Genuine Concern or Lazy Mums?
- Thread starter estebanrey
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Do you hate your own parents estebanrey?
To be fair, they don't seem to have done a very good job on at least one of their children...
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Easier in what way? You have a boss which you have to suppress the constant need to tell them they are speaking ******** even when clearly they are. You cannot fail to do your job or you get sacked, you cannot get sacked as a parent even if you're a bad one. Your work is rarely easy whereas being a parent sometimes is...etc etc
I general agree with Bill Maher when he spoke about "stay-at-home-mom" Ann Romney on the subject....
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Did you feel that your parents were more intelligent than you, or that they did not appreciate your full potential or even denied it?
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I don't get your line of questioning. I'm not comparing being a child with being a worker, I'm comparing having a full time job with being a full time 'mum' (or dad).
Caporegime
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Actually when you go out to work, work may be tough but you can come home to a place that is ONLY for relaxing and often its the mother who cooks dinner, and cleans/feeds the kids, is still doing washing.
People who work from home or are single parents will effectively have no place of relaxation, they have one place they don't leave and it's stressful. You can spend all day at work taking the crap your boss gives you, but you can go home put your feet up and watch the game. You don't get that split when you work at home(either a "proper" job done from home or as a mother), you lose a place to chill out, you're never "off" , you don't have downtime. That is from experience incredibly stressful. Your average worker works from 9-5 then goes home and relaxes. Your average mum is working 24/7, kid cries in the night, get up. 7pm, making dinner, before bed, cleaning up toys, putting the washing machine on, cleaning kitchen, etc, etc. Neither are easy and plenty of people take their work home with them, plenty(more really) don't.
Either way, kids SHOULD be in TOUGH schools as early as possible.
Your kids brains are hardwired into how they think as children, from babies to teens(afaik its mostly the pre-teen time that HUGELY effects how your brain will work). The harder the brain is pushed, the tougher concepts its forced to accept, deal with and work out at a younger age the smarter that kid will be, the better they are likely to do with their life, better jobs, more downtime, etc, etc. It's naive, short sighted and stupid to believe kids should just get to have fun. You won't even remember your younger years much if at all when you are older so if you use them to make yourself a smarter more intelligent person or are completely wasted... which would you hope your parents choose for you?
Have you ever heard how kids can pick up several languages in a breeze as kids but adults find it incredibly difficult to pick up new languages, this is part of why.
The age of school is irrelevant, parents these days expect their kids to be taught and blame schools and politicians when the schools are crap rather than teach your kids yourselves. They are your kids, take responsibility. I have every intention of teaching my kids a second language and particularly maths as early as possible.
Playing with blocks is playing, but do it right and they can be learning at the same time, structured learning when kids is crucial.
People who work from home or are single parents will effectively have no place of relaxation, they have one place they don't leave and it's stressful. You can spend all day at work taking the crap your boss gives you, but you can go home put your feet up and watch the game. You don't get that split when you work at home(either a "proper" job done from home or as a mother), you lose a place to chill out, you're never "off" , you don't have downtime. That is from experience incredibly stressful. Your average worker works from 9-5 then goes home and relaxes. Your average mum is working 24/7, kid cries in the night, get up. 7pm, making dinner, before bed, cleaning up toys, putting the washing machine on, cleaning kitchen, etc, etc. Neither are easy and plenty of people take their work home with them, plenty(more really) don't.
Either way, kids SHOULD be in TOUGH schools as early as possible.
Your kids brains are hardwired into how they think as children, from babies to teens(afaik its mostly the pre-teen time that HUGELY effects how your brain will work). The harder the brain is pushed, the tougher concepts its forced to accept, deal with and work out at a younger age the smarter that kid will be, the better they are likely to do with their life, better jobs, more downtime, etc, etc. It's naive, short sighted and stupid to believe kids should just get to have fun. You won't even remember your younger years much if at all when you are older so if you use them to make yourself a smarter more intelligent person or are completely wasted... which would you hope your parents choose for you?
Have you ever heard how kids can pick up several languages in a breeze as kids but adults find it incredibly difficult to pick up new languages, this is part of why.
The age of school is irrelevant, parents these days expect their kids to be taught and blame schools and politicians when the schools are crap rather than teach your kids yourselves. They are your kids, take responsibility. I have every intention of teaching my kids a second language and particularly maths as early as possible.
Playing with blocks is playing, but do it right and they can be learning at the same time, structured learning when kids is crucial.
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Frankly I don't think you are likely to be able to offer much insight into what mothers think and feel.
Why?
According to this the age most start in European countries is 6, not 7 or 8: http://www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/index.cfm?9B1C0068-C29E-AD4D-0AEC-8B4F43F54A28
In fact if you read the notes a lot of children start earlier than 6 even then.
