Am I being a crabby old bat .......

Not your monkey

Ths has been goig on for years but I do think we have a lot of young people who are not functioning normally because of the micro management by their parents. It's all blamed on covid anyway, so i wouldn't worry yourself

Grannylynj

Not your monkey

Indeed .... just cogitating on the change.

Yes you are, but you’re allowed to be!

Thinking of much, much younger children. My niece in Australia has a baby daughter, born just a couple of weeks ago. Anyone wanting to see this baby has had to have a whooping cough vaccination. Fair enough. I had a chat with my brother today. He will see his new granddaughter when he flies down to Sydney in early May. However, his ex-wife was only allowed to visit this new baby when she was a week old. The parents were cooped up in their home, bonding. Fair enough you might say but when I had my daughter, my mum was there the next day, a favourite aunt of mine in a couple of days and it was lovely.

I suppose we must accept that things change. In the very olden days, babies were handed over to wet nurses. Royal babies in our lifetime only saw their parents briefly once a day. Didn’t the late Queen leave Charles behind for 6 months while she went on a big Royal trip?

Back to GSCE revision - so long as the parents don’t somehow inveigle themselves into the examination hall…!

It was a bit of sn unhelpful post from GrannylynnJ
I like to think of GN as a place to encourage discussion, not to simple post one-liners like that.

It makes you wonder how they will cope at uni without someone there to organise their studies.

Well, yes, I understand where you are coming from on this and would probably be thinking the same about taking responsibility etc. Well done for zipping the lip. You deserve a treat for doing that and I hope you reward yourself with a nice one.

grannylynj tends to pipe in now and then with her unhelpful comments - she sabotages some ‘games’ threads. I wonder if it’s actually a naughty school boy 😂 I have threatened to report him/her

We were discussing similar issues the other day. Kids round here who do paper rounds are driven round in cars by their parents! What’s the point of that? What does it teach them?

I see parents of teenagers from the other side of the village driving them to the school bus stop and then waiting with them until the bus pulls up. Don’t these kids legs work?

I think maybe with this exam lark, that the parents probably realise that 50% of other parents are doing all the revision organising, so they would feel their children were at a disadvantage if they didn't.

I have found that if you do everything for them they will let you!
This doesn't mean that when they are adults and have to do things for themselves they can't.
I have seen this happen with my own GCs. Most are adults now and live very successfully by getting jobs and sorting their own lives out.

I don’t see you as a crabby old bag, that might be so if you said these things out loud and in critical voice
How can these children negotiate moving from adolescence into young adult life if they’re spoon fed like this.
I ensure mine were well fed, sent into bed at a reasonable time, didn’t expect them to be helping with domestic stuff then expected them to revise and complete course work. That’s enough imo
I bet these treasures don’t allow their parents on nights outb

Another thing that has changed since our DC were small is that older DC are ferried everywhere. They don't learn to go to local places such as a friend's house, the park or the shop without a parent. They get taken to school at secondary age and teens get lifts - they do not learn how to get around by themselves or use public transport.

Exams today are very different to our time. There is more competition. Answers need to be more prescriptive and formulaic. Correct answer, but not in the stipulated form - you lose marks.

DR is a university lecturer with eldest child doing A levels this year says he has been gobsmacked how form seems more important than knowledge and goes a long way towards explaining many of the problems first year uni students have with proper essay writing

Children are escorted places largely because roads are so dangerous they can’t play out or call for friends as we did

I just wondered what others had done with their children.

Mine seemed fine to just get on with it. Indeed that had been the case with all their homework - they took themselves off and did it. If they were late with it, I never knew - but at parents' evenings there were no complaints, so I assume they were doing what they should.

As I say, we were always there to help if asked - we had a fair spread of expertise between us and it was at their disposal if needed, but it was their responsibility to do the work and ask when needed.

Is that what others did?

I remember being amazed after I had delivered my daughter to the university campus for her interview seeing some parents accompanying their offspring into the waiting rooms; afterwards she said some parents expected to accompany their child into the interview and one mother made a fuss because she wasn't allowed in ; "but there are a lot of questions I want to ask". Later I heard of mothers who spent the first few days sleeping in the Halls of Residence, "to check if she is all right" and some who came home to revise for finals" because the others distract me."
So yes, I think some children are mollycoddled and not allowed to develop responsibility for themselves.

You ask what we did as far as our children were concerned - I think I may have bellowed 'Turn that music down, you're meant to be revising' up the stairs.

DD1's two have As and GCSEs this year. She probably does less bellowing up the stairs than I but doesn't get involved to a great extent.

The children are very bright and capable so why would she?

My son is a professor and he says there’s been a notable change in students’ abilities since lockdown. They are less capable now of managing themselves and expect him to shepherd them through their course with constant reminders of what to do next. His most repeated phrase to them is ‘I am not your parent.’

No I don't think you're being a crabby old bat Luckygirl, I'd have felt the same I'm sure.

Of course they need support and encouragement but excessive hand holding doesn't do them any favours in the long run.

Iam64

Children are escorted places largely because roads are so dangerous they can’t play out or call for friends as we did

Maybe primary school kids. We are talking about high school kids.

SueDonim

My son is a professor and he says there’s been a notable change in students’ abilities since lockdown. They are less capable now of managing themselves and expect him to shepherd them through their course with constant reminders of what to do next. His most repeated phrase to them is ‘I am not your parent.’

A relative of mine taught in a Uni and the pass rate for most exams was just 40%.

I would have liked some parental support dealing with homework and revision during my secondary years.

I have supported my daughter with homework, mostly when she was in Y7. She’s quite organised with it now.

She does go to meet friends by herself but this is only recently as we lived very rurally previously so no way to meet up with friends unless we took her.

My grandson, Y7 cycles to school, he also calls on friends to play football, when she was younger, my granddaughter called on friends the same.
My children were of the ‘turn the music down’ parenting by me, my daughter did well, my son didn’t, in hindsight he needed closer supervision.
So I think it depends on the child, parents of budding Einsteins don’t need to bother with any.