Anyone with DCs less clever than you used to be? How do you cope?

[Stillanawfulparent]

I've name-changed for obvious reasons. I posted about this some months ago and things are getting worse, not better. I need advice.

I had DD at barely 19. Her father is not around at all. I'd known her father since I was 15 and he was charming, funny and I fell for him big time. He certainly wasn't as academic as I was, but tbh it didn't really matter to me at the time. Then I became pregnant at 18, he vanished and since then I've been a lone parent.

DD is now nearly 8. She's thoughtful, caring, funny, pretty and I love her to pieces. But I'm struggling more and more with the fact that she's not as academic as I am.

I know I'll be flamed for this. I know there are parents whose children have real problems of some sort. But I just don't know how to cope with DD's attitude towards learning. For example, she really isn't interested in books or reading. I just want to cry when she states that 'books are boring'. I've read fluently from the age of two, my house is filled with books, I can't imagine not wanting to read.

I'm so jealous of parents at school whose children are happily reading for hours each day. I want my DD to be a bookworm, to be preocious, to be the top of the class as I was. I want her to go to Oxford like I did. I want her to be academically competitive and to have a fierce desire for learning. I want her to excel.

I feel so ashamed to write this, but things are getting more and more difficult as we battle over things like reading and homework. I rant and rave like a lunatic, telling her that reading and enjoying books is 'non-negotiable' God knows why I think my negative attitude will help.

I have very little patience in terms of teaching or explaining things. I feel that she should just 'know' the answer, like I used to at her age. Again, totally irrational.

I also wish in many ways that she wasn't an only child. If I had three or four children, I could relax and let them develop at their own rate, since the odds are that one might be 'the clever one', another might be 'the kind one' another 'the pretty one' and so on. With just one child, I'm putting so many expectations on her it's not fair.

I'm in therapy, I know that I'm irrational over this. I also know that intelligence does not equate to happiness - I admit I'm screwed up.

But is there anyone else in a similar situation. Has anyone had children with some less intelligent than them that perhaps knows a little of what I'm going through. I'm wracked with guilt and wish I could just chill out and let her get on with her life. I know the more stressed I get, the worse things will be.

Any words of advice?

hi there. my dd1 is only 3 and already i worry about this :-)

i was like this prodigy child according to my mum, speaking at 14 months, bilingual at 2, always (from kindie to my MSc) top of the class in everything. i have no idea how dd1 will turn out but let's say the odds are she won't be exactly like me.

a few things to think about: is there anything you are crap at and she's good at? for me, i was so hopeless at sports and so fearful of everything, and i am absolutely amazed and delighted at how physical dd is- she is completely fearless.

you seem to focus a lot on the reading aspect- have you thought that perhaps your dd just doesnt' have the "verbal" type of intelligence that you have? perhaps she is a more spatial/mathematical person? perhaps she will show her intelligence in relationships etc? can you step back and observe what she likes to play with?

if your house is full of books and you love reading, that is enough imo- you can't make someone enjoy reading. god, reading is my lifeline and iw ould be lost without it, but my brother (who is a successful architect btw) has probably read about 10-15 novels in his life- he simply doesnt have that love of reading. my dh is the same- he reads, but little and rarely, whereas i am forever devouring books. incidentally, my dh is a true intellectual, an amazingly intelligent and cultivated person, yet he scraped by all the way to high school and didnt do particularly well academically- but he knows a lot more than me, and his mind is a million times sharper than mine.

most fundamentally for me- being academic never made me happy. in fact it got in the way of happiness a lot of the time, so while i am scared that i won't know how to relate to my children if they are not academic, i don't particularly wish it on them.

i think you are putting a lot of pressure on yourself- focusing on all the things you are doing "wrong" so to speak (single parent, only child etc etc)- whereas in fact i am sure you are doing a brilliant job and your child is lucky to have such a strongwilled, determined mother. you are very young and you have achieved so much- but your daughter is not a project, just feel lucky to have in your life someone who's "thoughtful, caring, funny, pretty and I love her to pieces"

I do sympathise, SAAP - I have some similar feelings with regard to my ds, who's 8. I've had CBT in the past to help with OCD and it's really good at helping you challenge the kinds of thoughts that you get that you know are not helpful, or even rational. I'm trying to use some of these techniques again to help with the thoughts & feelings about ds, and it's hard, but it helps. Not sure what kind of therapy you're having, but I would def, recommend CBT.

