unhealthy pressure placed on children to succeed

Early Learning Early Learning General Discussions
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Lately I have been treading an uncomfortable balance. With my older son (age 7), I have been very much aware of my school district pushing kids beyond their developmental limits. I have been worried about homework loads which apparently become overwhelming by 5th or 6th grade. Also recently Dr Phil had a recent segment “Teens under Pressure” which was prompted by some teen suicide contagions going on here in the USA. There is a suicide contagion going on just 20 minutes from my home. Then there is this recent documentary “Race to Nowhere” calling for a change in our education system and society in order to reduce childhood stressors. I only saw the trailer for this documentary. Due to all of the above, I’ve been very concerned with restoring balance in my son’s life. We were noticing some signs of stress and have made some changes to improve the quality of his life. I got his homework load reduced, traded his competitive soccer league for a non-competitive baseball league, enrolled him in a yoga class, reduced TV time, etc. Overall I’m trying to just slow down the pressure for him to rush and catch up with his peers. He is a bit behind due to a learning disability and gross motor issues.

Anyway somehow these efforts seem to contradict the early learning that I do with my daughter. I believe childhood is important and I worry that our children are too rushed. But I don’t feel like I’m rushing her. She is a joyful learner and I spend very little time formally teaching her. I worry that parents are too competitive and that we fuel the insanity that is depriving children of a balanced joyful childhood. Yet my daughter does have a balanced lifestyle. I worry that soon, due to escalated expectations, 3 yr olds will be classified as learning disabled if they aren’t able to read. Is anyone else feeling like an imposture? Like I wear one face when discussing my son, and a different one for my daughter. I recently made a joke on a “stop the homework” website that soon developmental expectations will become so unrealistic that there might be a product called “Your Baby Can Read in the Womb.” Is anyone else feeling this uncomfortable balance?

Lori

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Yes, I have come to a point of, I’m not going to be upset if I cant do flashcards daily, or enrol in heaps of activities. My older kids just want to relax after school, not do extra-curricular activities. (homeschooloing will help reduce wasted hours of school tiring my younger kids out). I figure my kids are pretty bright, and I wont be disappointed if they arent EK experts, for example.

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I think what you are experiencing is the difference between boys and girls. I think most girls are quite capable of learning early and reading. Most boys are totally different. I think most boys develop slower. They also have a different desire to learn. Girls may never tire of learning to read for example, but a boy may have absolutely no interest. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. I am just speaking in general, because there are several boys on this site doing quite well. I think with most boys you have to be more creative in how you teach them. My grandson is still learning. He just does not do it sitting still for long periods of time. I have to come up with interesting games or different things to hold his interest to teach him.

But because early learning may not work for every child, I think it would be a crime to twist that and say no child should be taught early. If a child is eager and willing and wants to learn, I say teach them. To deprive a child that wants to learn, I think is a crime.

I think grades of school should be divided more on ability then age. Maybe even to take that another level, schools should be divided per subject based on ability. the lower grades should be more like college or even swimming lessons for that matter. A schools job is much easier to lump kids by age and not worry about their abilities. I refer this to dumbing kids down all to the same level. That is why they say that if you do early teaching there is no difference beyond third grade.

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My goal is to increase my daughter’s memory and abilities so that learning in school aand later in life is fun and easy for her.

My Mom often teaching little kids (family members mostly) Yesterday an almost 11yo was doing maths with her. He was studying quadrilaterals. She asked him what those were and he said: ‘Something with 4 sides’. ‘You mean a figure with 4 sides’, my mom said. ‘Can you give me an example of a quadrilateral?’ He could not. He was upset and kept repeating the definition. He knew the definition but had no idea what quadrilaterals were exactly. My mom asked him to draw one so he could get the point, and he could not. After a minute or two he gave up. So my Mom drew a square and he said ‘That’s a square!’ ‘Yes, it has 4 sides, like a rectangle’ my mom said. She spent a few minutes on this.

It was almost 9pm as his mom had droped him off 2 hours earlier (he had a test the next day) and although he had learned by heart some definitions, he did not comprehend anything.
This kid has activities every afternoon (5 times a week) and goes to competitions during the week-end. And learning is either not done at all or late at night! Obviously nothing he learns is done properly (always last minute sort of thing, just to make it to the test) and he dislikes learning. His parents never did things like reading before bed and it’s only now that he reaches secondary school that they hire someone to teach him, which of course he resents. His parents do not want him to fail but they still believe that education is done at school only.

