Parenting Corner: The joys and trials of raising little Villans

[mjmooney]

6 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Anyone else got a 2 year old who wakes up and seemingly says **** it I'm going to be a massive clearing in the woods today?

Grandchild, yes. Basically, they can't regulate their emotions. 

[AVFC_Hitz]

5 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Anyone else got a 2 year old who wakes up and seemingly says **** it I'm going to be a massive clearing in the woods today?

Yes. Today I've had a 20 minute long tantrum over shoes which ended in her leaving the house in an odd pair. She's also squirted an entire shower gel bottle into the loo.

[lapal_fan]

1 hour ago, AVFC_Hitz said:

Yes. Today I've had a 20 minute long tantrum over shoes which ended in her leaving the house in an odd pair. She's also squirted an entire shower gel bottle into the loo.

With the shoes thing, if it's not a special occasion or there's no dress code, just let them win.

Pick your battles

 

 

[Mark Albrighton]

I don’t think we really experienced “the terrible twos” with my daughter. That age didn’t seem to be anymore trying than any other age (so far).

[lapal_fan]

6 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

I don’t think we really experienced “the terrible twos” with my daughter. That age didn’t seem to be anymore trying than any other age (so far).

How old?

My first was the same, but regressed (as they do) at 3, nearly 4!

He's stubborn now he's 7, but we can sort anything resembling a tantrum pretty quick.

[Seat68]

My daughter had a brief period of being a dickhead not at 2, at 17. My grandson was a right prick between 2 and 3. Just an absolute obstinate bellend. 

[Mark Albrighton]

Just now, lapal_fan said:

How old?

My first was the same, but regressed (as they do) at 3, nearly 4!

He's stubborn now he's 7, but we can sort anything resembling a tantrum pretty quick.

She’s 6 - will be 7 in January.

That’s not to say we haven’t experienced a tantrum now and then, some difficulties. But I couldn’t say definitively that age 3 was worse than 4, for instance. And I couldn’t say she would always do X, Y and Z when having a tantrum, because it was sporadic. I think we’ve been fairly fortunate. 

I think her mum sees her at her worst more than I do. At her house she has two step sisters that she lives with part of the time and there’s an element of envy that creeps in when one or both have gained something that she hasn’t.

[foreveryoung]

1 hour ago, lapal_fan said:

How old?

My first was the same, but regressed (as they do) at 3, nearly 4!

He's stubborn now he's 7, but we can sort anything resembling a tantrum pretty quick.

Yeah my lads 7, starting to get a bit of homework from school and a reading book for the weekend. Thinks he can still play all day and do no school work. I kinda spoke to him like a adult, told him he's been living the dream up to now and needs to start getting into the real world where it's not all play and we have to do a bit. I'll update soon, but as you say stubborness, hard to deal with.

[Stevo985]

It’s **** exhausting this parenting shit isn’t it?!

[villarule123]

15 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

It’s **** exhausting this parenting shit isn’t it?!

I just spent over an hour doing 9 space questions with my lil boy, only to realise that you only had to pick a couple of questions to answer yourself. At least he knows loads about space now. 

I'm off to bed. 

[Davkaus]

1 hour ago, foreveryoung said:

Yeah my lads 7, starting to get a bit of homework from school and a reading book for the weekend. Thinks he can still play all day and do no school work. I kinda spoke to him like a adult, told him he's been living the dream up to now and needs to start getting into the real world where it's not all play and we have to do a bit. I'll update soon, but as you say stubborness, hard to deal with.

I can see why as an individual parent you need to take this line, so this absolutely isn't a criticism of you, but it's a bit shit, isn't it? Homework, at 7 years old? Telling a kid they need to work hard at the weekend and it's not all play. I know it's not exactly sending him up the chimney, but we should be able to let kids be **** kids. I suspect we've ended up in this position because of particularly shit parents who just want to dump their kids in front of a screen all weekend and never read to them or teach them anything

I anticipate a lot of arguments with teachers in my future.

Edited October 16, 2022 by Davkaus

[mjmooney]

56 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

I can see why as an individual parent you need to take this line, so this absolutely isn't a criticism of you, but it's a bit shit, isn't it? Homework, at 7 years old? Telling a kid they need to work hard at the weekend and it's not all play. I know it's not exactly sending him up the chimney, but we should be able to let kids be **** kids.

Exactly where we (and our daughter) are at with our 7 year old granddaughter. She's getting pretty stressed with homework, and I sympathise. We never had homework until high school. 

