How will you educate your kids

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How will you educate your kids

Post by Joseph27 » 23rd Feb, '11, 21:00



I love this video - the drawing is brilliant at getting the message across and the message is so powerful. I have heard all of his other videos and have customized my childrens education. Whilst they will still need to pass exams, the focus is very different.

I would love to get your comments on adapting the system to maximize opportunities for your kids

Oh and as for ADHD - comments also welcome
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Bender » 23rd Feb, '11, 21:45

If ADHD had been invented when I was a kid, I would have been diagnosed and drugged to the eyeballs.
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Joseph27 » 23rd Feb, '11, 23:10

Me too - as is I was borderline... too active, always questions the teachers authority, argues.... I would have been high as a kite all day and doing everything I was told if I was in school today... I really dislike how these drug companies exploiting people to make money. Just too bloody depressing but not much one can do...
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Morrolan » 24th Feb, '11, 09:07

same here...

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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Lili Von Shtupp » 24th Feb, '11, 10:07

Hey Joe. Just thought to recommend some of the books that I've read and found very interesting. You may have read them too, but thought to post anyway.

1) The Element: How finding your passion changes everything, by Ken Robinson (of the great talk you posted...)
2) What's the point of school? Rediscovering the heart of education, by Guy Claxton
3) Nurtureshock: New thinking about children, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
4) Outliers: The story of success, by Malcolm Gladwell

I am trying to think of a book I read. It was a novel for teens about a young girl who was desperate to break out of school, and the story is about how she and her parents explore alternative schools until eventually she convinces her parents not only to homeschool her, but to "unschool" her. It's brilliant the way it breaks down the very essence of what it means to learn and grow. I have no idea the name or the author of it, but thought it was very enlightening. I would imagine for a teenager feeling stuck in a rut, this book would seem like Plato's parable of the cave.

I've read tons on educational philosophy and pedagogy, but lately have moved more into educational practice. I mean, my abstract thoughts will not manifest themselves into my son's mind magically. The latest I'm reading and really like is Raising Lifelong Learners: A parent's guide.
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by slinky » 24th Feb, '11, 17:13

J27, go to TED.com and look up Ken Robinson - he has at least 2 talks on there worth watching.

Great list of books, Lili!

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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Satellite » 24th Feb, '11, 19:57

employers still look at the paper qualification dont they? Even in the UK, you would need a 2i hons minimum to get a respectable job. If one doesn't follow the mainstream, how are they going to get ahead. It is true that one would not be guaranteed a job with a paper but without one, how are you going to compete..on what basis?

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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by cromasaig » 24th Feb, '11, 21:02

Qualifications are certainly important, in my view, and I expect to be fairly traditional in setting rules about homework etc.

However, despite having absolutely no qualifications beyond a motley selection of Highers (Scottish sub-A levels), I out-earned my Oxbridge-educated husband for more than a decade before I chucked my career into the maternal vortex. That was thanks to a lucky break, a couple of good employers and discovering, to my surprise, that I was very good at something that was fun and pretty well paid.

But that was the UK, where people are definitely more openminded about the necessity of paper qualifications to prove that you can do something. Here in Germany, I'm a bit stuffed.

Aside from my own experience, my hope and belief is that those two approaches are not mutually exclusive. For example, you've got to have very, very good results to get into Oxford or Cambridge. But they turn down people with those every day in favour of students who have something more than a good brain - a good mind. That's a much harder thing to foster, in my view, and it doesn't come from focusing just on the test results.
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Lili Von Shtupp » 24th Feb, '11, 23:38

Satellite wrote:employers still look at the paper qualification dont they? Even in the UK, you would need a 2i hons minimum to get a respectable job. If one doesn't follow the mainstream, how are they going to get ahead. It is true that one would not be guaranteed a job with a paper but without one, how are you going to compete..on what basis?
Qualifications are without a doubt important. And although my son will be attending school and will be required to learn what they teach him, I'm going to hold him to a higher standard. I will encourage him to not follow the mainstream.

