Academic parents with very 'average' children - how do you cope?

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Without beating about the bush, DH and I are both bright, intelligent, quick-thinking etc etc. Good degrees. Like reading & learning.

DS1 is a chip off the old block(s) - seems to absorb information, and always has his nose in a book. Ahead of peers. Has never struggled with anything (except perhaps team sports!)

DS2 is completely different. Late to read. Slow to understand/'get' things. Doesn't concentrate. Learns something one day and forgets the next.

I love them both unreservedly, but fear that I am a crap parent to DS2, as I simply don't have the patience to do stuff at his pace.

I sometimes have to walk away when he's doing his homework to stop myself showing my frustration and tendency to 'jump in' .

Inside my head I'm thinking "how can you have FORGOTTEN how to spell that when it's right in front of you in the question" or "but we just talked about that".

Aaargh - how do you manage to have any empathy when your child is so different to yourself?

Pagwatch - what a brilliant post.

I'm worrying about ds2 at the moment whose only little but a bit slow in meeting milestones. That post just made me see things a little clearer.

Agree with pagwatch.

Dh and I both went to Oxford.

Our eldest has severe learning disabilities, will never live independently, will probaby never move off p levels, and almost certainly will never talk (he's 10 now). He lives a full life and it's not for me to judge its value. He can do things that I can't and remembers things that I would never remember, but these little achievements aren't really valued (and more importantly don't help you get the shopping done independently).

Ds2 is 7, seems fairly academic, although he loves things like drama too. DS3 has just started reception and could go either way - can't work out whether he's very bright, or has some odd problems. In any case both will grow up, independent and will be able to choose how they love their lives. As far as we are concerned that's the only thing that is important. It should be valued for the great gift it is. I couldn't care less what qualifications they get (can't say ours have made much difference to dh or me - except lead dh into a profession he doesn't enjoy).

Please don't put academic expectations on your children. I have taught young adults who at 20 years of age were having to lie to their parents about exam results as they knew if they told them the truth (and they'd worked hard to achieve what they did) then their parents would be disappointed in them. God one even had to sit through a celebration dinner with family friends for results she hadn't achieved. Excrutiating. She also couldn't move on for years as she tried and tried and tried to achieve exam results that her parents could be proud of. Such a waste of time when she could have been moving forward in something she was good at.

I think it's so sweet he wrote tabule three times ~I can imagine ds2 doing this as he was busy day dreaming about lego star wars or Harry Potter!
Because he has the sort of personality where you say "write that for miss please ds2" and he does,straight away,to please.

He is so busy pleasing me he might forget to check what the word was/if it was right.

And he is doing perfectly fine in school.

So don't be so quick to judge him,find your good humour and listen to these posters who speak a lot of sense.

Ohbaby, thats exactly how imagined it too. That he was daydreaming about something great and was too busy pleasing.Bless

Actually prunerz point about volunteering is a good one. There is nothing in life that make me take my head out of my arse faster than few hours in ds1's SLD/PMLD school. I don't think it's possible to come out of there and stress about SALTs results.

We sometimes ponder at home what we would have been like without the lesson in life that is ds1. I don't think we would have stressed too much about academics (because of my experience of teaching children who were 'disappointments') but who knows.

I'm not sure if I qualify as 'academic' but I did reasonably well at school, got good As and a degree (not a v good one - too much partying ). My DS#1 is one of those frustrating children who is, according to everyone who knows him, very bright, but also, according to his parents, very lazy . Why make any effort when by not making the effort you can get a passable grade. He drives me mad! But short of constantly bribing him or beating him regularly I don't know what I can do. He needs to be enthused and after an optimistic start in Yr 7 when he seemed to be so, he is back to same old muddling though DS.

DD is however very different. She is keen, hard-working and she really does care. And the results are very different. Teachers can't say enough lovely things about her. But I worry about next year - she is dreading the move to secondary and I am so afraid it will scare all the enthusiasm out of her

DS#2 is....... well we're not 100% sure he is homo sapiens as yet. He may well be some alien species. So academic results are not exactly relevant

And yes, I get very frustrated but after 12yrs of parenting 3 very different DC I have learned to let things go a little.

