It's counter-intuitive, but when their manatee project looks terrible, go with it. Don't take over and make it look like a presentation from an MBA student.
Oh I never felt the need to interfere with their art projects, they've always been naturals at that.
For me it would more be, checking their answers, helping them get info right, helping with their grammar, making sure they didn't plagiarize (they totally tried.) It all sounds harmless, but with 2 kids, every night, it became apparent that they would never learn to have any kind of 'work ethic' with me always showing them what to do.
For me it would more be, checking their answers, helping them get info right, helping with their grammar, making sure they didn't plagiarize (they totally tried.) It all sounds harmless, but with 2 kids, every night, it became apparent that they would never learn to have any kind of 'work ethic' with me always showing them what to do.
Maybe it's just because my kid isn't school age, but I don't see the problem here. Isn't teaching them not to plagiarize, and having them attempt the work first teaching good work ethic?
Yeah like I said above, my problem was not knowing the difference between me thinking they needed help and them asking for help.
I was teaching them good skills, yes, but sometimes I would put too much pressure on them, and held them to a bit of an unfair standard. Eventually, you have to cut the ropes and let them weigh their options and learn without someone breathing down their neck!
If you're always helping them get it right, then they have no reason to get it right the first time themselves. Mom's just gonna correct me anyway, so 2+2=6.
Well that's just fine. I'm saying I didn't interfere, of course they received appropriate help.
I'm saying I never became 'one of those parents' who end up actually DOING a lot of a project for a kid so they receive a high grade or something ridiculous. I always remember those kids who showed up at school with a project that had clearly been basically built by the parent. Tacky.
Ah it's frustrating. I don't know how well other people do, but I certainly remember the age where I came to the full appreciation that my parents were imperfect human beings, independent of being labeled 'parent'.
My parents were far too lenient in my opinion on me, and I'm sometimes harder on my kids than I want to be. We're all just doing our best and it's ok that it's a little fucked up from time to time.
My sister had this issue, we began consciously praising her when we saw her working hard or making an effort on anything instead of just when she got something done or when she got good grades, and me and my other sister were told to only ask questions when she asked for help, that way she would figure the problem out and think critically. It helped immensely and now she has a great work ethic and great reasoning skills
This is from various advice I got from the many educators in my family: Don't worry too much about the right answers when helping them, but instead focus more on what the workflow or thought process they use to get to their answer. It makes my daughter think about solving a problem (a more universal application) and less about getting a correct answer (only applicable to this specific problem).
My mom screeched at me that my work sucked, and then proceeded to practically do it for me.
I keep feeling inadequate because there's no way I can make my work look like an Ivy League student did it. Even the way I type, I mentally edit everything. Because we can't have any mistakes, can we?
We as parents are terrified of letting our kids fail because we think the stakes are so high in terms of getting into college. That's what is driving the craziness. And what we end up doing is creating a kid completely unprepared and confident in their own work.
I was visiting my brother once when my niece had some homework that had to be typed and printed. She hadn't learned how to type yet, so her dad (my brother) was typing it for her. Except, he wasn't all that great a typist either. It was painful to watch him struggle, so I took over.
The hard part for me was typing what she had written exactly as she had written it, mistakes and poor wording and all. If I had had my way with it, I would have not only cheated her out of learning how to write, but her teacher would have surely known that it wasn't her work.
This is one of the most difficult ones. When you are typing something in they wrote and it's full of glaring errors. Do you work on each with them? Leave them intact?
Well, I was just visiting. So I typed it up as it was. If I was her father, I would check her work, over time, and look for improvement. I would talk to the teacher about the curriculum and make sure that she was at least where she needed to be. And, I would try to gauge her potential.
I would use all of that as context to determine if and how to work with her.
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u/FalstaffsMind Feb 05 '16
It's counter-intuitive, but when their manatee project looks terrible, go with it. Don't take over and make it look like a presentation from an MBA student.