At the moment schools are teaching children knowledge and skills that were vital to the economy about 30 years ago. If he wants to really compete, my son is going to have to learn knowledge and skills that will be vital to the economy 20+ years from now, and nobody knows what those will be, but we have an idea. Schools as they are today are not able to change as fast as the world around them.

On the one hand I do understand that my thinking about education is a bit radical. On the other hand, there's not one thought I've ever had about education that Singapore Ministry of Education hasn't already considered how to apply.
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by skank-la » 25th Feb, '11, 07:06

I've been screaming about giving drugs like Ritalin to children for decades now.
Its basically dressed up Crank. Go ahead take some yourself & tell me you think its good for kids

This ADHD diagnosis of any high energy kid is a byproduct of a medical & educational system gone mad in my mind. As the lecturer so points out today the kids are hit w/total sensory overload from multiple sources.

Dont ever let any educational/medical people gang up on you & make you acquiesce to them giving mood altering drugs to your children

My wife & I are ready to move to the Peens -dump the rat race but we're here for the Skankster
The US is really one f'd up place these days but educational system in higher socioeconomic school districts still is truely fantastic. We moved to a better area 2 years ago for the schools so the skankster is now in one of the highest rate school systems in the whole country. Interestingly the demographics of his school are as follows. 45% Chinese (Mostly Taiwanese Origin) 15% Indian 12% Filipino 5% Other Asian 4% Latino & 4% Caucasian & 5% Other(??) since he's mixed wonder. Its a mostly upper class professional Asian area in the hills east of LA populated by lots of Asian's also here for their kids, refugees from the rote learning scene in Asia but still Tiger Moms in their own right. The kids all do academics, music &sports & the parents are heavily involved. Kids are busier than most adults - a far cry from my pretty much care free childhood of riding bicycles down to & playing in the park till dinner time after school.

I' as guilty of it as anybody. My kid plays baseball, soccer, swim team & piano, guitar, sax & choir along w/school. He loves most of it -starting to get bored w/choir after 3 years as he gets proficient with the instruments but thats where he learned pitch & to read music.

The skankster seems to love it all so so far so good. Got to go - work beckons
Am I doing it right or wrong guys? ?
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by slinky » 25th Feb, '11, 09:35

One of the (many) things I found interesting about this video is the part about the paperclip. My son would have been one of the people coming up with ideas for it under the condition that it was 9 feet tall and made of foam :lol: (or whatever it exactly said) He lives in a world where anything is possible and everything can be altered, manipulated or turned on its head. I don't think I've ever truly lived in that world, so it's admittedly a little hard for me to 'get him' sometimes, but I certainly don't want him to lose that way of thinking. So far in his short school career, he's been encouraged to stay interested and curious, so I'm hopeful.

Skank, I don't think you can look at raising a child in the black and white terms of 'right and wrong.' Sounds to me like you're making a great effort to expose him to all kinds of things beyond just school. I can't really see anything wrong with that - particularly if he's happy to do the extra things he's doing. Interesting that you moved to a better school district - lots of people in the US do that when they can. Have a look at the documentary "Waiting for Superman" if you haven't already. I'd say it basically tells the story of what happens to kids whose families don't have that option available to them. Sad state of affairs.

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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Joseph27 » 25th Feb, '11, 10:14

Paper qualifications are still so highly respected in this region - so as with others, my kids will be attending good schools and later I will definitely encourage them to do a uni course that gives a solid foundation.... engineering, medicine, law. The most important thing is simply teaching your child how to think - how to ask questions. I already do that with them - lessons are factual but there's a huge amount of fantasy played out through stories with lots of fun - math, chinese, indonesia and of course english.

The oldest one is due to go to school next year and I am still searching for the best mix - at present they are at Nafa which is great though I am still thinking about local versus international.

