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In praise of 'pushy' parents!
Tuesday 2 November 2010
Categories: Education, Family Relationships, Homework, Parenting
Hallelujah! Once again research confirms common sense. This time it transpires that so-called “pushy parents” have a beneficial effect on their children’s educational outcomes. Researchers at Leeds and Leicester universities found that pupils have more positive attitudes to school and higher academic achievement if their parents make an effort to help them succeed. (Daily Telegraph 29.10.10)
Parents who regularly attend parent-teacher evenings, who read to their children and who encourage and support them to make more of an effort at school have a positive effect on the educational attainment of their children. Who would have thought it?
Schools also increase their effort on children whose parents support them, perhaps because these parents are more demanding of the schools.The report says that parents put less effort into their children’s education the more offspring they have. Not exactly surprising – it’s hard enough to listen to two or three children read each night, as Kirstie Allsopp is finding, let alone if you have four or five or more. Kirsty’s reaction is to call for the abolition of homework, a somewhat extreme response. Reading is the gateway to all learning so it should be a priority for parents, even the least “pushy”.
Isn’t it time to drop this negative term? Let’s talk about “supportive parents”, “encouraging parents” or “engaged parents”. And let’s praise them instead of making them feel guilty…
Your comments
Definitely, Alison. ‘Pushy’ suggests that these parents are aggressive and perhaps trying to give their children some kind of unfair advantage. I do believe that parents need to work with the staff in their children’s schools, in the best interests of their children. Sometimes parents feel the best way to ‘champion’ their children and show they are on their side is to ‘take on’ the educational establishment, and that rarely works out well, in my experience. But there’s certainly nothing wrong, and in fact it’s the most natural thing in the world, if you want your children to be successful and happy. Doing all you can to promote their education, in its widest sense, has to be one of the most important things a parent can do. So not ‘pushy’ at all.
I definitely come into the Pushy and Proud category. I support, encourage and help my child to succeed at school and as a result she is just 6 with the reading age of a 7 year old, and loving that she can read. I have a real problem with homework though. At the school we attend they don’t seem to care about homework. I think it is vital that children have at least a bit of homework so that 1) their parents can see what their are learning at school, 2) they can help them if there are things they are struggling with, and 3)we give them the chance to put into practice at home what they have learnt at school and in that way we teach them to be able to be responsible and in charge or their own learning too. Discipline – the discipline of applying yourself to learning, should not be a bad word. I don’t rule the roost with an iron whip (she says as she mixes her metaphors) but I want my child to get the best from school, and to be happy and succesful. Abolishing homework is just ridiculous…some of the year 6 pupils didn’t have homework for a year and ended up at the next secondary school in utter shock when they got homework for each subject every day. We have to give them the tools and skills for the future and the younger we start, the easier it will be for them in the long run. I do feel for the parents with lots of children to listen to read or practice spelling etc, but the point is also that the children should be doing it on their own, especially as they get older.