Family tree homework

[TheHumancatapult]

over the half term dd was meant to draw up a family tree . She is not intomorrow anyway as is poorly

But have not done that piece anyway was not sure how to handle it . dd has no contact with her dad for quite some time ( he is not allowed it ) but she can not really remember him

Ds1 and ds2 have differ t dad to dd and ds3 but since ds1 and ds2 don't see him much ( their choice he buttered of when little came back when they were teens ) but far as she's concerned their her adorded older brothers
Her fathers parents were divorced and she remarried bit even when was with xh they never bothered seeing Gc and second we split up they dropped all pretence of being interested

Dd lost her grandma recently ( my dads mum ) still has old grandad ( dads dad ) but on my mums side she knows knowone infact I hardly know them met twice I think z( they never forgave my mum for marrying my dad

My dad died almost 5 years ago and dd can remember bits and talks about her grandad in the sky that was married to nanny

Mums since remarried and dd and ds3 adore him call him grandad (ds1&ds2 like him but call first names)

But I don't call him dad but like him but he has 2 grown up daughters so o refer as step sisters we do get on ok though but neither of them felt comfy bring called auntie by my dc though one of there Dh is uncle

But more complicated I have 2 foster sisters but I call th my sisters and my kids call them auntie

Dd is at a very strong CofE school and were defintley in the minority when fines to single parent and mixed family's

If you worked through that well done

So was I being unreasonable to refuse to do this. As it would confuse her compleley will course give teacher a condensed version

Oh a d I do have a brother but nothing to do with him and would never ever let him near my kids but no one seem him bar once at my dads funeral

It's completely understandable that you don't do the family tree in your situation. Does she have a favourite character in a book or on TV for whom you could do one instead and explain to the teacher why?

Can you get your DD to do a diagram of important people in her life (her in the middle and people connected to her).

Then let the teacher know that the tree was very complicated, so you decided to do a different take on it.

The teacher will be fine and your DD will feel that she has taken part.

Thank you

Piprabbit that's a good idea . Thank you will do diagram with her in middle her 3 brothers and nan and her grandad if she wants she can add geanma and my dad as stars as that's what she decided they were age 3 when my dad died . Can add my two foster sisters as they are important to her and me

Then she can add my step sisters by first name as that's what she calls them

Dd does have some understanding bit feel age 8 is far to complicated to explain it all to her

I was going to say similar to Piprabbit but draw a tree with her on the trunk and all the people she feels as important as leaves or branches. You could still add grandma and your dad as stars.

Not sure if I agree that 8 year olds should be made do this assignment...it can touch on very sensitive issues and may cause upset. They are still quite young and it may be awkard to explain some sitautions to children at this age.
I can totally understand why you have reservations about it.
I am sure there will be others who have equally complicated situations and teachers should be aware of this. Children who are adopted/fostered/bereaved or who are from recently separated/divorced families may be experiencing enough trauma without drawing family trees. I am sure there will be some who will disagree with me but I think it is like opening a "can of worms" for some families.

i am suspecting more dd teacher not thought it through as its a church school and a small one .I know we are very much in minority with it especilaly her class years 3 and 4 .

But yes i would hope teachers especially in bigger schools apply more thought to it .Though we had a letter home recentley saying all parent smust sign up for the parents race no exscuses one needs to race it was meant well but dd was getting bit of a grumble aboput not having a parent to race but luckily dd handled it and said well no dad and mums not going to be racing Miss is she or are wheelchairs allowed to enter

But have took piprabbits idea and done it like that .

camdancer sadly it seems dd had inhertied my art skills or more so lack of them

will talk with teacher anyway as seems there whole topic is talking working on family trees history etc .

and will be very senstive for dd as hers is not a proper tree me my parents then only one set of great granparents .

I'm glad that you used the good suggestions pps made.

I agree with aries, that this seemingly simple and cross-curriculum project must be so fraught for so many people.

I still feel upset when I think of learning French in first year senior and having to parrot out 'academy is the daughter of mr academy' etc in French, when my parents had been through an extremely messy and un-dealt-with-properly split and I hadn't seen him for nearly 10 years and was already completely fucked up about it.

And I remember the teaching saying brightly, "Don't worry if your dad's dead or anything, just tell me and I'll tell you how to say it in French".

I'm glad that you were able to support your daughter.

"i am suspecting more dd teacher not thought it through as its a church school and a small one "

You've had some great advice and it sounds like you've come up with a good compromise. But I just wanted to add ... don't let the fact it's a church school get in the way of making sure the teacher realises how sensitive this was for you. Whatever kind of school it is, they need to be aware of children's different family circumstances.

Looking around my church this morning, I could have pointed out any number of people who would have struggled with this homework, had they been at school. Among our very ordinary congregation, we have a number of remarried people, a couple of adopted children, a handful of divorces, some messy and at least one gay bachelor.

Churches are full of normal people with all the same relationship issues as everyone else and Church schools should not assume otherwise.

I think that what you've worked on sounds brilliant - the work is likely to be about different families and who children consider as being important to them. For future reference, the website Family Echo is a fantastic tool that draws simple (but complex!) family 'trees'.... I had a go using the relationships that you described and it works. There are options to add children with/without named fathers/no fathers at all, can indicate additional/ex partners and all sorts of other combinations. Depending upon the person whose family 'tree' you want to view, the arrangement is different i.e. with Human Catapult at the centre vs. Human Catapult's DD1 at the centre.