Lili Von Shtupp - I fully agree with you in thinking about what the next 20 years looks like versus the system we grew up in. I do like the local ciriculum however I cant help but to notice that the locals who came up with this pressure through the local school and uni system don't seem any more relevant than the equivalent Aussie, Brit or American. There has got to be a good way to combine the best of each system
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Lili Von Shtupp » 25th Feb, '11, 11:02

What I've seen of the local school system is a strong desire to change, but that's happneing at the ministerial level. If you go to the MOE website and read the speeches, and some of the inquiries they've undertaken, it's clear that they have a lot of these thoughts in mind. Singapore's only resource is human, and they're aware that what the schools are churning out today suit a manufacturing-based economy, and it will fail to give this country an edge. Creativity, innovation, divergent thinking, alongside ideas about accepting failure, shifting away from traditional testing-based assessment. They have the budget and have initiated plans to change to single session primary schools to allow time for art, music, drama and sports to be a part of the curriculum, scrapping exams for P1, P2, P3 - etc, but what's happening is that parents don't want the change. Parents want the extra school time to be spent in revision, not dance, so that kids can get good scores. Parents want testing because they want the measure of success (or failure). And really, any mass system in and of itself requires measurable data in order to assess how its doing. Singapore's obsession with ranking schools, students etc requires hard numerical data, and that (ranking) phenomenon has been driven by the kiasu parents. On the one hand, the Confucian notion of merit based advancement through an annual examination is a brilliant idea in social mobility. But in the economy/society of today and in the future, life/economies/careers are not as linear as they were back in his day. We need a little divergent thinking to comprehend the world of possibilities for the next generation, but it's a hard sell to a generation of Singaporeans who still believe that it's enough to simply do what you're told, work hard and get good grades.
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Joseph27 » 25th Feb, '11, 13:22

slinky wrote:J27, go to TED.com and look up Ken Robinson - he has at least 2 talks on there worth watching.

Great list of books, Lili!
Thanks Slinky - thats where I first heard of Ken, I love the guys presentation and teaching method. I find it funny that lots of people get so angry about his comments on ADHD, perhaps they just forgot to take their medicine that day.

There is another talk about mathmatics and teaching kids how to use computers to do the crunch work and basically use their knowledge to know what questions to ask and how to frame those question. That is a very difficult proposition to put to the 'establishment' - its like we need to know how to solve complex math on paper first even though there are a number of ways to do it. The 'do it our way or you are doing it wrong' mentality is so 19th century.

Yes and thanks Lili for the list - I have read a few though not all so I will venture over to Kinokuniya on a lunch break and have a look.
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Satellite » 25th Feb, '11, 14:34

Lili Von Shtupp wrote:. Singapore's obsession with ranking schools, students etc requires hard numerical data, and that (ranking) phenomenon has been driven by the kiasu parents. .

I know that it is going to suppot the kiasu mentality but really, the parents are only trying to ensure that their child has a better future for them in Signapore. As it is, I've got friends how cannot compete wiht the lower/middle level employment as competition comes from SEA/ASIA. Also, they have difficulty competing on the higher level as most MNCs do not believe that Singaporeans are capable of holding the higher level posts. So that leaves many singaporeans in limbo.

Most singaporeans also know that employers do look at which schools prospective employees come from , hence the obsession. MOE can try to change the education system/curriculum but it is going to be very hard to change the mindset of employers.

Also, we have decided to move to the UK solely for baby Sate's education (even though I am not keen on the cold weather) and having surveyed the the competition is also very stiff to get a place near a good state school. (withndetailed rankings ppublished by ofstead). Employers there are also obsessed with grades - when I was applying for jobs, there was always mention of having a 2i hons and above. I must add that most are more receptive of people making mid-career changes.

Finally, I don't know if it is just Mr. Sate or if most are like that but he is a product of UK's education system and I find that he definitely does not have creativity - he will use a paperclip as a paperclip and nothing else (drives me insane) whereas I was a scientist and we had to improvise all the time to save cost or to create a device that would be useful to us.