As other posters have said, being academic, competative and high achieving doesn't nec. make you happy - it certainly didn't for me.

Stillanawfulparent - you are definitely not alone in this. I can very much relate to your post, as I used to feel exactly like you with my ds. In fact, I do still feel like it at times and however much I know that he is different and excels at other things it still hankers on in my mind.

We did go down the tutor route, mainly to build up confidence, and although it helped him (e.g by avoiding the tension that would build up between us whenever I tried to show him how to solve a maths problem) I'm not sure it helped me!

As the previous poster said, this is your problem - don't make it your dd's problem. It is tough to change your innermost feelings, but the point is that you won't be able to dramatically change her - it is you that has to change. My advice is to really try and deal with it now, before you get to the secondary school phase - the stresses and obsessions of getting your dc into a good secondary school are a nightmare to deal with, without the added problem of how you feel about your dc's achievement.
The hardest thing I had to deal with was accepting the fact that my DS was unlikely to pass the 11+ . Let's not go there

It should also be noted that sometimes, very bright chidren rebel against their strictures.

Churchill is a quotable example, and there have been many others.

Government educational goals are just that: set by people who aren't too bright themselves.

I have always hated governmental control. As a result, I rebelled at school, but did my homework in private.

The net result was 10 'O' levels, most of them at 'A'.

If you leave her alone, I suspect she will thrive.

I was dealing with this issue recently - two academically very successful parents with a teenager who just simply isn't. They are looking for a 'reason', even a medical label they can stick on him to explain away how they "of all people" could end up with a son who is "not bright". This boy is so frightened of failing and disappointing his parents he completes no work at all and rarely attends school. Yet he is kind, gentle and funny but these qualities are not valued as highly as passing a wealth of exams

I sympathise to some extent. I had a school career that featured a lot of high marks, being encouraged to see myself as clever, and at first I did very well. I loved acing things, coming top, things being easy, being approved of and admired. I'm not sure that's necessarily that compatible with a true love of learning 'for its own sake', though. Surely loving learning for its sake would mean not caring about coming top, as that's purely a relative thing dependent on the group one happens to be with? Now although I think loving getting high marks is actually pretty crap as a driving force for learning, part of me secretly really would like my children to ace things without effort and make everything look easy.

I've given this a fair bit of thought since finding myself with a school-aged child. As I say, part of me yearns for him to be singled out as unusually bright from an early age, to ace things, to come top all the time, and so on. Part of me (the bit that didn't do as well socially at school, and that ran out of academic steam at uni when things became harder) wants him to settle happily into a place somewhere in the top half of the class, not to be aware or care of where he stands relative to others, but to be truly interested in what he's learning and doing - not just hooked on the easy 'hits' of high marks and school success relative to a random group of peers. Many of my uni peers who did much better than me, who went on to research and so on, came from that place in their classes, not the very top.

I do actually think it's a mistake to see a love of reading, and even ability to learn, as set innately. And seeing siblings as 'the brainy one', 'the kind one' and so on can lead to everyone feeling shortchanged - why should 'brainy' belong only the most academic child in the family when both may be more 'brainy' than any of the children next door, for instance? All of these things can change over the years, and it's a shame to pigeonhole children too early.

I've been trying for a few years to unlearn some of the myths I came to believe in childhood - that if it isn't easy, it's not your thing, practice is pointless, it ought to be easy, and if you don't come top in something you might as well abandon it. It's hard work. What I would really like for my child is for him to be truly motivated to learn, and not at all motivated to get high marks or come top for the sake of it (only as a side-effect of him enjoying his work generally).

I hope for the sake of your relationship with your dd that you can get past this. Even looked at purely pragmatically, what you're doing at the moment is not likely to get you what you want.

beforesunrise - Thank you for such a nice post.

newnamer - It's hard when I'm talking about secondary schools in the area (which are fairly dire - we're in North London) and my friends ask why I don't send DD to a selective school like Henrietta Barnett and I have to explain that I'm not sure she'd get in.