[Mark Albrighton]

It’s tough. My girl was being given homework from Reception age (this was the covid outbreak so there was already a working at home situation). This has obviously carried on through Year 1 and into the present Year 2.

This homework takes the form of a Learning Log. Basically at the start of every term the school sticks a task sheet in her log book, with 6 or 7 bits of work to do over the next couple of months. Now, in fairness you DON’T have to do this. I know some parents who don’t bother at all.

One of the tasks this term is to write a diary entry like Pepys, imagining what the Great Fire of London was like. I naturally ask my daughter if they’ve been taught anything about the fire. She says no. So I’m not totally sure if they will teach her it at a later date and she’s expected to do that task then, or if there’s an expectation for me to teach her about Pudding Lane, etc etc.

Some of the tasks are phrased like “Learning to count in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s”. Now I could get her to just say her five times table out loud, but I can’t exactly record that and put in the book. So I get her to put Lego pieces out, one row of 5, the next row 10 and so on. I take a picture of her doing that and it goes in the book.

Essentially some of these tasks you have to work out how you can do it and present the evidence that they’ve actually done it.

In addition to that, we have the weekly spelling tests, the 2-3 new books they send for her to read every week (they’re short, to be fair). There are little tasks on line, something called Purple Mash. She’s also joined a little extra curricular committee which is nice, but it also comes with additional tasks, making a poster for charitable donations, learning lines to say in assembly. That sort of thing.

And we recently had a parent teacher meeting where they showed us the sorts of things they will do when they’re “tested” in their Key Stage One - they won’t realise they’re being tested, it’s really testing the school, making sure they’re teaching them to a certain standard. My daughter’s year is apparently the last year they’re doing it this way. 

There’s quite a bit of stuff, more than I remember doing at that age. But again, at this age it’s not exactly mandatory. But they definitely encourage you to do it and while I think I worry about it more than I should I try and make the tasks as easy and as appealing for her to complete.

As a side note, I learn one or two things this time round that I missed first time - 

“Subitise”

I reached the age of about 38 having never heard that word before. But there it was in one of the tasks for my kid. Turns out it’s the ability to look at a certain number of items, a handful of coins say, and immediately know how many there are. Kinda counting without literally counting.

Every day’s a school day.

[villa4europe]

5 hours ago, Mark Albrighton said:

This homework takes the form of a Learning Log. Basically at the start of every term the school sticks a task sheet in her log book, with 6 or 7 bits of work to do over the next couple of months. Now, in fairness you DON’T have to do this. I know some parents who don’t bother at all

One of the tasks this term is to write a diary entry like Pepys, imagining what the Great Fire of London was like. I naturally ask my daughter if they’ve been taught anything about the fire. She says no. So I’m not totally sure if they will teach her it at a later date and she’s expected to do that task then, or if there’s an expectation for me to teach her about Pudding Lane, etc etc.

Essentially some of these tasks you have to work out how you can do it and present the evidence that they’ve actually done it.

Based on that she's the harvard referencing system away from a degree from Wolverhampton University

[Rds1983]

7 hours ago, Mark Albrighton said:

It’s tough. My girl was being given homework from Reception age (this was the covid outbreak so there was already a working at home situation). This has obviously carried on through Year 1 and into the present Year 2.

This homework takes the form of a Learning Log. Basically at the start of every term the school sticks a task sheet in her log book, with 6 or 7 bits of work to do over the next couple of months. Now, in fairness you DON’T have to do this. I know some parents who don’t bother at all.

One of the tasks this term is to write a diary entry like Pepys, imagining what the Great Fire of London was like. I naturally ask my daughter if they’ve been taught anything about the fire. She says no. So I’m not totally sure if they will teach her it at a later date and she’s expected to do that task then, or if there’s an expectation for me to teach her about Pudding Lane, etc etc.

Some of the tasks are phrased like “Learning to count in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s”. Now I could get her to just say her five times table out loud, but I can’t exactly record that and put in the book. So I get her to put Lego pieces out, one row of 5, the next row 10 and so on. I take a picture of her doing that and it goes in the book.

Essentially some of these tasks you have to work out how you can do it and present the evidence that they’ve actually done it.

In addition to that, we have the weekly spelling tests, the 2-3 new books they send for her to read every week (they’re short, to be fair). There are little tasks on line, something called Purple Mash. She’s also joined a little extra curricular committee which is nice, but it also comes with additional tasks, making a poster for charitable donations, learning lines to say in assembly. That sort of thing.