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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by slinky » 25th Feb, '11, 16:24

Lili Von Shtupp wrote: They have the budget and have initiated plans to change to single session primary schools to allow time for art, music, drama and sports to be a part of the curriculum, scrapping exams for P1, P2, P3 - etc, but what's happening is that parents don't want the change. Parents want the extra school time to be spent in revision, not dance, so that kids can get good scores. Parents want testing because they want the measure of success (or failure).
So, if they want to get rid of some of the exams and make these changes, how do they get the parents to buy into the idea?

I'm no fan of mass standardized testing because I don't think it really tests anything aside from any given teacher's ability to teach the test by rote - and, really, what's the point of that?

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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Lili Von Shtupp » 25th Feb, '11, 16:46

Well, when they ditched the P1 exams, apparently parents stormed tuition centers to administer the exams for them, outside of school, so that they could have a result. I think MOE's only succeeded in eliminating P1 exams, and are working on P2, but there's been a backlash and some letters to ST Forum about it.

It's all about the PSLE. The latest is about the after school enrichment classes. It's all extra time to crunch for this damned exam. It's completely understandable that parents are anxious about which secondary school their child gets into. Hell, I'm parent volunteering at my first choice school, so I'm just as kiasu as the next mother.

I really don't know how they're going to change the public's attitude, but I know this problem has some of the top planners in the ministry feeling frustrated. There is no way that Singapore will compete with the bigger economies in the future unless it can offer something truly unique. Human capital is really all it has and unless it has an edge it's just a speck in the sea.
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Lili Von Shtupp » 14th Mar, '11, 08:46

"Smother Love" LOL! Thought to share this very interesting article for anyone who's interested.

Parents, take a deep breath
Expert after expert in child-rearing has told parents to back off. But anxiety still seems to be the rule in parenting.

By Mary MacVean, Los Angeles Times

March 12, 2011

In Bel-Air one bright and cold morning, a full crowd of moms, wearing sumptuous knee-high boots and beautiful sweaters, gathers in a church to hear Ashley Merryman, coauthor of the child development book "NurtureShock." After one mother asks about letting her son wait to start soccer, another wonders whether the late-starter might be too far behind to be competitive. At age 7.

Across town at USC, it doesn't take long for the small talk to turn to college among a small group of parents waiting on a Saturday for an advanced high school art class to let out. As one mother tells of her daughter's interviews with Princeton and Brown and her expectation not only of acceptance but also of financial aid, anxiety ripples almost visibly.

And every morning, children up to eighth grade walk to a mid-city Catholic school, their hands free. Nearby, their parents lug the lunchboxes, backpacks and class projects.

The hovering, worrying, competing and fear that inhabit many parents from the birth of their children well into college are alive and kicking. Didn't parents get the message? Expert after expert has advised them to calm down, back off a little, allow children to gaze at the stars rather than sign them up for a summer astronomy course. Plenty of outrage greeted "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," author Amy Chua's my-way-or-the-highway style, but the desire for children to have the best lives possible is still translating to heavily involved parents full of anxiety.

The battalions of mothers — and they're mostly mothers — managing their children's lives these days are talking about their anxiety. They see the frighteningly stressed children in "Race to Nowhere," a film in which teen after teen talks about how his or her life is all college prep and no play. They test their homes for hazards such as radon, and they provide lists of foods children may not have during playdates.

"There seems to be a conversation going on. It's kind of coming to a head," Merryman said. But no one knows yet how — or if — parents will change their behavior.

"I don't see the pendulum moving that much. There's still a lot of anxiety," said Joanna Port, the executive director of a new organization called the Parents Education League of Los Angeles http://www.parentseducationleague.org which means to help parents through one of their most anxiety-producing decisions: choosing schools.

"Most of my parents are just scared," said Sonya Gohill, a pediatrician in Brentwood. "Scared they're going to do the wrong thing, not do enough, they're going to miss the boat. It's like they're in competition from the minute their kids are born. Whose kid is crawling first, and why does my kid just sit here in my lap?"