I was always determined not to put high academic expectations on my children, as my parents did this and I did resent it, even though all of us did happen to be good academically.

It's hard sometimes when too much of your own identity has been wrapped around academic succcess. I don't like that aspect of myself, I'm not proud of it, but in my family that was over-valued, throughout our childhood, and then I went to Oxford (where, obviously, conventional academic ability is over-valued) and then I did a phd and have spent most of my adult life in academia (ditto). So it does take a bit of effort to step away from that way of seeing the world. though it is depressing and pathetic of some of us to mind, it's deeply ingrained and hard to shrug off.

Can I be honest with you? When I read the thread title and your OP, I thought 'oh fgs, don't be so silly' but I take that back and apologise for thinking it.

I've been mulling this over while baking with dd (she's 2.4 so who knows where life is leading her). The old adage of 'you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family' sprang to mind. And I don't mean for a second that you would want to choose and therefore change the children you were given but when you are so used to gravitating towards certain endeavours, to cherishing certain achievements and to sharing this world with likeminded people, you can be blindsided when your own genes conspire against you to produce an individual who is so far removed from all those preferences and natural leanings.

Academia is one small aspect, though an oft celebrated one, of every child's abilities. And of course when your child struggles because something is easy, then the lack of understanding is yours. Because it's simple. Your child, for example, isn't good at spelling. It's so straightforward. What's more complicated is your reaction to it. And that's parenting. Accepting the facts of your child's situation in life and helping them navigate a way through it. You have the resources, time and ability to adopt ways of trying to explain this foreign concept to him, that's where your intelligence, especially your emotional intelligence, is of paramount importance. You can't change the fact that he struggles with it but you can learn something about yourself in this, you can learn how to teach him these things. And at the same time you can wholly embrace the things he is good at. And it may be something that you never wanted to do, something you don't understand, but in this your child will teach you how to enjoy it. It's a gift you pass back and forth between yourselves. You see the pleasure they derive from something you are not inclined to do yourself and you see that thing through their eyes.

I don't think it's a matter of 'coping' because coping is something you do with a problem.

And I also think that when you set up a dichotomy between classical intelligence and its lack, then you miss the complicated and subtle variations of ability. I suspect that some of the best historical minds struggled with spelling and the written word but their ability and intelligence may have far surpassed somebody who could spell tabule correctly.

You've certainly made me think this morning.

Blast just deleted a really long post

here is the short version.

I was the first in my family not to be a gifted child. The first not to go to Oxford or Cambridge for many generations and on both sides . My db even went very early clever old thing. I was considered a hopeless case and arrived at secondary school barely able to read. However, I left university with the higest marks in my year having finally discovered somthing I could do and that I loved. Please don't be so quick to judge.

I would second looking at the Sir Ken Robinson creativity lecture it is excellent.

www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

It isn't just academics that do this though - I know that my parents groaned inwardly every time that I did any kind of sport. They tried to improve my co-ordination, but failed miserably. I think that there's a good probability that I'm dispraxic. They weren't always very good at hiding their disappointment, either.

The point is that we all secretly hope that our children will inherit our good points and our skills so that we can bond over them. I am very happy that DD1 has inherited our daft sense of humour (and it looks as though DD2 has too). I love it when we all share a joke as a family.

It's important to remember that every child has their strengths and to find something that we have in common, if it's not obvious, but I think that it's just human nature to wish things for our children.

Maybe the issue is the value applied to academic success in childhood. Although I went to Oxford it wasn't over-valued in my childhood (neither parent had been to university, both left school at 15). DH's family do place high value on academic achievements (and the existence of ds1 hasn't done anything to alter that ). Although MIL wasn't academic a lot of her identity comes from being married to someone who achieved a lot of academic success - and I think she would certainly be very proud of grandchildren who achieve academically, and perhaps not so proud of ones who achieved say practically.