Mind you, DD is far more creative than I am. She was just upstairs singing me songs that she's made up, strumming the guitar and talking about the hole in the ozone layer. She's also really into dance, drama and artistic things in general.

Heated - I really really don't want to be that kind of parent. I know I need to accept DD for who she is and all her wonderful talents. I don't want her to feel a failure in any way.

your dd sounds like a very happy confident little girl, and hopefully she will stay that way, if you do not put too much pressure on her to be exactly how you want her to be.

I have a friend and her parents expected her to do this or that, and when things did not go how they wanted she felt she had let them down. She has very low confidence now and always comes across as needy and wants everyone approval, it can be quite draining.

'She's outgoing, very popular, social, empathetic, confident. She has great life skills'

IMO social skills are worth their weight in gold - I know lots of people who aren't that academic yet who've done well in careers because of their social abilities.

I think even if she were really bright you're setting her up for a fall with all this Oxbridge at all costs attitude.

I guess I'm in this situation. I passed my 11+, top streams at school, went to uni (twice).

DD (nearly 8) is not academic at all. I think she's quite bright but she's a slacker. If she finds anything slightly difficult she gives up. She has been diagnosed as having "mild dyslexia" which does affect her writing. Funnily enough she can read well but I've never known her pick up a story book and read.

To be honest I've never had a problem with this, I just accept that she probably won't do well at school. It does make me sad as I worry what sort of career, etc she'll end up doing, will she be able to earn enough, etc. I just hope as she gets older she may find something she enjoys and be prepared to work harder for it.

She says she wants to be a vet and I've explaiend how hard you have to work at school to be a vet. I joke to DH that she'll end up cleaning up dog poo at the RSPCA kennels instead. But who knows, maybe she'll be a vetinary nurse or something else she enjoys instead. Maybe she will work at the RSPCA kennels and love it. I think I'm quite relaxed about it as I don't think qualifications are all they're cracked up to be. The job I did before my current one was one that I could have done if I'd left school at 16. I loved it and the money was OK to be honest. I joined the company as a temp after uni and didn't leave for 10 years.

I probably feel sadder about the fact she doesn't seem to enjoy reading for pleasure as I think its such a fantastic way to "see the world", broaden your horizons, etc. But then DH never reads either and doesn't seem to think he's missing out.

I make sure I read her a bedtime story every night and she loves that. She also enjoys audio CDs. Also she got a really nice encylopedia for Xmas and she's staretd dipping in and out of that to find out things about topics that interest her. Maybe getting your DD some books which can be dipped in and out of rather than a coventional story book may be a start. DD is learning about Romans at school at the minute and I got her an Usbourne "See Inside Rome book. There are lots of colourful, detailed pictures with lots of flaps to lift and then under the flaps are little snippets of info. DD's been looking at that a bit as well. But defintely stop the pressure as you're turning it into a battle ground. Leave books around the house for her but don't tell her she needs to read them, etc.

my ds1 has speech and laung ,gross delayed motor skills ,and is getting tests for dxspraxia type 2 which is were he finds it hard to translate words n sounds and write from memory i cry some time thinking was it somthing i have done and wish he could read but im sure that in time it will all click as he is givfted n talented in art and is average in his class for maths and science which to me is fantastic he may not be einstein but he is funny ,sociable,bright and wants to learn and he is my little boy (8yrs)and as long as he is happy and can get through his education and feels equal to his piers well good on him he is his own person not me ....just be thankful that u have a lovely dd and she may suprise u ....

You are in no way an awful parent, you are allowed to have hopes and aspirations for your child. Your own acute self-realisation means, I believe, that you will put a break on the behaviours you deem detrimental as you've thought through what could go wrong. You already know leaving dd to flourish at her own pace will allow her own latent talents to develop, many of which do not emerge until teens/20s. So sew the ground by encouraging her to be confident, happy and secure. Would you still be disappointed if she became an entrenepuer, a talented artist or just the kind of person who makes the room light up and the world a better place by her being in it?

Your post is all about you, and not much about your daughter.