Parents hire doulas, night nurses, nannies, camp consultants, batting coaches, SAT tutors. They try to be deeply attuned to every pimple in their child's life path and scurry to remove it. They fret they've destroyed their 4-year-old's future if she doesn't gain acceptance to the Center for Early Education in West Hollywood.

They fear predators, or that kids are having oral sex at bar mitzvah parties, or that only 10 colleges in the country are worth going to, said Wendy Mogel, author of "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee" and "The Blessing of a B Minus," at a recent talk to parents at the private Westside Neighborhood School. She knows of a school where the washcloths were red so that children who got cut were protected from the sight of blood.

College officials are calling students "teacups" and "crispies" — the former so overprotected they're fragile, the latter pushed so hard they're burned out, said Mogel, a clinical psychologist.

Unable to let go

"If there was one piece of advice I could give, it would be to relax a little," said Susan Engel, the mother of three grown sons and a developmental psychologist at Williams College in Massachusetts. She wrote the new book "Red Flags or Red Herrings" to offer insight into the research about what parents can change and what they cannot.

Her first sentence reads: "You cannot dictate who your children will become."

It's a "dangerous myth, especially among middle-class parents," Engel told a group of mothers, that if you just parent well enough, make all the right decisions about schools, discipline, activities, friendships, "that you can fix your child, that you can tailor a child. But you can't."

So why are so many parents unable or unwilling to banish their anxiety?

"I think most parents really want to do the right thing," said Leslie King, a licensed clinical social worker and counselor at Crossroads School in Santa Monica. "But when they hear all the opportunities other parents may be giving their children, their own hearts get lost, even parents who have that feeling that enough is enough."

To some extent, the irrational nature of anxiety is to blame, said David Anderegg, a psychologist and author of the book "Worried All the Time."

"Anxiety thrives on superstition. If you worry about something happening, and it doesn't happen, there's a part of our irrational mind that feels it didn't happen because we worried about it," he said. "So worrying is very, very hard to give up in any domain."

And some anxiety has a purpose.

"If you think about what makes parents anxious, there's sort of a biological propensity for parents to be worried about and protect their children. That makes sense evolutionarily," said Wendy Grolnick, a professor at Clark University in Massachusetts who has studied families. "Parents who didn't [worry] had kids who died and got eaten by the lions."

The lions of the 21st century are just as voracious, if figurative. Add an uncertain economy, world instability and fears for the environment and the fact that only a tiny percentage of children will ever go to an Ivy League school, and it's no wonder there's so much apprehension.

"Right now the level of competition that's in our environment is just unprecedented," Grolnick said. "You now have to compete in community service, to help people! My kids are applying to help someone and worrying about if they will get in."

Survival of the fittest

In some circles, talking about that competitive feeling — perhaps insomnia over whether your child will make the travel soccer team — is more taboo than talking about sex, Grolnick said.

"For my patients, I have a lot of moms who are extremely well-educated, who were practicing lawyers or have their MBAs," said Gohill, the Brentwood pediatrician. "And they've retired to be stay-at-home moms. They're rechanneling their energy. Their kids are their project. The outcome is so important because they've put so much time and effort into it."

And with just one or two kids, how dare they fail?

It's not that a child-centered society is new. In this country, after World War I, the idea of motherhood as a vocation took hold, Ann Hulbert writes in her history of child-rearing, "Raising America." She also notes that the term "smother love" was invented early in the last century. Of course, the suggestion to relax alsohas been made before, coming perhaps most famously from Dr. Spock, who in 1946 reassured parents, "You know more than you think you do."

But for many parents, their sense of doing it right is so fragile that every new theory offers an opportunity to second-guess the last one they latched onto. Chua faced vitriol for her "Tiger Mom" approach, but at the same time, parents wondered along with her whether they should have let their kid quit the piano.

