ergo degrees in oxbridge in maths will make his twins happy.

Personally I come from an academic family, so does DH. This thread has got me thinking, I have always just assumed that my DC will go to a redbrick/russell group/ivy league university and get a degree or two. Much the same way in that I assume they'll be straight. I wouldn't be unhappy or feel let down if they do grow up to be gay/pursue a career in hairdressing/brick laying etc its just that I have no experiance of that and the 'norm' in my my experiance is to be straight and go to a good university, so until I am shown otherwise I'll assume this is what they'll all grow up to do...
Is it possible that this is how the OPs husband feels?

belladonna wanders off to wrestle ds1 out of his pink fairy outfit and to ask him to stop trying to cut his sister's hair

Well Spokette you clearly understand the problem the thing is how do you get your dh to understand it?

I want dd to live the life that is right for her - whatever that is. I'm currently a postgrad at Cambridge and I have had one ro two people say to me basically how I must great it will be to groom dd to come here too. It really annoys me and I am concerned that dd should not feel any pressure to follow in our footsteps. My own parents were totally non-academic and somewhat hostile to further education (waste of time when you could be earning more money) and I know what it's like to be a square peg in a round hole. I want to be open to all possibilities.

That said - I can't help but be interested and concerned about her education and i sometimes have to gently reign dh in on this front. Must go...

I sympathise strongly with your husband.

There is nothing wrong with instilling discipline, drive
and a desire to achieve into our children.

In fact, part of the globalisation debate is whether Western kids
will stand any chance against millions of ambitious, determined
Indian and Chinese youngsters whose parents wasted no time on namby-pamby
'whatever you wish, my precious, I just want you to be happy' philosophies.

There is, however, a flaw in your dh's approach:
He should be focusing on values, on behaviours, on habits even.
Banging on about Oxbridge or Maths or 'a career in the City'
is too simplistic and limiting.

The important thing is that your dh is passionate about your dcs
and wants them to do well. Now you two (and eventually all four of you)
need to debate what 'doing well' actually means!

My DH finds it very easy .
We have had to insist that he does not do careers evening at DS1's school because he tends to shout..... " really? The city? Is that it? Is that the extent of your fricking imagination? Sitting in some mind numbing office with pretentious self important twats talking about where they plan to summer and how the skiing is this season? Seriously. Do something - for fucks sake do something. Be a writer or an artist or a marine biologist or fine the cure for aids or teach children to speak but do something"

He has been taking DS1 to work once a year for as long as i can remember and it is always about " see - it is this tedious !"
His city collegues must love him .

DS1 is very academic and currently wants to be a cricketer, a film director or a special needs teacher.I am looking forward to when he starts to rebel and will wind his dad up by telling him he wants to train as an actuary.

This thread reminds me of my antenatal class when the teacher asked the dads what they wanted for their children and it was all "downhill olympic champion skier" "in the england rugby team" etc etc. This says more about the parent's expectation than any actual child they might end up with (the one who wanted a rubgy player had a girl btw).
I think it is sad to pass your expectations onto a child with an, as yet, unformed personality.
DH should wait and see what child he has, rather than the one he wants otherwise he is setting up the DCs for years of his disappointment.
I know someone who got their child reading and doing algebra before they even went to school. This child can't relate to other children and has no friends and it's really sad. He sits on computer maths sites and does not get party invites...

I was the only arty one in my family of engineers and they REALLY struggled to cope with the fact I was not going to take an engineering degree but sucumbed to the inevitable in the end. I am arty, DH is technical, DC seems to be arty and imaginative but it's too early to say really.

Get DH to re evauate what he wants, if he gets a tough, team game playing footballer as a son it will really be a shock to his sytem. He needs to accept that his children are not HIM and making such detailed plans can only lead to dissappointment all round...life is too short to do this kind of thing to your kids!

Got better then that... when my son was only 6 months old, I had a very animated discussion with a friend of my husband who wants his children to be able to read by the age of three, send them to a top university and excel in maths etc etc. Oh I think I forgot to mention that he hasn't got children yet...

I am not academic but I totally agree that as a parent, I feel that I have responsibility to help fulfill my children's potential. If they are academic, then I will do my very best to support them even though I am not. I thhink my oldest son (who is only two) is very good at music, has an excellent sense of rythm, he loves playing the piano and I don't want to be a pushy parent but if he has a natural talent I will do my very best to support him. I don't care if others think that I am pushy.

Oh God, I absolutely hate pushy competative parents, it made 21 years of my life a complete missery and I'll never forgive my parents for what I basically catagorise as emotional abuse (sounds strong but I am being serious). They know they did wrong now, but it's too late for them to change and it's a shame because it has partially ruined my relationship with my mother, obviously I still love her, but we always have this 'thing' that's between us.

There is another bit of a danger with focus on high-achieving - which is that, without a dose of perspective & salt, academic achievement can become ... what's the word I'm looking for ... not a rollercoaster, nor an escalator - a kind of tapis roulant, an endless onward moving process - for its own sake. Which is not good.