In fact if you read the notes a lot of children start earlier than 6 even then.
There are 100,000s of mums that stay at home and secretly many of them are laughing to themselves that they don't have to work. Talking of mumsnet, recently when the government said that they would help working parents (x2) with childcare, there was uproar from the non-working mums. There were all sort of excuses and sob storys but the bottom line was, it was hacking away at their excuse of "we can't afford for me to go to work"
On a dating site I use (ok, T the P) the amount of "full time mummys xxx :}}} xxx }}} xxx" whose kids spend all day at school and the mums smoke and go out every weekend really does take the P. I do still use these creatures
On a dating site I use (ok, T the P) the amount of "full time mummys xxx :}}} xxx }}} xxx" whose kids spend all day at school and the mums smoke and go out every weekend really does take the P. I do still use these creatures
Associate
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right, but hot-housing has a really bad track record on breakdowns and going mad to varying degrees
early yes but pushing it is a big no-no
My sister has done pretty much this with her first child (and starting soon with her second). Teaching her basically what will be taught in her first year of "proper school".
Now I'm mixed about it tbh. I applaud the point of giving the kids a headstart and all BUT it can become an issue because the schools aren't given flexibility with the curriculum because education in this country, particularly primary education, is a 'one-size fits all' affair and a kid that's just rehashing what they already know and is wanting to go further is going to get bored and disengaged with the learning process and that's a problem if you've got a kid who's bright enough to succeed further.
Caporegime
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It depends entirely what you mean by pushing, one person thinks the times tables are tough and if the kid learns them early they think they're a genius, another person learnt complex calculus before high school and thinks anything short of that is failing.
It depends on the kid, but they absolutely SHOULD be pushed, they shouldn't be put infront of a blackboard from dawn till dusk without anything else happening. THere is plenty of mid ground for any level of kid. Humans in general do nothing without being pushed, its a healthy attitude to have to encourage them to keep learning, that doesn't mean it has to be all day.
Simply learning the ability to concentrate is invaluable. Almost every troubled kid I came across at various schools were both, utterly incapable of concentrating on anything for even a few minutes, never pushed by parents or encouraged to learn, had a god awful attitude.
However teaching a kid leads to problems as the poster below hinted at.
Yup, the problem with school is lowest common denominator. My parents actually weren't good teachers, at all and encouraged me in almost no area, school or out of school activities. My brother for some reason taught me to read when I was very young, and I taught myself loads of stuff simply because I was interested in reading. Middle school was insanely good about giving me extra work to the tune of finishing gcse level work in maths and having read books on history beyond the level/scope required at gcse also. However when it came to high school, no interest from them at all. You know this, go away then.
Actually when I first got there despite it being in my record they refused to believe I knew what maths I did and put me in the bottom set though10 mins with the maths department head and he was basically yelling at the deputy head for being a moron. But the fact that I'd finished basically meant they gave me nothing to do for four years, when gcse's actually started I got given an extra free period, took the exam 2 years early, and was given a couple insanely dry a-level books to read on my own. Basically 4 years after I'd last bothered to do any maths, with crap materials and no motivation I did nothing.
Teaching too much can absolutely in the wrong(read that as most these days) school lead to rehashing the same crap, being bored out of your wits, just simply wasting time. Home schooling is one possible solution but impracticle and can be very harmful to socialising skills of a kid. A very difficult school, like the schools below those of the likes of Eton will push kids hard(too hard, maybe) but shouldn't give you any trouble with teaching your kid too much... but are expensive in general, few and far between and have their own sets of issues.
The fact that my middle school had older teachers, particularly in maths/history and the headmaster, and had such a massively different attitude while the high school was a 30 something head teacher who was all about numbers, targets, and was a complete **** to the kids who he had no intention of teaching well.
It's a different generation of people teaching kids and they've been taught in a completely different style, with those running schools running to targets and tests rather than the kids abilities and interests.
Whole education system has gone to hell and I can't really see at this point how you can have a kid do particularly well in them these days.
Soldato
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My son starts pre-school on thursday and he is 3. Best thing that could have happened imo. All though he will not do much in terms of accademic work, the social skills he will learn will set it him up for a good start for the rest of his educational life.
It should be lower if anything. It'll not only allow mums to get back to work, but it'll prevent bad parents from screwing their kids up too much before sending them to school, an increasingly big problem.
It's all these ******** parents who still breastfeed their kid and use the doctor phil method of parenting where you don't punish your kid at all.
It's all these ******** parents who still breastfeed their kid and use the doctor phil method of parenting where you don't punish your kid at all.
A few weeks ago there was a programme on BBC2 called "How to be German", in it, it suggested that the average German child starts kindergarten at 5 which was basically a load of kids playing in the forest rather than starting school.