The achievement race is the domino theory of parenting, Merryman said. Baby boom parents worry that their "boomlets" will face a scarcity of spots in good high schools and colleges, so they have to make their kids more appealing from an early age.

The children of the 1960s filled out their own college applications, maybe two or three of them. Today, children as young as 14 (ninth grade) are touring colleges and practicing SATs; parents provide more and more "unique" experiences, hoping that organic farming in the inner city might make an appealing college essay to at least one of the 10 or more schools where their children apply.

Hollywood, Engel said, contributes to parents' anxiety.

Today's models of motherhood have morphed from the lovingly lackadaisical, overworked mom in the sitcom "Roseanne" to devoted star mothers — Angelina Jolie or Gwyneth Paltrow, for example — who appear to keep their figures and their tempers while they act in films and raise gorgeously clad youngsters.

Parents Education League's Port has four elementary school children, too many to allow for helicopter parenting, she said with a laugh. They walk to their public school, and the older ones get to choose one activity. Her daughter had to pick between musical theater and Girl Scouts.

But even Port looks ahead to college with anxiety.

"You have to be a superstar. You can't just get straight A's," she said. "So it feeds down."

Barbara Osborn, director of strategic communications at Liberty Hill, a social justice-oriented foundation and mother of a 7-year-old girl, said parents have good reason to be "incredibly anxious" about schools.

She also notes how hard it is to be a working parent. "I see how humorless parents are. We drop off our kids and the parents look so grim. It's the working mother thing. I do think it's unbelievably difficult."

Experts say anxiety is not limited to families who can afford lessons and vacations and tutors. Rather than worry about a private school, parents with few financial resources may worry about lingering on waiting lists for popular magnet or charter schools, as the recent film "Waiting for 'Superman' " dramatized. The sort of anxiety felt on the Westside may seem a luxury to families who cannot afford decent childcare or who fear neighborhood crime.

Anderegg suggested that parents look at actual probabilities. Is it more likely that your child will be snatched off the sidewalk or sustain serious injury playing soccer?

Holding on to your values and keeping what's most important in mind are difficult.

"When you talk to parents, one on one, the issues are simpler than all this," King, the Crossroads counselor, said. "They want their children to be happy, that they feel good about themselves, that they know themselves, that they're safe, that they find a job in this world and support a family."

And parents might find another way to spend their time, Engel said.

"If you're spending more than an hour a day thinking about your kid when they're not there, find something else to do," Engel said. Try working, she said — for pay or not — to make schools better for all children.
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Lili Von Shtupp » 14th Mar, '11, 08:49

I also caught this documentary last week and thought parts of it were very good:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jbppp
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slinky
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by slinky » 14th Mar, '11, 10:43

Dr. Spock, who in 1946 reassured parents, "You know more than you think you do."
Yep, that's the attitude I try to keep most of the time. I've seen parents who second guess themselves all the time and worry about every possible little thing there is (or isn't, in a lot of cases) and it's not that I never worry or second guess myself, but I honestly don't see the value in doing it all that often. I'm actively trying to do my best and I like the fact that I'm able to give my kids a lot of options and choices, but I don't feel the need to make them into something I want them to be. I do want them to do their best, etc., etc., but in the end it it's their lives and they need to be content with their choices, not me. I do have to think that these parents who spend their whole child's childhood pushing them ultimately into this career or that career are doing it more for themselves and not for their child. The phrase 'it's not about you' comes to mind, really.

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Lili Von Shtupp
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Lili Von Shtupp » 14th Mar, '11, 11:19

Good points, Slinky. sometimes it's as if the parents feel like any failure on the part of the child is a failure on the part of the parent, so the kids are tortured by the parent's own fear of failure.

Then again, many successful people were pushed into something only to realize they were dying to do something else, and the struggle to defy their parents and pursue their own path really fueled their commitment to it. Sort of a back-handed compliment for those parents, but, the opposite would be the slacker kid who isn't pushed in any direction and becomes so overwhelmed by life's choices that he can't narrow it down and do something, anything. In my experience growing up, I knew more kids who fell into the latter category.

