Interesting Psychology Team
What to do about other adults ‘ control over your child?
This is a question you are guaranteed to ask once you have learnt new skills that increase your awareness and ability to get your children to cooperate with you.
When you experience the difference that a few words can have on the well being of your child, then you want other people around you to also use those words.
You’ve put time and effort into learning an intelligent emotional approach and are committed to providing the best possible opportunities for your child, and then they go to school and your teacher shouts, or say things you’re trying to avoid.
Or your child goes on playdates and you can see that the other parents use techniques that are really undermining and disempowering.
Does it make sense that over 1 in four divorces are caused by conflicting parenting styles?
So it makes perfect sense to ask the question, “What to do about the influence of other adults on my child?”
And as this topic had continued comments, I have left it as a text lesson so as to include their comments.
The original question to me was:
My children are grown up now, but I enrolled in this course wanting to see if there were things I did wrong and if there was, then to learn some better skills before grandchildren appear on the scene.
I’m glad to see that I was putting into practice your strategies throughout their childhoods and they worked very well. My son was/is very strong-willed, but I found I could manage him well while he was at home by giving him choices and letting him come up with his own choices within the boundaries I set.
The problem was though that most of his teachers were autocratic which meant he had a difficult time at school. I sent my kids to the most outstanding school in the area – the best school by far, but my son regrets going there and wishes I had sent him somewhere else. I think he would have had the same problems in any school.
My question is: What can you do as a parent when teachers handle your child in a way that causes your child to respond in an uncooperative manner?
We tried (endlessly) talking to teachers about it – the ones who treated him in the way you teach, and the way we managed him at home, and in whose classes he also excelled, thought he was wonderful and couldn’t understand how other teachers had a problem with him and the autocratic teachers slammed us as being obviously useless parents or he wouldn’t be responding to them the way he did.
In the UK it seems to be the culture in schools to treat kids like this. Apart from home schooling what can you do to make things run smoothly when your child has no choice but to accept the authority of an autocratic, rude and inconsiderate teacher?
ROBIN WROTE BACK:
Hi and thanks for opening such an important discussion! And I really appreciate that you resonate with what I have covered in the course. But Wow… where do we start with such a HUGE and important topic. I have tried any different approaches and here is a quick summary (and my best option is at the end)
- You start your own school – I did this in 2004 but this is not a quick solution – (and now I actually consult to a few of these start up schools by parents who just couldn’t ‘wait’… and one of t hose schools is in the UK!)
- You talk to the teachers – like you have, but as you mentioned this can be really tricky and often doesn’t go too far.
- You give/buy the teachers the books or workshops like these – so instead of a “you the parent” trying to teach a teacher, you get a professional teacher to do the training (like me in this workshop). This has worked very well for a lot of parents who have done my workshops and ask questions like you have. One way to do this with the greatest impact is speak to the school principal and offer to donate a whole bunch for the teachers. If you can get the school principal on board, it will create more leverage to get the teachers to be involved. For example I know on UDEMY you can buy a batch of the same course for staff, and often at discounted prices. Then these can be given to teachers (let me know if you want more info on this)
- Offer to pay/ donate personal development courses to be run at the school – in other words do some research as to various personal development courses and offer the school to choose one of them to be run at the school for the teachers (as a gift from you – and if you let the school choose from your choices… well we know that giving choices goes a long way to get cooperation)
The challenge with all of the above scenarios is that we are trying to ‘change’ other people. I found that the one thing I have the most control over is my family, and my conversations with Cailin (my child). The world is a tough place out there….and happiness is not the absence of problems but our ability to deal with them. So I chose to ‘see‘ this as an opportunity to support Cailin in learning the skills of how to manage a person/teacher who is disrespectful back to her.
And more importantly, how to support her in discovering for herself how to manage her frustration and disappointment in the teachers. She would often come back home from school saying, “My teacher kept saying ‘No don’t do that…. Doesn’t she see that if she just asks for what she is needing the kids will cooperate with her?’
But at the same time, regardless of me upskilling her, it still breaks my heart when she comes back from school (she’s 8 years old) and tells stories like you have shared above.
I hope that gives some useful ideas. And as awlays, let me know if you have any further questions.
warmly, Robin
THE PARENT RESPONDED BACK
I have friends who started their own school (they had 8 kids and the mother was a teacher anyway so it was an obvious choice for them).
Looking back it is the thing I wish I could have done, but I was too ill to be honest for much of the time. Financially we did not have the sort of money that would have made enough of a difference to the schools for them to treat us differently – the high school has a multi-million pound budget and anything we could have given would have been a drop in the ocean. Also, I think the staff would have taken it as a personal insult if we had suggested a course like this; they would get hugely offended if you questioned their judgement on anything and come out with comments like “Oh so now you’re a qualified teacher are you?”
Some were unbelievably obnoxious and were as rude to the parents as they were to the kids. I think the UK is particularly bad in the way they treat kids. My husband was raised in the US between the ages of 2 and 8 and found it a huge shock to the system to return to the UK and the English school system.
There is a pervasive attitude of disrespect towards children in my opinion. And adults in general and teachers in particular never seem to question if their own behaviour could be behind the discipline problems they have with kids they interact with.
So that leaves us with preparing our children to cope with unfair, unkind adults. I found that incredibly hard to be honest, with my son (my daughter not so much). My son feels very passionately about things, hates injustice and takes a stand for what he believes.
As an adult that can be a very useful quality to have, but as a child it can get you labelled disruptive or difficult. Compliance is what they want.
I agree that the key is most likely to be found in teaching our kids to handle disrespectful people/adults/those in authority and thinking about it I think the reason I didn’t do that very well is that I’m actually not good at it myself, so I didn’t have the skill to pass on.
My own mother always taught me to defer to others and that others were always more important than me, and I see that was a real area of weakness on my part. Maybe you could think about adding a section to this course devoted to practical techniques to teach our children (and apply ourselves) to manage those with power over us who are unfair or hostile and also how to teach kids to manage their emotions under such circumstances.
As an adult we can walk away or find a new job. Kids don’t have that luxury. My kid’s high school was excellent at dealing with bullying from other kids, but didn’t even acknowledge bullying from staff to children (officially they wouldn’t – but some teachers would in off the record, one to one conversations).
ANOTHER PARENT ADDED THE FOLLOWING:
Thank you so much for asking this question and sharing your views! It is something I ask myself and your reflection on the topic helps me to clarify my own values and hopes.
My child is still too young to go to school so I can’t offer tangible advice. However, in my opinion the best thing to do is to be the loving, supporting parent. As Robin said it is almost impossible to change other people. Although it is hard for your child to live in a school environment that is less ideal you most likely can do little about it (except homeshooling etc. as you’ve already pointed out).
What you can do is: be the best example and that’s what you did, so: great job!
I also think it’s wonderful that you did the course to reflect on your parenting skills and maybe discover your own mistakes. That’s very courageous. In the end we sadly can’t protect our children from all the emotional harm that is done to them by other people. But you gave your son a solid foundation and I’m sure he will “recover”.
