To push or not to push!!!

[tigerfrog]

I have just returned from a play date with my DD, i dont think we shall be invited back again!! I have been friendly with DD friend's mum since baby group so thought i knew her quite welll!! Both girls are now year 2 but different schools. We got on to the conversation about schools and how the girls are doing. She got quite heated about how her daughter needs to be pushed. She insists that school must be taken very seriously, that there's no need to have fun, homework should be done as soon as she returns from school (at least an hour) and if they are going to succeed in life we must start to drill it into them now!! I disagreed!!!!!!! I believe school is about having fun, being inquisitive, happy children learn. Primary years are about being a child surely. My DD does her homework, we read together every night and play silly maths games in the car but the rest of the time shes playing. So should I be pushing her more? Should I be insisiting that school is about hard work and for her to take it more seriously or should I leave that for the many years of senior school she has ahead of her?

Well obviously I am very slack re year 2 ds. School say he is doing well so for the moment we will carry on having home work/ work free evenings. [School stopped doing spelling tests and say they will cover spelling at school in other ways which is great as seemed waste of time. DS would get 10 out of 10 and spell the word wrong in context soon after].
Your children's schools seem to have a very different attitude to ds school.

I have the same problem as gabid that dd never wants to do the stuff that she should be doing at home. She has only just started school (nearly 6 - continental Europe!) and I thought at the beginning she´d be keen. She is really but she was given flashcards to bring home for the half term holidays on the Friday. Friday afternoon she was proud and excited and showed them to me once. And that was that as far as she was concerned. Her teacher wrote a letter home to the parents asking them to practise the words on the cards with the children. I know that dd won´t accept ANYTHING from me so I tried not to say anything at all - but I did ask her if she´d like to show her cards to Grandma when we visited - this was received with fury. I don´t know what to do. If I don´t say anything and leave it all to her, I just think she is going to get behind as she just does nothing. I wouldn´t consider doing anything if it wasn´t that the teacher had written the letter home. I tried to think of different ways of getting her to read (one of the words was "Chip" from the Oxford Reading Tree - I wrote a menu for our tea and she had to read it and choose). But, it has to be SO subtle otherwise she gets really angry with me. It´s so difficult to encourage her without driving her to stop reading forever - before she´s even started... I´d be so grateful for any tips or stories of how other people support kids who are not particularly interested...!

gabid I ask ds to do his homework. If he refuses I let the teacher know. I don't agree with homework at primary school age and I won't force ds to do it. School at that age is about having fun as well as learning. If his teachers aren't making his learning sufficiently fun that makes him want to do his homework then that is down to them. It is not my job to do their job for them.

Ds is a star pupil when he is motivated and interested and probably a teacher's worst nightmare when he isn't.

Simic - my DS started school at 4 (way too early in my opinion) and he refused to read with me from the start, I left him alone but at age 5.5 I first tried to hide key words in the garden, write them on magnetic board, sand ... when he could read and write them we made a paper ball out of the piece of paper and aimed for the bin. However, whatever idea I came up with, it was short lived. I think his interests just lay elsewhere and he is just not that interested in learning to read and write.

As well, I think my DS is just lazy, as I also have to make him get dressed, wash, tidy his things, lay the table ... he always has other things to do.

Do whatever you like. She's your daughter.

I would (secretly) love not to do any additional work with my children and just enjoy them, I do relate to feeling in a system that has expectations and live in dread of letting my children down by not adhering to school/community views of what they should be learning and for how long each day.
Sometimes I "break-free" and abandon home-work/extra extension work ( if I'm honest my children have a great time then) but I do find it hard to get off the treadmill of turing every situation into a learning oppotunity.

Hi Rosemary,
I am absolutely sure you are not letting your children down.

I think it is important not to get too 'sucked in' to everything being educational work at such an early age. It is hard not to get worried by other parents etc expectations. Comparing children/ abilities can be so draining and damaging.
There is a lot to be said for enjoyment and taking it easy in the early years I think. .