competitive mums

[lovecheese]

Do you have them in your Dcs playground? I bet you do; Child comes out of school and the first thing that mum does is grab the childs book bag to see if "he/she has gone up a level" and then the spelling book to check that the poor child has got 10/10, meanwhile child is waiting for a kiss and a hug and a how has your day been? And this in infants too. I'm not one. Are other schools like this?

God yes, spellings always devisive. One pushy Mum went to head and complained they were too easy,in a fit of madness school agreed and year 1 were getting 20-30 spellings a week. Then other children were in tears every week at the thought of the test. New head has seen sense and we are back to 10 standard and 3 challenging. The Mum in question has now become a parent governor, just loves to be in control.

Not that i am aware of.

Mind you i dont hang around too long.

They all seem really nice actually, not noticed anything like that at my kids school.

Certainly some around but none as bad as the one described by Boo! But for some reason there are hardly any amongst the mums in DC1's class and a whole cluster in DC2's - have a horrible feeling half the kids in that class will be spending Easter swotting for KS1 Sats...

I have heard of a mum who invited another child to tea so she could check his book band to see what level he was on.....thats awful imo.

I don't do the school run so don't get to see any of this, thank goodness.

TP

tikkapots, I would have thought that is pretty standard practice!

OMG yes - and some.
DD best friends with the child with the nightmare mum heres one instance that left me fuming.
My DD gets picked up fm school as I work and she often offers lift home to her friend.
Friends mum gets in the car and asks my DD if she had received her school report.
DD ( P2 last year) says yes.
Mother then asks my daughter to let her take a look - even though it is unopened.
She reads the report and then texts me at work to say I should be proud of my dd's report. It says her vocab is outstanding and she often uses words such as xyz and
she has been accelerated for reading.

Later that night I receive 4 further emails questioning why my DD has been accelerated as she thinks her child is a very similar standard and almost accusing me of having been in to school to and requested it.
Then suggesting my dd must be doing a lot of tutorial work ( which she doesnt).

The parents that realy bug me are the ones who will blatantly lie about beleiving the children are under so much pressure& believe they need time to be children -and then you find they are the ones whose kids are in extra maths, English, French, Piano Ballet, etc etc etc.In fact the more obscure the better.

That is unbelievably THK!

At home time at the infant gates I remember it was more the loud-voice-to-dcs-hoping-others-can-hear type oneupmanship designed to make us feel inadequate.

"I've brought you an apple, I know you prefer fruit to sweets!"

"We have to hurry, we can't keep Mme Dupont waiting!"

Did Mrs X like the Nepalese prayer-wheel of mummy's in show and tell today?"

"Let's go and get the wholemeal flour we need for our baking tonight".

Etc

It must have grated - the fact that I have remembered them for so long!

That is outrageous, THK!

OMG! that is completely outrageous! Are you still friends with the woman after that?

THK that is terrible.
We dont seem to have this at our school thank goodness

hocuspontas - laughing out loud here! Ive got a friend a bit like that, always says things that she hopes will impress slightly too loud if there is a crowd around. I just cringe.

The shocking thing was she didnt see the problem I had with it and thought I would want to know as it was a good report!!! - her words.
No I dont socialise with her but our daughters are friends so there is contact.

Show and tell - noone could beat the nobel prize nomination!

The stuffed animal weekend diary competion. thankfully no more in Y3.

When ds2 was at primary we had a nightmare of show and tell.....

ds2 said he had to take in something better than the boy who showed today....

It was decided either his brothers verrucca or my letter from mohammed al fayed

want to make clear nobel prize nomination was another child.
DD took a stuffed goat!

thk - outrageous!!

hocuspontas - god thats hilarious! i can't wait for all this when dd starts school!

seriously though i hate competitive parenting. mat/paternal love is supposed to be unconditional ffs

We have an ex-very high achieving drug rep. Her children are independant assessed each year to check the school is doing their job.
She demanded that a DC was in the top set for everything.
The DCs do every club going.
As for their pages in the class mascots book!!!!

Lizcat - and did the school put the DC in top sets?

I once did some teaching cover at a school that didn't allow parents inside to collect their children because they had too many incidents where parents were going into classrooms to look at other children's books to see if they were doing better than their own children.

Sane people actually behave this way? Must say I have never seen behavior like this, as DS1 goes to an academic pre-prep, in West London!

will be watching this thread... my DCs are pre-school age and I don't know if this would make me laugh or cry! Or bang my head on the wall.

At DSDs school there's mostly anti-competition - i.e. who can be the most disinterested in the child's life education.

Hmm, I just pretend to be really stupid and pretend not to know what level my child is on, which then means people don't ask me again. Not many people do ask though. I do hear complaints that their books aren't changed often enough and plenty of whining about that but we have tons of books to read in our house so I just don't bother whether it is changed or not to be honest.

In fact, she is actually the best reader in her class which I am very proud of as she has serious special needs but I just don't want to be drawn into that sort of thing.

Nobody mentions reading levels or spellings round here. DS likes to discuss it; he is very competitive.

He likes to know exactly where he is in the pecking order. Prob because he's a swot and all his friends are better at football than him.

I escape most of this by working FT. And not knowing what reading level a child is on is a great tactic which also works for me.

Due to a gobby parent-helper, ppl know exactly where our ds is academically (she knows more about him than we do!); while we're pleased he's getting on well it's no big deal, but it has meant I'm encountering a bit of competitive parenting, from one couple in particular..and the dcs are only in yr 1!

Mum pigeon-holes me specifically to tell me how well her ds is doing and I think has been through ds' reading book (and lunchbox!) from things she's said subsequently, whilst the dad makes mildly sarcastic comments about our ds (and oddly also about dd who starts in Sept at the same time as their 2nd). 'Tis very odd.

There was one mum in ds's old school who actually requested extra homework at the weekends and during the school holidays, the poor child was then moved to a boarding school (as a day student) which is as pushy as anything. I see her rebelling!!