Hmm interesting....

Sorry to swerve this a bit.

I am a dipshit but my dc's are all very bright, reading very early- one of my dd's reads her brother's books from primary school and she will start nursery in the summer- I read to her but have never gone through word for word, it's only her brother playing school with her- she will get new books from his reading bag and read them.

All of my children struggle socially and I am often in tears wishing they were in some way normal and could interact and enjoy being young children, I'm not sure what I did wrong.

minty -" However, I left university with the higest marks in my year having finally discovered somthing I could do and that I loved. " That is exactly what happened to DB. And as DS#1 is so like him in many ways I am hoping that he'll find that spark too.

"And I also think that when you set up a dichotomy between classical intelligence and its lack, then you miss the complicated and subtle variations of ability."

Ah yes. So true. DS1 has severe learning disabilties, cannot talk, etc. But dropped into a street in London on google maps streetscene he went straight to the house he left 8 years earlier when he was 2 and stood outside it (then got cross because he couldn't walk into the back garden). Meeting with someone a year after an initial meeting he was very put out to find they'd changed their car. This is stuff that ds2 and ds3 could never do. And ds1 does it all the time. Would love to know how his mind works and how he experiences the world as I really have no idea.

Inspiring story mintycane.

The original question was 'how do you cope' - well, how do you cope with teaching them to eat solids, play on their own with toys, use the loo etc? You apply your own intelligence. You think about the individual needs of the individual child, and you find the right motivation.

Being a mother is all about boredom and frustration if you have unrealistic expectations. If you do some simple thinking and observing, it all gets a bit more rewarding...

Orm I think so many people do find their spark in the end, as long as they are not told they are thick because the don't read at 3 or 5 or even 9. I hate to hear parents outside school say 'well he is just not academic' about five year olds. How do they know ? The child has their whole life ahead of them to discover somthing that they love.

lavenderkate- good post! Exactly what I would want to say.
Sometimes children unconsciously, or even consciously, know they can't compete with sibs in a particular area and so don't even try.
I think he's expressing a missing family aspect and providing a kind of balance to the academia. Very important.

Pagwatch what a brilliant post.

I also think there is a danger in being academic that there will be an assumption made that you will work in certain fields or certain professions. There can be a lot of pressure to so-called fulfill that academic potential. Even if you don't want to and want to do something non-academic.

just wanted to add my experience of being the child of an academic - my father was considered above average at school, got a 1st at uni (and don't we all bloody know it), went on to do a PhD and is now a professor, and well respected in his field.

I'm the eldest child, and have pretty much followed in his footsteps (in virtually the same field as him - luckily, I love it), although he has continually made it clear that by only getting a 2.1 I am a disappointment to him. My PhD disappointed him, as my thesis was 'too short'. Now I'm expecting a baby and on maternity leave, he is barely speaking to me, as he thinks women shouldn't do academic jobs and have kids. However, I'm the only one of us kids (there are 4 of us) who went on into academia (others are a nurse, an art student, and, well, no idea what my brother is doing, and nor does he). All 4 of us feel we've let dad down, as he has made it very clear to us that we have. My siblings all feel that they can't talk to him, and basically have no relationship with him, as he shouts at them every time they do something wrong (in his opinion). I have the best relationship with him of the 4 of us, but it's not great.

Mum, on the other hand, always made sure to praise us, no matter what we had achieved, and still says she's proud of us when we do something well (for example, at my PhD graduation, mum was chuffed to bits, and told me so - dad just went around networking with the academics at the ceremony, and set up some collaborations).
If we fuck up, she does let us know that we're failures, so she isn't perfect - but she told me recently how proud she is of my bro for being such a nice person, and having so many friends. Dad told me he's ashamed of my bro for failing his HNC exams twice.

What I suppose I'm trying to say is - praise your son's achievements, and be there for him, and even if he doesn't do what you consider to be well in exams, look for ways in which he's done well. basically, don't be like my father!!