[Mike 75]

Seems to be a nationwide phenomenon.
https://www.theatlantic.com/educatio...school/577117/

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by Frostnip

Or maybe there's some happy medium between neglecting children entirely, and smothering them.

Why that's just crazy talk!

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by JayCT

I have two family members that teach in Bridgeport’s inner city schools. They would have Parents Night where literally one parent would show up. It may have been because the parent did not care but many of the parents must work multiple jobs to make ends meet or don’t have child care. Also one would call the parents about their kids failing and the parents would literally say “What the f*** do you want me to do about it?” This happened multiple times every year. I am not sure they even know how to educate their child which is really sad and downright scary. Jay

They themselves probably had no oversight or involvement from their parents.

When I was a young adult and got my first job, one of the older men in the office mentioned that he had spent the evening before helping his son with his homework. I was flabbergasted. "You HELPED your kid with his homework? That's CHEATING." I had never heard of such a thing.

Turned out that lots of parents help their kids with their homework. Mine never did or even mentioned our homework or asked if we did it. They went to Back-to-School-night and they looked at our report cards, but how we did in school and our activities weren't their priority, and it's probably because neither of them had experienced much involved parenting growing up. They simply had no idea that this was how the world worked. I think they were also overwhelmed having seven of us. We weren't inner-city people, but my parents had both grown up poor and how the kids were doing in school wasn't at the top of the list of things that their parents had to worry about. I'm sure that factors in to families in impoverished areas now, too.

Oddly enough, when my mother later became my "daycare" for my daughter, she taught her to come home from school and do her homework first thing, a habit that my daughter retained throughout her school career. I didn't go to college. It didn't even occur to me to WANT to go to college. My daughter, on the other hand, will finish her Masters in the spring and her PhD in two more years. Might be a correlation there.

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801

They themselves probably had no oversight or involvement from their parents.

When I was a young adult and got my first job, one of the older men in the office mentioned that he had spent the evening before helping his son with his homework. I was flabbergasted. "You HELPED your kid with his homework? That's CHEATING." I had never heard of such a thing.

Turned out that lots of parents help their kids with their homework. Mine never did or even mentioned our homework or asked if we did it. They went to Back-to-School-night and they looked at our report cards, but how we did in school and our activities weren't their priority, and it's probably because neither of them had experienced much involved parenting growing up. They simply had no idea that this was how the world worked. I think they were also overwhelmed having seven of us. We weren't inner-city people, but my parents had both grown up poor and how the kids were doing in school wasn't at the top of the list of things that their parents had to worry about. I'm sure that factors in to families in impoverished areas now, too.

Oddly enough, when my mother later became my "daycare" for my daughter, she taught her to come home from school and do her homework first thing, a habit that my daughter retained throughout her school career. I didn't go to college. It didn't even occur to me to WANT to go to college. My daughter, on the other hand, will finish her Masters in the spring and her PhD in two more years. Might be a correlation there.

I helped my kids with their homework at times. That does not mean I did it for them. They did it. I just oversaw them doing it and made sure they understood what they did. I will say that sometimes I did not understand what they did because things like math are done differently now from when I was in school. The main thing teachers will tell you is that parents should look to be sure the homework is done and check if possible, if it is done correctly.

My parents also helped me as much as they could. They were not educated BUT they made sure we were. They checked to see if our homework was done. It was also expected that we would go to college. That may have been because we lived in Fairfield and many friends of theirs expected their kids to go to college. I was the first in my very large family to graduate from college. DS was next. Most of my cousins worked (sales, fishermen, retail). One went into the service (career army) and a couple went into the trades (mechanic, welder, carpenters, hairdresser). Another couple went on to nursing and dental hygiene. IT was such a different world even just a few decades back. Jay