Last week a parent was telling me about their highly anxious child who isn’t going to school. They had gone to see a counsellor, and after hours of coaxing and preparation they got to the room. The first question (after names and introductions)? ‘So how can we get you back to school?’.
‘It’s just a few minutes every day! No one should be struggling with that!’. When a child is finding school hard, it’s not just about the hours at school. From early on, there’s the expectation that they’ll be doing extra work at home too. Maybe ‘just reading together’ or learning the weekly spellings. Or Times Tables Rockstars, with everyone ranked against each other. For some children, that’s fine, it really does just take a few minutes. For others, homework can bring all the difficulties of school back home. It’s a constant weight, something that hasn’t been done and which means they can’t relax. The whole weekend is overcast by Sunday evening and ‘
: Sit up straight : Listen carefully : Ask and answer questions
We must make the children more productive, they said. They run around aimlessly from whim to whim. They don’t wash their faces and they pretend they are dinosaurs. They waste their time, when they could be learning about homophones and homographs, memorising number bonds and doing times tables at speed. We must make the children more productive, they said.
Recently I’ve noticed a trend where children who receive a diagnosis of autism or ADHD are told that it’s not their fault that they struggle, it’s because the world isn’t built for them. I’ve now met several children who have been told this. As a result of what those children told me, I suggest to parents that they think carefully before saying this to their children.
So much distress is caused by the idea that we must teach children things which cannot be taught. Not just for the children, but for their parents too. For we are always parenting for the future, for the ‘badly brought up’ person we don’t want them to become. It stops us from responding to the child we have, right now. We torture ourselves with "but what if they never learn?'.
(illustration by Eliza Fricker from my book A Different Way to Learn, published by JKP) I was talking to a grandmother last week about schooling. ‘I can see the difference’ she said. ‘When my children were young, primary school was relaxed. If the weather was good, they went outside and ran around. If they were sick, they stayed at home. Now with my grandchildren they are seated in desks for more of the day and if they are ill, they are worried that they’ll lose their 100% attendance for the term. The pressure is on to pass their phonics test when they are six and then to learn their times tables at speed by the time they are nine. They feel it and and their parents feel it too’. There’s lots of talk about SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) at the moment, and how increasing numbers of children are being identified as SEND. It’s less common to ask questions about what SEND really means, and whether the education system creates more children ‘with SEND’ as it becomes more pressured and rigid.
Sarah was despondent. “I don’t know what to do” she said. “Lucas is eight, but he behaves like a toddler. The harder I try to set boundaries, the more he refuses to do what I ask. We’ve tried the Naughty Step, Time Out, sticker charts, taking away his screen time… none of it helps.”