Most parents have physically, mentally or symbolically taken their children’s homework textbook, thrown it into the air and uttered that sentence: “I give up, I’m just not used to this.”
It’s not a comment about the subject or the parent not doing homework for 20 years. “This” reflects a deeper didactic chasm between parent and child.
Seed’s CRP courses for parents last year – where parents can collect Certificate of Religious Practice points for their children’s Jewish school application – asked parents about the three most important things a child learns at school and the three most important things a child doesn’t learn at school.
The answers to the first part were similar: iterations of values, relationships and knowledge. Yet, what if we turned the tables and asked the children? After all, education is a balance between child and parent, with the school partnering.
Children grow up quickly and their awareness is often precise – the questions I receive in our Seed Schools question boxes are often tremendously perceptive and advanced. And while children may lack knowledge, they often make up for it in being straight-thinking, and having an awareness and a natural curiosity.
So how would a child mark their parents’ “homework”? What do children often feel their parents need to learn to navigate school? Three general areas often come up.
I once started a session purporting to tell the audience a “big secret”. That secret was that rabbis were young once too. The audience laughed. But the children more so than the parents. Children do not want to hear that “things were different in my day” if that has the effect of dismissing their current lived experience.
Yes, blackboards have been replaced by whiteboards and then Smart Boards. Children know that their parents had a different school experience, but they don’t need the generational gap being widened by constant cross-comparison, especially with an “it was better in my day” air of superiority.
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but don’t alienate your children by failing to connect to what they are experiencing. And recognise that what used to be a very narrow educational route through school and exams to the world of work has broadened. There are now many more pathways available.
Secondly, children love and need parents who connect to their own experiences; but there is a fine line between this and trying to relive one’s life through one’s children.
Children don’t need remote-control parents – they need parents who simply accept who they are. This doesn’t mean that a parent cannot be ambitious for their child, but the old “I don’t mind what career you choose, as long as it’s law or medicine” doesn’t cut it.
Part of showing belief in your child is giving them undivided attention, complimenting their talents, celebrating their achievements and not cross-comparing them with others.
“What did you get in the exam?” is a fair question. “What did so-and-so/the rest of the class get?” is not a question children love hearing.
Thirdly, deep down (for some, very deep down), children want to look up to their parents. They need unwavering acceptance, loyalty, solidity, a foundation and a strong family base. But it’s not just the predictability of a solid parent figure they need. They need role models – showing values in action, someone who stands for something they can look up to and respect.
Parents would get a lot more from role-modelling than they do out of lecturing. This comes across in how much the parent shapes and underlines the values their child picks up.
Rabbi Fine is educational director of Seed