I can't help but wonder if the helicopter parent phenomenon isn't a subconscious reaction to the parenting philosophy of the 1970s-80s, the whole "Me Generation" attitude was that parents should make their personal choices based on their own happiness, (as opposed to "sacrificing for the sake of the children"), and that by doing so there will be a trickle down effect of groovy, self-fulfillment vibes to the younger generation. It was a time of social change, sexual liberation, divorce on the rise, women pursuing education and careers, the birth of latch key kids. I can't help but wonder if today's parenting ideology isn't a knee-jerk reaction to that, and a kind of twisted, yuppified revert to "sacrificing for the sake of the children". The very last bit of that article says it all in that parents should pursue their own interests more.
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by slinky » 14th Mar, '11, 11:50

Lili Von Shtupp wrote:...but, the opposite would be the slacker kid who isn't pushed in any direction and becomes so overwhelmed by life's choices that he can't narrow it down and do something, anything. In my experience growing up, I knew more kids who fell into the latter category.
Fair point there -- I definitely knew/know a lot of kids (grown ups, now) who fell into that category.
Lili Von Shtupp wrote:I can't help but wonder if the helicopter parent phenomenon isn't a subconscious reaction to the parenting philosophy of the 1970s-80s, the whole "Me Generation" attitude was that parents should make their personal choices based on their own happiness, (as opposed to "sacrificing for the sake of the children"), and that by doing so there will be a trickle down effect of groovy, self-fulfillment vibes to the younger generation. It was a time of social change, sexual liberation, divorce on the rise, women pursuing education and careers, the birth of latch key kids. I can't help but wonder if today's parenting ideology isn't a knee-jerk reaction to that, and a kind of twisted, yuppified revert to "sacrificing for the sake of the children". The very last bit of that article says it all in that parents should pursue their own interests more.
Agree - I think there is definitely a lot of knee-jerk reaction going on. Just another example of why knee-jerk reactions really aren't the best in the long run - better to think it through a little more before deciding on your 'reaction,' IMO. (But, easier said than done sometimes, I know)

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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by slinky » 14th Mar, '11, 11:54

Oh, forgot to add, the article mentions the film 'The Race to Nowhere' which SAS showed for parents back in late Jan I think. I really wanted to go see it, but I was so swamped with my own course work at the time, so I didn't go. I'm hoping I'll be able to download it soon so I can see it. It's one I definitely want to check out.

The film 'Waiting for Superman' is really pretty heartbreaking when you sit down and think about it because it's focused on mainly inner-city kids with no real options given the public schools they have to go to are totally failing and failing them. It makes me appreciate the options and opportunities I'm able to give my kids but it also makes me really angry that the system is so broken that literally millions get the shaft.

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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by Tas » 14th Mar, '11, 12:01

god I'm glad to be a barren spinster after reading this lot
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Re: How will you educate your kids

Post by slinky » 14th Mar, '11, 12:13

Tas wrote:god I'm glad to be a barren spinster after reading this lot
:lol:

One of the quotes from the article that kind of cracks me up is:
...and they provide lists of foods children may not have during playdates.
I mean, really, unless your child has a life-threatening allergy to nuts or something, this is way over the top. If you're doing that, I think you've got too much time on your hands.

There was a little girl in my daughter's class last year who told me, when I offered her a cupcake that I brought in to celebrate Slinkette's birthday, that she wasn't allowed to have sugar because it's 'bad.' OK, sure, sugar isn't good for you, but a cupcake on someone's birthday for the average person isn't likely to have such adverse effects that it will be life threatening, is it? What happened to common-sense, everything in moderation? Sorry, I just think that little girl is going to go flat-out hog wild on sugar and junk food the minute she gets out from under her mother's watchful eye because they've made it some awful taboo.

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