I’d like for my daughter to be able to comprehend things so that her life is not learning lessons by heart the night before the test, and being unable to draw a square or to see the point in doing so at 11 yo.
I don’t know if this makes sense?

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I realize that there is a difference between boys and girls, but I’m just referring to the pressure to succeed. Kids are under more pressure than ever, especially high achieving ones. Children spend a long day at school then are hammered with tons of monotonous homework. They don’t relax by running around unsupervised outside because they may be kidnapped. Instead they spend more time inside watching tv until their parents have time to take them to a playground. TV exposes them to pretend children in makeup who are famous, successful, rich, popular, and beautiful. Then finally when parents have time to take them outside to play, they are continually monitored. They are encouraged to play nice and follow the rules. No pushing, No shoving, no climbing up the slide the wrong way, no heated arguements over rules, no working out conflicts by themselves, etc. There aren’t any informal unsupervised backyard sports games instead kids are signed up for competitive sports teams where parents watch and cheer. As they get older homework loads become so unmanageable that kids don’t get enough sleep. Homework is graded and they are conditioned to do it all. Then on top of it, comes the expectation that they learn more and more at every stage of life. High school level work in elementary school, and college level work in highschool. My son was classified even before kindergarten. In sense, before formal education even started I was told that he was failing in preschool. In many ways this is ludicrous and I worry that I am contributing to the insanity by engaging in early learning activities with my daughter. I want to continue teaching my daughter in a joyful manner but I don’t want to raise the developmental bar for all children. I worry that I am fueling the fire that places unrealistic pressures on children.

My own childhood was so different. There was very little if any homework before 6th grade and even then most kids didn’t do it and our parents weren’t ware of it. I really didn’t even have much homework in high school depite being an honor student. I played all day unsupervised until I was called in for dinner. I didn’t follow rules, I argued alot, and god forbid I even had minor physical fights with my friends. I learned how to play all sports on my own street with informal rules without supervision, criticism, or cheering from parents. I watched very little TV and had alot less toys and indoor things. My childhood occured mostly outside even in the snow. I never worried about my grades in grammer school and didn’t have to practice skills to keep up. I resented grades in highschool and felt it was presumptious for anyone to grade me. I had lots of time to explore my own interests. I became an avid reader. In the evening, I devoured boxes of college textbooks and novels that I found in our garage. I learned to think for myself and it wasn’t a chore. I went to a good college on nearly a full scholarship and I don’t feel an urge to measure up to other people. I have my own internal unshakeable sense of worth and am content without alot of material stuff. I want to give this all to my kids, but it feels like there isn’t a way to do it. I feel like I need to change our whole society in order to support my children. It’s an impossible task. Then to my embarrassment, I worry that prehaps I’m part of the problem not the solution. Maybe somehow I’m buying into this rushed competitive culture. Maybe I even fuel it when I spend dollars on early learning products. Ugh! What am I to do? So I feel uncomfortable trying to deescalate my son (age 7) while sharing early education with my daughter (almost 3).

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Hypatia - Yes, I see your point. I’ve been hoping my daughter might be advanced enough to rise above the pressure to cram and such. But then I worry what if everyone does the same? The learning bar will be raised yet again until even my daughter will need to rush and cram to succeed. Then of course there is high school where AP students get crushing loads of mindless graded homework. It feels like our public educational system is undermining real learning and competency. I can’t blame teachers because I am sure they don’t enjoy it either. Somehow our culture has created this beastly system. Maybe the answer is homeschooling. I just don’t think I have the finances to remain a stay-at-home mom. There are some good private schools that actually have little homework and great learning environments but I can’t afford them either.

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akalori, I was going to (probably unhelpfully) point out that if you were homeschooling, you probably wouldn’t have these problems, and your kids would learn more, and more happily, besides.