And we recently had a parent teacher meeting where they showed us the sorts of things they will do when they’re “tested” in their Key Stage One - they won’t realise they’re being tested, it’s really testing the school, making sure they’re teaching them to a certain standard. My daughter’s year is apparently the last year they’re doing it this way. 

There’s quite a bit of stuff, more than I remember doing at that age. But again, at this age it’s not exactly mandatory. But they definitely encourage you to do it and while I think I worry about it more than I should I try and make the tasks as easy and as appealing for her to complete.

As a side note, I learn one or two things this time round that I missed first time - 

“Subitise”

I reached the age of about 38 having never heard that word before. But there it was in one of the tasks for my kid. Turns out it’s the ability to look at a certain number of items, a handful of coins say, and immediately know how many there are. Kinda counting without literally counting.

Every day’s a school day.

My son is in Year One and gets homework. But it's not anything big and usually in a form of a game (like doing a word search). He gets spellings and reading to do but gets ages to do it. This weekend he had to copy and spell three short words and read a very short book which took him about 10 minutes. Seems an easy way to ease him into it. 

[AlwaysAVFC]

12 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

My son is in Year One and gets homework. But it's not anything big and usually in a form of a game (like doing a word search). He gets spellings and reading to do but gets ages to do it. This weekend he had to copy and spell three short words and read a very short book which took him about 10 minutes. Seems an easy way to ease him into it. 

Mine is year 1 too. She has reading, phonics sounds sheets and then another piece.  This week it was counting number blocks, last week was her learning a poem and recording her doing it.

Reading we found difficult finding the right time to do when she would make any attempt. Then we accidentally discovered (most of the time) she actually tries & thinks about it before school. There is a lot of dead time in the car, as we drop her sister off near her school first. Reading is a slow and steady process with her but seems to be picking numbers & maths up quicker. The opposite of her older sister.

[Rds1983]

28 minutes ago, AlwaysAVFC said:

Mine is year 1 too. She has reading, phonics sounds sheets and then another piece.  This week it was counting number blocks, last week was her learning a poem and recording her doing it.

Reading we found difficult finding the right time to do when she would make any attempt. Then we accidentally discovered (most of the time) she actually tries & thinks about it before school. There is a lot of dead time in the car, as we drop her sister off near her school first. Reading is a slow and steady process with her but seems to be picking numbers & maths up quicker. The opposite of her older sister.

Earlier in the day does seem to work well as they're not as tired. Trying to get him to read after he's been to football after school or something is certainly more of a challenge. 

[Seat68]

1 hour ago, Rds1983 said:

My son is in Year One and gets homework. But it's not anything big and usually in a form of a game (like doing a word search). He gets spellings and reading to do but gets ages to do it. This weekend he had to copy and spell three short words and read a very short book which took him about 10 minutes. Seems an easy way to ease him into it. 

My grandson is year 2. He has a book to read at his leisure, which we tend to do after we get home from the school run and homework in the form of a worksheet a couple of times a week. It's not onerous and it doesn't impinge on his sweet YouTube time. 

[Stevo985]

One thing I was really bad at when I was a kid was doing my homework early. It's absolutely shit having your homework hanging over your head all evening/weekend but I never learned my lesson. And I kind of wish my parents had forced me into that mindset that it's better to get it done early and get it out of the way rather than let it drag on.

It's an approach that I think still affects me in my adult life. I always do things last minute.

So I can say that's definitely something I'm going to do with Jack. Whether or not it's right he gets homework, if he does get it then it gets done when he gets home from school and then he can spend all evening doing what he wants. 

[Mark Albrighton]

16 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

One thing I was really bad at when I was a kid was doing my homework early. It's absolutely shit having your homework hanging over your head all evening/weekend but I never learned my lesson. And I kind of wish my parents had forced me into that mindset that it's better to get it done early and get it out of the way rather than let it drag on.

It's an approach that I think still affects me in my adult life. I always do things last minute.

So I can say that's definitely something I'm going to do with Jack. Whether or not it's right he gets homework, if he does get it then it gets done when he gets home from school and then he can spend all evening doing what he wants. 

It’s exactly my reasoning with my daughter’s homework.

The number of times I didn’t do homework and found myself scribbling out some half arsed attempt at it during the 20 minute break time when it was due in for literally the next lesson. 

I want her to just tell me and I’m more than happy to help her manage her time so she doesn’t piss around like I did (and still do, to be honest).

Fortunately only the Friday just gone when we got home from school Ava essentially said to me “Let’s practice the spellings now because I don’t want you asking me to do them later”.