When I ask children in my class (Y4) to find out about their families/people who are important to them I go to great lengths to explain that families are different and always demonstrate to the children how I would draw my own i.e. including people who aren't, strictly speaking 'family' as being family. With my own DD1 I have used the Family Echo one and inserted photographs of the people she wanted to include.... it wasn't very tree-like by the end but it was a celebration of her family as she saw it and that's what matters.

I'm sure your DD's teacher will be pleased that the two of you have produced something that shows the people your DD considers to be family... hopefully she'll also rebrand the activity when she next asks children to undertake it so that next year's parents don't experience the same anxiety you and your daughter have done (maybe point her in the direction of Family Echo...?).

Some good compromises here. But this kind of thing makes me a bit meh. I had to do it at school, my mum wasn't married to my dad at the time and was v. sensitive about it. (they got married when I was 35 :D), my mum's mum died when she was a child, she had no contact with her mum's family. My Dad's mum thought the school was being nosey and gave me no info. As you can guess, I got a shite mark for that homework! It shocks me that teachers are still this insensitive.

I hate this type of homework, and am not looking forward to when my children have to do it. What if you've 'pruned your family tree' so to speak? Or relations have been horrifically murdered? There are some things you'd rather not have to explain to small children.

a little note to the teacher saying that this was not appropriate homework for your dd, given family circumstances. no explanation necessary.

dd has just done this hw. She's 5, so we just found photos of people in her family and stuck them on a piece of paper. No biggie.
If we didn't find a photo, we didn't include the person.

The h/w isn't to test your family links or figure out a who's who in your household; there are some excellent ideas on this thread, but the idea that this h/w isn't appropriate because someone might not have a 2+2 nuclear family and might get upset

Just do something as h/w and move on. No need for massive explanations to the teacher

From being the kid with the most fragmented family tree possible (we've got dead twins where the living twin was renamed after the dead one, we've got family members in psychiatric hospitals, we've got a murderer in the family, a dad who walked out and disowned us - along with his parents, step brothers, half brothers, 11 sets of grandparents from all the divorce and remarriage in the family etc etc... think there's also been some intermarriage among it all so I've got a cousin who is also something like my great aunty or something insane - I forget the exact relationship links, you tend to just roll with it in my family and nod and smile if someone comes out of the woodwork that you're related to) this type of homework only becomes a big deal if you make it so - just keep it at the level of the people you have actual contact with - so when I had to do it for school (and this was at a fairly strict Catholic school back when divorced single mums were REALLY stigmatised) we just did me, brother (who is technically my half-brother but we never bother with that faff), mum, mum's grandparents... then, because I was the sort of kid who was curious and with quite a dark sense of humour (still have that now - but it started very early on) I dared my mother to try to do the full one... she gave up cos it was so complicated and we joked we don't have a tree but an entire bloody forest!

We've also got relatives that were "pruned" (in our case it's my mother's brother who raped her when she was 11 - so fairly heavy reasons for it too) - when we did this all for school (and it would have been Junior/KS2 age cos I remember the class I was in for it) she just did a "and my brothers and sisters were X/Y/Z/A and B" - included him by name but didn't go any more into it than that - and since they're not a close set of siblings anyway (they're the sort of family who only come out of the woodwork for a good funeral), and we only ever really saw any of them in brief passing from time to time - it just, again, wasn't a big deal. I'm still appreciative that she took the time to set out ALL the family relationships and names - more than anything else it became handy to know in adult life for things like family medical history and the like... I've got no knowledge at all of my biological father, other than his name and my grandmother's name - and THAT part is the gaping hole I had difficulty coming to terms with - not the ins and outs, skeletons and intermarriage and endless web of divorce in the family.

I agree with Korma that you should take this up with the teacher and maybe also the school admin. But take a look first at whether you are feeling more 'outside the Pale' than the school sees you.

The DCs attend a Catholic primary and the most they have ever had to do in this line was around All Souls and All Saints days when they were asked to compose a piece on a person they know or they knew who was or is very much loved by them, with the emphasis on how they went about being a good person and not the relationship to the child.

In the US where the oldest finished school, they used to do a survey of where everyone's ancestors had come from, but this turned out to be a bit of a can of worms for the African American children in the class, most of whom could only say 'Africa' as opposed to specific places like Bavaria, Gdansk, Krakow, Szczecin, St. Petersburg, Tipperary, Oaxaca, Palermo, etc.

Blewugh

Your dd might not been ndeapth but dd was expected to . Complete with dates of birth with dIffernt colours for married or siblings of expected to go back at Least great granparents Notice you said your dd is 5 dd is y4

But took piprabbits idea and had quite chat with teacher so dd did not have to explain

apologies, but stealth OP!

Of course Piprabbit had the best idea.

Glad my idea went down well - I'm taking a closer look at Family Echo too, sounds just what we need.

Am a bit late into this and apologise if this ha been suggested,

We drew a large tree in the middle of the papaer and Dd1 just wrote the names of people she knew in her family all over the tree.

She quite enjoyed doing it and we didn't have to worry about the complex structure that is our family.

when we did this in ks1 we got round it by doing concentric circles...child in the middle...then people/family who live with you in the next circle..people/family who live close to you in the next... people who live further away in the next etc. So sometimes Mums/Dads were on the outside circles and Grandparents/step-parents etc in the central circles. It doesn't seem to worry the children...they know how they're families work, on the whole.

*oops! their not they're!!