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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

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Original poster

Does it matter if DC have already read schools set texts?

94 replies

LynetteScavo · 11/12/2011 19:06

DS1 (Y8) is an avid reader, and pretty much reads anything I throw at him.

I've realised that he has already read most of the books they are covering/going to cover in English. Does it matter?

Should I try to avoid books which will be covered in class to make him work a bit harder? He does the bare minimum and ends up with decent grades as it is, but I don't think that can continue for ever.

Or is it a good thing that he's already read the books?

OP posts:

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 19:47

I have also been on various PTA trying to sell tickets and perfectly lovely parents are very resistant!

amerryscot · 14/12/2011 19:47

It's called 'being the adult in the relationship', exotic.

mrsravelstein · 14/12/2011 19:49

but a 13 year old isn't far off being an adult. how do they learn to be an adult if at 13 you're still telling them what they can and can't read, and who they can be friends with? surely any child who is hovered over to that extent is going to end up rebelling even more?

mrsravelstein · 14/12/2011 19:51

i speak as someone whose mum hovered over me. ah, all those nights when i was 16 and my mother thought i was staying at "joanne's house". she dropped me off at joanne's house. she picked me up from joanne's house. but as to what happened inbetween...

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 19:52

I am the adult-my DSs would roll around the floor laughing at this liberal picture you have of me. They however go to school, several miles away on a school coach and I do not know all the friend's parents. If they go to their house I can't be sure which books they have around. I have 'Girl with a Dragon Tattoo' on my shelves. They haven't read it, or noticed it, but I am not locking it away when they have friends around.

amerryscot · 14/12/2011 19:52

13 is a long way from being an adult! A long, long way!

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 19:55

The stricter the mother the better they are at lying in my experience. I wasn't in the least rebellious but ameeryscot would have made me utterly determined to read some books. At 13yrs I think there are more important things to worry about as in alcohol, drugs, films and computer games.

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 19:57

You will be surprised amerryscot-mine are all adult now-you blink and you are there! Less than 3 yrs before he can marry or join the army, 4 before he can be behind the wheel of a car.

mrsravelstein · 14/12/2011 20:00

i'm with you on this exotic, i am definitely towards the less liberal end of the scale compared to some of our friends/his friends' parents... if ds1 came home now (at 10) saying he'd watched a horror film or played a hideous computer game at a mate's house, i would be very reluctant to let him go there again, even though realistically i know in a couple of years i won't be able to exercise that level of control.

desertgirl · 14/12/2011 20:01

goodness, I'm glad nobody tried to censor my reading at 13. Even though I definitely got the wrong end of the stick a couple of times.

Although I am not sure if 13 year olds today are actually more sheltered than we were A Long Time Ago, or at least sheltered in different ways. I suppose by the time I have 13 year olds I might have figured that bit out.

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 20:02

Sorry-I realise I should have been in the past tense. They did it all without reading unsuitable books-mainly because no one made them desirable.

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 20:04

And we didn't have the internet desertgirl-even if you are strict at home you can have no idea what they are exposed to 'with the nicest of parents' home-a lot worse than anything found in the local authority library!

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 20:08

i am definitely towards the less liberal end of the scale compared to some of our friends/his friends' parents

This is what I really don't understand. Other parents have used me as in 'can you tell your DS he can't exotic and then mine won't want to'! This is because they don't want to be the horrible one who says 'no', whereas I am well know for it!
From teacher friends in private schools I know that many of the parents there are very lax.

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 20:09

known not know-I should proof read.

lljkk · 14/12/2011 20:18

We certainly passed 'smutty' books around.

Nowadays it's smutty pictures passed around via mobiles. Really, who needs books? :(

Given how much I can't control, I'm quite happy to exercise a heavy influence over the library books my teens get hold of.

Takver · 14/12/2011 21:03

This is a really interesting conversation. I don't have a teenager, so its not quite the same, but I have wondered about the differences in attitudes to censorship between films, computer games and books.

I know that quite a lot of people would be shocked at DD (age 9) playing a 12 rated computer game - despite the fact that it was passed to her by DH's younger brother (trained as a teacher, works for Social services - so a fairly reliable young man!) and checked out by DH.

Yet no-one would bat an eyelid at her reading material, which I do sometimes worry a bit about (Eragon, for example, which involves an awful lot of battle scenes). Somehow it is taken as read that books = good, whereas computer games = potentially bad and in need of censorship.

I'm not sure what my position is on this, but I'm not convinced that the general 'MN consensus' is consistent!

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 22:05

I don't expect that they pass 'smutty' books around anymore-who needs them with the internet? The world has moved on, anything that a teenager can get hold of in the local library is going to be very tame against the click of a mouse! That is what parents should be worrying about.

exoticfruits · 14/12/2011 22:28

I don't think that DCs change-they have minds of their own.
You only have to read an autobiography like the one by Jenni Murray (very respectable and a Dame these days). As a teenager she kept clothes and make up with a friend. Set off on the bus to a mother approved activity in mother approved clothes, changed went to a disco. Changed back in the toilets, washed the makeup off, gave the bag to a friend and arrived home with chat about her 'approved' evening. Very common I would imagine.

seeker · 15/12/2011 06:50

I noticed my dd reading "Riders" at about this age. I dithered for q moment then decided to let her get on with it. She read a couple of chapters then put it back on the shelf. If I had tried to stop her, I'm sure she would have got much further out of curiosity- as it as she was either bored or uncomfortable with it and stopped when she realised it wasn't for her.

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