The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

As a parent, I think that teachers should pay attention to research on homework that says there is on average no academic benefit, but there is a huge cost in family conflict. You have enough time in the classroom to teach and provide practice time. Free family time up for what parents see best.

Some students, despite being in your classroom, are really being homeschooled. For example, my wife and I both got extra assignments from our parents. The parents aren't just helping. The parents are teaching. You aren't trusted to teach.

Other students have parents that trust you to teach. Your job is to teach, and these parents expect you to do it. In theory, they are correct.

If you want a plant to bear fruit, you have to nurture it for a while, and you will never be able to browbeat it into producing fruit before it has developed the facilities for doing so.

Part of effective parenting is resolving the dependency tree for healthy attitude/behavior in your child.

Half-OT, but you're making a textbook logical error in interpreting the science you're citing. This is an observational study, making claims about associations, yet you clearly indicate a causal effect in your words.

Your kids will turn out how they are going to turn out. Instinctively, you'll love them and want to keep them alive, so don't worry about that. Other than that, do what you think is right and hope for the best.

Really kids just want someone to love them and teach them how to be a person.

I started a family almost 15 years ago, and I'm still wondering myself. On the one hand, I can see firsthand how competitive the world is - much more competitive than it was when I was growing up - and I figure the least I can do is prepare my kids for the tidal wave of adulthood that's going to crash into them in another ten years or so. I'm encouraging them to participate in (and supporting them in, even though it's starting to break the bank) as much extracurricular stuff as possible, so their college applications look good, but on the other hand, I worry about stressing them out so hard that they don't feel like they ever had time to enjoy being children. As a parent, I feel like I'm walking a fine line between preparing them for the world and protecting them from it.

Unless you have had regular interaction with the 0-3 set and how people raise them, you won't know what you're getting into, and you won't have the right perspective.

n.b., I think it is something that can be written down, to a large extent, but you won't find it in the "parenting guide" section, you'd find it in the clinical guide texts for professional nurses and parenting educators.

For example, were you fat as a teenager? OK, make sure your kids have good eating habits. Notice this is not: put them in crossfit, feed them only vegetables.

A single parent is not enough. No matter how much you love your kids... being alone with them all the time will drive you crazy. You need another adult person to share the burden, to provide feedback, to make a joke at the right moment and remind you that there is life after parenting.

Time spent with your children is more important than the toys you buy them. (Though some toys are better than others. That would be a long debate, but the short version is "Lego good, Barbie bad" i.e. the toy should be there to teach your child some skills, not just to be admired for how expensive it was.)

Be there to provide encouragement when your child succeeds at something, and comfort when it fails. Try to encourage your child to try new things, but don't push. Sometimes a child fails at something, and then a few days or months later succeeds; that is natural. Sometimes children evolve in "jumps"; for a few months you don't see any progress at some specific area, and then a huge change happens overnight.

Your children will try to manipulate you; probably before they learn to talk. That is also natural. Resist the manipulation, but don't get angry.

Always reward progress with praise, even very small progress. Be specific with the praise, i.e. describe exactly the progress you celebrate. For overcoming difficult problems, offer rewards.

In teaching, I am a fan of Montessori education: set up an environment where learning happens naturally, and then learning will happen. For example, your child is more likely to learn drawing, if they have pencils and paper always available; more likely to get mechanical skills if they have mechanical toys; and more likely to be good at computers when they have access to a computer. (Computers, that is a separate long topic. But again: don't use them as a device for playing shooting games or chatting online, rather use editors or encyclopedias etc.)

As my RPG-playing friends say: "If your child could do something alone, but you are doing it for them, you are stealing their experience points." Teach kids new skills. Yes, at the first time they will be clumsy and likely do it wrong. That's natural. You are investing in the long-term outcome.

The children will copy what you do. That is a f-ing huge responsibility! But also an extra reward for finally getting your own life in order.

Don't ever believe that the school will fix something. The teacher cannot be a substitute parent; they have dozens of other kids in the classroom, lessons to teach, exams to administer, and most importantly a ton of paperwork to fill.

Accept that sometimes you won't do things perfectly. As long as you avoid the worst mistakes, you are still doing a great job.

...you are right, I could probably go on and write 200 more pages. :D

Don't treat your child "like a child", treat them like a small person. What I mean by this hopefully will come through in my other points.

Just like every person is a little different, so it is for children. Don't be afraid to try other techniques if something isn't working for your child. A recent example of this in my case is helping my daughter with spelling. It took us a while to determine the best way for learn in this particular case.

If I need my daughter to do something, or I tell her no, I always try to provide an explanation as to why. This isn't easy, but so far it has been fruitful.

By the same token, she can always ask why and I always try to provide an explanation. Now that she's older, if she has a question about why something happens or works, we try to investigate it together by various means.

Don't be afraid to explain complicated concepts to your child, even at a very early age. My wife thought it was pretty funny that I was trying to explain that the string on a balloon is a tether and why you might call something a tether rather than a string. Early on it's not clear how much they absorb, but it seems to have worked (at least for my daughter).

Always let them know that how their opinions/feelings are important, even if you have to explain that they have not understood something correctly. In other words, don't just dismiss what they think or feel just because they are children. I try to use these as teaching moments. Occasionally you will be the one being taught. I think this concept in particular has made my daughter an outgoing person, and one who generally thinks about things before she speaks (well, for a nine year old anyway). One good example of this was when she was five or six, we had some pretty extreme flooding in our area. There was a news story on the local news station about one of the rescuers themselves needing to be rescued during an operation. I chuckled about that and pointed it out to my wife. My daughter who was sitting next to me made this observation: "Maybe he's new". I had to agree with her, once I stopped laughing. My point is she made an astute observation that I had not considered, and one that was extremely plausible.

