How to teach your child to believe in things that you really don't?

[JazbayGrapes]

Think school.
That work assigned is important.
That obeying the rules is important.
That getting on with you peers is important.

Other than "you will need some qualifications to show on your cv" i can't think of anything else.

My kid hates school. I hated it too. Even though academically i was top of the class and went to university.

You don’t think obeying rules is important?
It is obviously practise for life, you might not agree with a particular law but if you break it there is a consequence. School rules help you understand that.

Just be honest about the reasons why.

You need a job to support yourself and showing that you can make an effort will show employers why they should bother with you. It's a competition and if you don't try then someone else will win and you'll be living at home into your sixties

MN generally has a massive throbbing boner for rules, the more arbitrary and pointless the better.

I didn't teach mine that rules/homework/hoop-jumping were sacrosanct. I believe in having an authentic relationship with kids, discussing things honestly and trying to make sure they understand the potential consequences of the choices they make. I expected them to employ their reasoning skills and their moral compasses and own their decisions. They're both young adults now and (imo) genuinely good people.

You don’t think obeying rules is important?

There are rules and there is nonsense. Petty uniform rules for example.

You need a job to support yourself and showing that you can make an effort will show employers why they should bother with you.

Except the employers barely glance at your official qualifications. They'll show more interest in your hobbies than your GCSCEs

I didn't

I taught them that most rules have exemptions and special cases and if you look hard enough/talk to the right people you will find them.

They worked out for themselves that if you are good most of the time you can get away with murder when you need to.

Why do you have to tell them things you don't believe in?

Do you wish that you hadn't got in to university?

There are some episodes on Netflix on Worlds Toughest Prisons (or something like that) about some prisons that run without guards and have no rules which are interesting.

I didn't say they would, I said it's how to teach something you don't believe in lol

I'm a very pragmatic person, so mostly I tell my daughter to suck it up sunshine, life's not fair. It's pretty much cracking on, taking the rough with the smooth and realising that you don't have to believe in something to understand you just have to get on with it. That's just life...

Think school. - Love it or hate it, an education is necessary to get ahead in life. I hated school, my daughter hates school. I totally understand and I sympathise, but tough luck love, we've all been there, now it's your turn!

That work assigned is important. - It's important because you need a job in order to make money. If you consider the assigment isn't important, your employer is going to get someone else to do it and you'll be out of a job. Every job has it's ups and downs. That's life, just because you don't think it's important doesn't mean it isn't.

That obeying the rules is important. - Rules are almost always there for a good reason, whether you think it's a good reason or not. You don't get to choose which ones you feel you want to obey. Think about the consequences if people decide to only obey the rules they agreed with.

That getting on with you peers is important. - Getting on with your peers makes life easier, it's a good skill to learn as you never know when you might need their assistance with something. If you have alienated people then at some point you'll find yourself alone.

Do you wish that you hadn't got in to university?

If honestly i'm not sure. I did a pretty useless degree. I wouldn't do it again. Even though i enjoyed it, going to university for the sake of going is a waste of time/money.

University is now a very big expense if you're not sure about it. If your child isn't sure about it then it's worth them thinking about what they might want to do instead.

Degree apprenticeship are becoming more and more of a thing as your degree is paid for and you get paid - but they are often very competitive especially with the big/well known companies. You can bet that those high GCSE's and A-level predicted grades are going to get you noticed there. And when it comes to uni or apprenticeships 'hobbies' need to be related to the course to be really appreciated. Unless of course they demonstrate other skills such as team working or leadership skills. That's where getting on with your peers becomes important. DS did a lot of interviews and pretty much everyone had a question on working as part of a team.

We live in a society and everything is better if we get along. That some rules are stupid, but is it worth the time and the hassle of arguing with them. Doing the work assigned when it's assigned is easier than doing it later, and there are hoops that have to be jumped through to get to the next stage of life. And getting on with your peers can be a lot of fun.

I totally understand and I sympathise, but tough luck love, we've all been there, now it's your turn!

I really thought of home educating a lot. It is on the table. However, so far school life apparently isn't shitty enough.

The things you mention are the things that keep our society ticking along and not in anarchy.
Completing work when needed IS important in almost all paid careers. Or are you ok to be waiting 4 weeks without electricity because they couldn’t be bothered to fix it? Or to sit in a&e for hours in agony because the nurses didn’t fancy finishing their shift?
Most rules have a purpose. Some might seem silly but unless it actually harms you, just get on with it. Some things in life are annoying.
Getting on with people IS an important skill. Life is hard and lonely when you spend it thinking everyone is against you.