Hence - doing well at school meant going to Oxbridge, doing well at Oxbridge meant post-grad, doing post-grad meant ... at that point (10 years out of school) I stopped, & did a vocational qualification instead. But I ended up being productive a sort of generation behind my peers, and in some ways I've never quite caught up. And that was all because once you've got through academic Hoop 1, it's all too easy to go for Hoop 2, then Hoop 3 ... and on and on. So I will be making sure my children have a good sense of their real destination (which doesn't mean their degree).

When their high academic achievements brought them absolutely no financial success in life and more than a little unhappiness, not very hard at all.

Sorry, only read the OP.

But I learned the hard way it's not the be all to end all and fully support my children going in the direction they lead.

I don't really know what I think of University it has to be said, I went, I've got a degree in something stupid, I had a good time getting p*ssed, probably did considerable damage to my liver and certainly damaged my credit rating. Now I'm in a job that I certainly could've got to without uni just by working up in the world, but then I walked into it and into a good salary without any effort, and I suppose that is down to my degree, however silly the subject.

spokette maybe you should point out to dh that he is missing then fun that children are, i.e. watching how they DO turn out..what will they be? what do they like? what are they good at?

there's the best bit. Once you map it out you've got a robot for a child not a special human being.

..and I've got an engineering degree but I just saw a wonderful gardening course at RHS wisley where you live on site and garden your way to pay for it all, and you get a degree. How fantastic.

why are schools so university/money obsessed!!!

Oh dear I only have the one very ordinary degree but DS does not have my genes and perhaps it has liberated me to think that he may have wonderful skills and talents inside that we know nothing of yet. It excites me to think that as he grows we will learn together what entertains, amuses and excites him.

I may have assumed that a biological child will have inherited my strengths but I'm not sure that at all the case in reality.

Pagwatch - if I let rip - that would be my rant too! In all honesty - some outcomes would take more coming to terms with than others - and I'd have to try hard not to be disappointed if dd takes the money-city route.

I think that you and your husband have to find a compromise. Prehaps rather than formal mathematical tutoring you could buy your twins cuisaire rods to play with when they are older or a range of FUN mathematical games.

To be sucessful in life and academically you need good social skills, good language skills, literacy and a whole host of other things. At three years old these are best gained through play. Playing in the park improves handwriting as it build large muscles.

Prehaps its time to find your three years olds a good nursery where they can develop these skills that will stand them in good stead for life.

I think dh & I do push our dcs but hopefully not excessively - I do reign in dh if I think he is, just because I think he forgets how young ds is. Ds1 especially seems to be thirsty for knowledge; dd may be a different kettle of fish, we'll see.

But our 'pushiness' for want of a better word is not because we want to turn them into mini-me's and have ambitions for high office. I don't know if it applies to many others on here, but as a result of an 'academic' education, we're the first out of our friends and immediate family to have children and tbh little children, until our own, were alien!

We're very much feeling our way. My own mother died when I was a child so much of what I recall about parenting is dredged up from distant memory & very worthy parenting books, so we might not be as relaxed about it as others with family to fall back on for advice.

It's why I value MNer's advice and experiences .

I have a PhD in Maths and find it extremely easy to allow my children to go their own way. Indeed, I'd prefer that they did anything but a Maths degree (DH and I, DH's brother, and all four of the DSs' cousins having one or being in the process of doing one, we'd like a bit of variety) and I would point out the downside of doing a PhD. I'd even be quite in favour of them not applying to Oxbridge, though DH isn't quite so sure on that point . I'd like them to consider the actual content of the course, and not to feel inhibited from doing things they're not particularly brilliant at, rather than fling themselves headlong into the pursuit of excellence. Their choice though...

Dh and I are both Oxford grads.

I want my kids to be happy, healthy and honest.

The rest is really up to them.

a few weeks of teaching taught me one vital thing, 'Nice kids do fine'.

I'd pick nice over clever every day and twice on sunday for my kids.

DH and I were discussing schools recently and came to realise that while we of course didnt want to put pressure on DCs and just wanted them to be happy, we also had to admit that we really wanted them to go to oxford (but with no pressure, or course...)

I figure the best we can do is be aware of our motives. I know so many people who pursued an academic degree to keep their parents happy and ended up giving it all up sooner or later to be yoga teachers or suchlike.

Whats wrong with being a yoga teacher? When I went to yoga classes I was amazed by the positions the teacher could get her body into.

If my son wanted to be a yoga teacher I would not have a problem. (Although I can't quite see him wanting to be a yoga teacher)

You know that Ruth Lawrence character? I think her father was a bit of a menace. Don't let your DH do the same thing, will you?

Normality and sanity and balance are all good things and much better and healthier than extreme academic results.

It is rare that hothoused clever young things end up being balanced.

Her father was banned from collage student meetings. Actually they had to ban all fathers from attending, but it really only affected him....

Thanks for all the advice and I will be reigning DH in. At the moment he has the boys racing to see who can dress the quickest in order to be declared The Winner. That in itself is probably not too bad but it is the first step to getting them to compete against each other which I don't believe is very healthy.

What happens if one picks up reading easier than the other? Does that mean the slower one is a dunce? Of course not but I'm afraid that is how he will feel if I don't take steps now to stop that happening.

I have no problem with competition and for things like sport, you have to be the best if you want to reach the top and be Olympic Champion for example. However, for many things, especially education, the nature of it must be about excelling to be the best that you can be, not about being better than everyone else.