Back to always providing an explanation, sometimes I don't say no, in particular to activities where she could be injured. Instead, I try to get her to analyze the situation (and help if necessary) to see if she can accomplish her goal in a safer manner. For example, I have a four wheel cart to move stuff around on. She wanted to ride it like a surfboard in the driveway. By asking her what would happen if she falls, she saw the wisdom in wearing knee and elbow pads, gloves, and her bicycle helmet (which she had for riding her scooter). I don't doubt the falls on the scooter while wearing pads helped her make her decision. By the same token, one day when I came home from work, her hands and chin were scraped up. She was reluctant to tell me what happened, but I got her to tell me that she got on the cart without her pads and fell off. I told her that's why I thought she should wear the pads (and that she wasn't in trouble). Kids will be kids after all.

Try to expose you children to new things. When you do, make sure there is some interaction. For example, just this week, I got my daughter to start doing a little astronomy. I recently bought a dobsonian mount telescope because it would be easier for her to use. She wasn't too interested until I told her that she was the one who would be pointing the telescope. I showed her what to do and let her point it at whatever she wanted to look at, helping a little along the way. Now she wants to get out whenever it's clear, despite the bugs (summertime...).

Don't be worried what other parents think. Feel free to listen to their advice. Also feel free to ignore it.

I don't know if any of this helps you or not, and I certainly have forgotten to mention some things, but it's worked for us so far. I can't say for certain (obviously) that going this route has made my daughter the person she is. All I can say is these are some of the concepts my wife and I have applied and that my daughter is an intelligent, thoughtful, outgoing person who has made me a better person just by knowing her.

Obviously those products exist (and probably do in Germany too) and I'm sure that parent who got in trouble was a real incident. Nonetheless those of us actually raising children in this country don't actually do that stuff. Chill.

I've never done this but I imagine the reason would be to spot times when the teachers are abusive towards the children, not to ensure everything is perfect.

If you think that is bad, wait until you have to speak with some 20-year-old's mom who is thinking that her kiddo should be getting an A for C-level work and you have to get litigious about supporting your grades. I had to write a policy into my syllabus saying that I won't (and, IIRC, legally was not permitted) to talk with other folks than the student about grades and assessments.

(I catch myself doing this frequently: that couple's marriage is in trouble—they're not even talking over dinner, that driver is on his phone scrolling through Facebook probably, etc. Those stories may be true but there's perfectly reasonable alternatives that would look exactly the same.)

The only people they know how to talk to are their parents.

I had a flatmate who talked with her mom every night. Literally every night. For hours. She was just close with her family. It wasn't like she was at school or anything, we were both grown adults with working lives.

Sure, if mom is still supervising, then that's a bit awkward...

Also, you teach them basic safety things, and then name it when they've mastered it; e.g. "You know how to look both ways, you don't need to hold my hand crossing the street anymore." or "You can cook on the stove by yourself now because you know how to be safe around hot things." They are getting independence, but doing so knowing that their parent is concerned about protecting them from dangers they cannot address themselves.

With those two things, a child is unlikely to feel neglected or unloved, but can still develop a sense of independence.

This is a tough one because I think how we parent is super-strongly influenced by our experiences as a child. I think the keys here are to make sure she knows that you love and support her no matter what and that's as much of a given as that the sun will rise in the east AND to support her on doing things for herself.

It's one thing if you're there to provide encouragement or a bit of help doing something vs. telling her to get it done and walking away. She'll learn the least from having everything on a whim or you doing everything for her. If the answer is "no" discuss why. Be fair and not capricious. Kids are smart. They know the difference between a parent that doesn't care and a parent that's setting limits.

I did, in a particularly subtle way, until I realized it and stopped. I never physically performed the homework task, but I prodded my kids to get it done. As it turns out, the homework was so easy, that literally the only challenge was motivation. By supplying them with the motivation, I was effectively doing the work.

Nowadays, if asked for help, I go into teacher mode, and start asking them questions or providing a gentle nudge towards figuring out something themselves. They know that asking me for help will generally make their task harder, rather than easier. ;-)

>>> Here's an idea. Why not have "how to be a parent" classes taught in high school or college?

Because we don't know what it consists of.

But actually do homework for them? No.

The poor kids (myself included) don't even necessarily have a person at home asking them anything about their homework, and so often don't do it at all.

The kids with the tutors tended to have test scores that underperformed their homework scores. The teachers usually attributed this to abnormal stress levels due to the student being an over-achiever, or it was hand-waved as "he's just a poor test-taker", etc. A lot of them were given additional time to complete their tests as an accommodation.

The kids who didn't do their homework tended to have test scores that dramatically outperformed their homework scores. The teachers attributed this to a slacker mentality, the student "not applying themselves", the student not respecting the teacher's curriculum, etc. In my case, I was repeatedly threatened with not even moving on to the next grade due to homework, despite never getting anything less than an A on any test, and repeatedly demonstrating that I knew all the material really well, and having all of that acknowledged by the very people threatening the hold me back a grade...

That was a bit of a tangent, but yeah, a lot of kids have parents either doing their homework for them or proofing/correcting it before the teacher ever sees it. A lot of kids have parents doing entire projects for them using what is clearly hundreds or thousands of dollars in materials and equipment. It's a common thing, or at least it was in my districts growing up.