Also, you need to know the rules before you know which ones are unimportant.

I found it really helpful when my parents said, look, it’s all a big stupid game and if you can just kind of play along without feeling like you need to mean it or buy into it, you’ll end up with more options that can buy you more freedom, and entry into environments that aren’t quite so absurd, where you’ll find more like-minded people.

I think it's important to let them know that throughout life, even when they think something's stupid, they have to do what those in charge say. When they're in a job they will have rules and dress codes, and unless they're self employed or lottery winners, it's something they're going to have to suck up.

Completing work when needed IS important in almost all paid careers.

I think you'll find a massive difference between public and private sector. No sensible business will employ a person and assign them pointless tasks just so they can sit there for hours collecting their wage. But in public sector they certainly would.

I went with you keep the little rules that are easy to keep so that you can question the big rules when the time comes. It's hard to explain but because my uniform was right, my homework was on time etc when I said 'that rules is totally immoral and I'm not doing that' people listened a bit more.

I don’t quite agree. There aren’t many jobs that have dress codes, and someone who doesn’t like school uniform and pointless rules is hardly going to be attracted to the sorts of jobs that are strict about this.

We don’t have to follow every stupid rule. We don’t have to just do what people in charge say. We can learn skills in debate and diplomacy and negotiation and critical thinking and advocate for sensible changes to pointlessly oppressive rules rather than just taking orders unquestioningly. We can work to create more sensible rules.

Being an adult and a worker doesn’t need to begin and end at doing what you’re told.

🤨 I work in the ‘public sector’ , that’s not really
my my experience.
And anyway, my point still stands, if you want to get paid you have to do your job. Whatever that entails. (Barring criminal activity) If you don’t like what it entails, Find a new job. Picking and choosing the bits that you deem to be important is going to get you fired.
Life isn’t always exciting and interesting. Sometimes it’s a bit dull. We all have to learn to power through.

Think of it like the 5 fruit and veg a day rule. That's the recommended, but you can live a reasonably healthy life eating less. But the recommended needs to be 5 because they know most people will fail at 5 and eat less, but at least try for 3-4. Whereas if the recommended was the actual needed amount, 3 a day, people would maybe only bother with two.
So most people will naturally bend a little bit on the rules here and there, but its good to teach a baseline of 'we try and follow the rules because they have been put there for a reason'
School uniform is a great one - the schools official reason could be 'less distraction/more equalising/learning personal responsibility' so you can talk about how for some kids, have a uniform will do exactly that - others may just find it annoying, but its good to always thinks outside the box and not think that your experience or interpretation of a situation dictates reality. It's good critical thinking development really. Kids are very susceptible to going 'NOONE benefits from this stupid rule' when actually, they don't know if people do or not, because the people who benefit might not even realise that they do either. All good discussion to have I think, so you don't end up with one of those adults who say things like, I don't know 'I don't know why people keep banging on about how dangerous it is walking around outside at night, I've never had any problems' - you want them to be able to consider that their experience isn't the only one that matters.

This. I had to say it to myself quite a lot too when i was younger. Play the game rather than fight a war. It will result in a much nicer life. You don't have to believe in any of it, you just have to work out what will have a better end result for you.

Look, employers want an easy life. They want to know whether a prospective candidate 1) can do (or learn) the job and 2) be easy to work with.

The evidence of qualifications is easy to use to help demonstrate 1). It shows that a candidate can knuckle down across a variety of areas and get the job done. Of course there may be other ways for those candidates who don’t have a straightforward cv, but there is no getting around the fact that qualifications makes it easy for the employer (absent other reason) to tick that box.

This^ in a nutshell.

I suppose it helps to find some positives maybe even more distant positives, looking at the bigger picture with pros and cons is always helpful.

I suppose it's also good to discuss because you need to teach:

• what's actually worth challenging
• presenting actual evidence and facts for your challenge, not personal feelings or hearsay or assumptions
• what is a hill to die on and what isny
• when is the benefit to you personally outweighed by the benefit to a group
• how to challenge to the appropriate person/time and when to accept defeat gracefully
• why deliberately flouting rules could cause pointless grief for people who don't even set the rules - teachers having to spend time correcting you, when they havnt dictated that you wear a tie etc
• on that line, if you are planning on ignoring or challenging a rule, what impact could you have on other people by doing so
• why people uphold rules that they night not necessarily agree with (because they might lose their job otherwise and they need the job to pay their bils)

You could do some great critical thinking work!