We have only one 3-year-old, but aren’t in any academic (preschool) classes. If parents are competitive, we haven’t been in a position to notice because we aren’t around other parents in academic contexts. We’re going to homeschool him, mainly because I can’t imagine turning such important decisions over to the “industrialized school system,” where everyone of a certain age is made to learn the same things at the same time and in the same ways.

It is ridiculous that schools apparently require so much homework and yet, amazingly, they fail to teach much. No doubt the reason of course is the nature of the homework and what is taught generally–mindless busywork as you say.

But I find it hard to believe that there is “high school level work in elementary school, and college level work in highschool.” What do you mean, I wonder? Do they teach calculus earlier than senior year now? Do kids read Shakespeare for the first time at age 10, instead of 14? Do they start foreign languages earlier than high school now? (They should.) When I taught college, even many of the brighter, better-prepared students were not especially well prepared, and the average high school graduate was hopeless when it came to careful, critical reading and grammatical, coherent writing. But that was a while ago–maybe things have changed?

I agree that I don’t want to “hothouse” my boy, and I also agree that what we seem to be doing isn’t that, because he generally likes what we do (and we quickly stop what he doesn’t). You describe a situation in which overzealous educators are pressuring kids to learn too much and too soon. But, considering how low standards in public schools are generally, I have to doubt that that’s the best description of what’s going on. Instead, they’re pushing ever increasing amounts of busywork on kids. Does that sound right?

I think that most kids can learn a lot more and a lot faster than they do in public schools, but not by doing what they do in public school, only harder. I’d agree that that would be a mistake.

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I’d like for my daughter to be able to comprehend things so that her life is not learning lessons by heart the night before the test, and being unable to draw a square or to see the point in doing so at 11 yo.
I don’t know if this makes sense?

learnig has to be a fun and an adventure - but I don’t know any public school do it that way - I remember my school - it was seriously, repetition, noisy - as one time I was really advance in my class I was bored all time (anybody asked if I would like to make something more complicated for my level…so when I made university I was quite normal student (with a reflex of something special) but I could’t memorize many materials or give bright answer as I would like to do becouse I was convinced that it has not sense…)
for my son: I’m happy that I’ve got a son - he can play with cars, planes, all dinamic and mechanic toys which are not alloved for girls >:(
I’d like to ask why at school boys are learning to repare bicycle etc. and girls are making sandwiches (it was my school!!!)

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DadDude - At our bus stop, 3 fifth graders were talking about whether they crammed enough for their “geometry” test. It really does seem that they have accelerated the curriculum. My son was assessed as being behind in phonics in preschool. He was expected to able compose and write sentences in kindergarten. Personally I even wasn’t taught to read until the first grade. Now in first grade kids are reading chapter books. Also I’m sure I didn’t have to understand subtraction in first grade. When I was in high school only the honor students were encouraged to take AP classes - now it seems to be the norm for all college bound kids. Many people may feel grateful that their gifted children will be challenged, but average children are just cramming without understanding the material. Then there are learning disabled children that are stuck with a slightly modified version of this same accelerated curriculum up until highschool. Then in addition to this superficially accelerated curriculum there is alot of homework. I didn’t have homework in elementary school. Now it seems to be the norm starting in kindergarten. Much of the homework is repetitious - the same type of worksheets over and over again. I don’t blame the treachers because I doubt they like the state of affairs either. It’s great that you are planning to homeschool it really does seem to solve these issues.

Ed - Yes I agree deep learning is much better than cramming and having fun while learning is the very best of all.

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Hi Akalori,

I can see your point as well. I do believe that there is a difference in how boys and girls learn, and how they show their skills. I didn’t think so before until I had my own boy and noticed this when he was compared to girl peers or cousins, then it seemed he was somehow always behind, and of course, it made me feel worried and anxious about his development and I stared to think if maybe I was doing something different.

Anyhow, I can see he loves learning new things everyday, and it amazes me, but as every person, he has preferences on what he’d rather do with his time, and usually is not academics sitting down. He is more physical and creative.
Is hard for me to understand how to teach a boy, because I feel I am in the opposite corner, but my husband has done a great job with him.

My point is, as long as the child is having fun learning and the parent enjoys the personal process of their own child it won’t turn into a “race” to compare kids on who is the fastest and the smartest.
There are families that will always try to “prove” their kids as the more “advanced”, but I personally try to avoid such people.