When I read your posts it almost sounds like you are looking for an excuse to be hard on her. You ignore the things she is good at (which you are not) and focus on her 'bad points'. I have no idea why you do this, but my suggestion would be that you address it with your therapist.

'It's hard when I'm talking about secondary schools in the area (which are fairly dire - we're in North London) and my friends ask why I don't send DD to a selective school like Henrietta Barnett and I have to explain that I'm not sure she'd get in.'

errrr why do you have to say that? Why not put her forward and see how she gets on? Or find a school that specialises in the Arts. Instead of focussing again on her 'failure'.

Maybe you'll feel better when you admit to yourself that even if she was gifted academically, you would find another reason to be unhappy.

i think you are sound and honest good luck

Just goes to show that hothousing and extreme pressure does not work. She is more intelligent than you think

She sounds lovely and happy! I for one wish i had better social skills. They can take you a long way. The ability to express yourself and in built confidence goes a very long way!

And believe me, I used to work for a guy who had no qualifications, and whose first job was as a chicken plucker! 10 years ago he was earning far more than me, and probably still is.

She sounds lovely. If she is creative and musical (which seems to be the case from your posts), why not focus on building those skills that she enjoys and can excel at? Does she do any extra-curricular art or music?

DS1, like me, is very academic, has always excelled at school and loves learning. When DS2 came along I initially just expected him to be the same. He isn't. He's a bright boy but academically he is not much more than average. However, he's outgoing and sporty (cricket, rugby, tae kwon do, you name it!) and I'm delighted that he's found something he loves and can do well at. The academic stuff is less important. I do think that if neither of my children were academic I would find it difficult, though, so I know where you're coming from.

My friend has 2 girls, the eldest is very clever, she always says that the youngest is less intelligent but will go further because she is so lovable and open, whilst the eldest is seemingly quite cold and unapproachable.
This is from highly academic parents.

I wouldn't go down the route of tutor while she is so young, it is giving the message that you are expecting more from her than she is able to give. It doesn't sound as is she would fit into a highly selective school. I would relax and enjoy her as she is, she sounds delightful.
I never know why parents are so keen to compare children, starting with whose DC sits up first, continuing with which level of reading book they are on, who got the most A* and so on. Life isn't a race, and if it was slow and steady often wins! Having a DC in the top maths group doesn't make you a better parent than having a DC in the bottom maths group. It is rather like those round robin Christmas letters with the glittering exploits of offspring - when you know the DCs you take it all with a pinch of salt!

DD does extra-curricular art, dance, drama etc and really enjoys and excels at these things.

OrangeKnickers - I take your point that perhaps the posts I've written are more about me than my DD. I guess that's because I'm aware that I'm the one with the problem. Possibly I am hard on her - I feel that I have a lot to prove, given the fact that I'm a lone parent in my twenties. I don't want to be tarred with the same brush that The Daily Mail uses on most lone parents of my age. Again, I acknowledge these are my issues and that I need to get past them.

StripeyKnickersSpottySocks - Thank you for audio CD suggestion - it's something I keep meaning to do and I'll certainly pursue it!

Stillawful - Am in north london too, so I know how you feel. My advice is don't discuss secondary schools in RL, use Mumsnet for that instead!

The way you describe her upstairs writing her songs etc sounds lovely. When it comes to secondary schools, you could focus on your thoughts along that dimension. My ds was ace at sports, seriously good, and quite good at music so in the end I concentrated on those aspects...and there is nothing I don't know about london schools that are hot on these aspects whilst still providing a reasonable education!

I can now feel proud that he is known quite widely for his sporting prowess and that he performs solos regularly in the youth orchestra. He is the envy of many younger ones in his school...and for some reason that helps me

If you think of all the horror stories from actors, dancers, artists of parents who wanted them to be lawyers, doctors etc it should give you pause for thought! It never works in the long term, they may start off in the narrow, predetermined path, but they usually rebel eventually and do what they always wanted to do.

Just skimmed thru this thread and wanted to add that even tho she may not be as intelligent, hopefully she'll inherit your humour, i think you are hilarious!! Much rather spend time in the company of funny people than 'intelligent' people! Personal choice!

I prefer common sense to intelligence every time!

Hear hear Pisces!