The email arrived, out of the blue, last Saturday night. It was from a parent we used to be friendly with at primary school, more than a decade ago. “Hi … just wondering, do you have a contact number for that glazier you mentioned when we met at X’s party? Hope all is well. Has A finished university? E has finally finished and we are all extremely pleased – and relieved! – at how it’s gone …”
Oddly, I had recently received a similar text from a work colleague, informing me, inter alia, that her daughter had got a distinction in her masters. Fantastic, I texted back, although I was surprised to be updated, for the first time ever in our relationship, on the academic achievements of one of her children. There then followed not just one, but two, follow-up messages, asking, “Any good news your end? Waiting keenly to hear.” I bet.
Our children are in their early 20s. Yet these messages were a depressing echo of nigh on two decades of Covert Competitive Parenting (CCP) almost unavoidable in today’s ever more pressurised school system.
Glazier Woman is the direct emotional descendant of the mother I found feverishly rifling through my five-year-old daughter’s book bag on a play date or the parent who, on telephoning to tell me her child’s GCSE results, began the conversation in mournful tones, “Well, the bad news is, S just missed an A* in French …(long pause) … but we are appealing.” You will be as relieved as I was to hear that, apart from that distressing blip, S had gained 14 A*s.
Children pick up quickly on this sort of thing. One of my most memorable trips to the zoo as a primary-school parent involved a long conversation with a seven-year-old in my daughter’s class who insisted on telling me, in absorbing detail, how her own Sats results had matched, even possibly outstripped, my own child’s, all in a voice that spookily echoed that of her pushy mother.
So how should one ward off this sort of ghastly behaviour in others or, indeed, in oneself (for there’s a CCP lurking within us all)? By remembering the simplest and most important rule of all: the only thing you need to take care of is your child’s education and your relationship with him or her. Come their young adulthood, I can guarantee that while you may have wished you had spent more time and thought in developing your son or daughter’s interests, confidence or work ethic, you will finally see the competitiveness of other parents for what it is: a mass of irrelevant white noise, the dispiriting Christmas circular letter writ nightmarishly large.
So my advice to parents of primary-age children is to wean yourself off Compare and Contrast as soon as you feel the temptation, which you almost certainly will, the first time your darling child gets a high mark or a gold star. That’s a good place to begin because no one can misinterpret your silence as sour grapes.
Establish a habit from nursery onwards that when school reports are issued, you take the report back, unopened, to read together at home. Find someone, far from the school world, that you trust absolutely to share worries and glories.
Avoid all playground or pub conversations about tests, exams and league tables. Just excuse yourself – mentally, or if necessary, physically. Keep away from other parents on results days (GCSEs and A-levels), especially the ones who roam local high streets, buying endless lattes, in the hope of bumping into someone to whom they can brag.
All this is harder than it sounds. Such chats can be like a delicious itch: one more scratch and then you’ll stop, you promise yourself. But by abstaining as early and as often as you can, you are sending your children an important message: that you care about them as individuals, not as representatives of your parental ego.
This becomes ever more important as the school system becomes increasingly competitive and nuanced. From 2017, GCSEs will be awarded under a new mark scheme, with results graded from one to nine, the top numbers aimed at identifying the creme de la creme. Many schools now publicly list their pupils in order of achievement and there has even been talk of a country-wide individual ranking system.
Adopting a different approach means not just swimming against the tide, but helping your son or daughter to grasp, as early as possible, the real purpose of education. The Latin root of the word – educere – means, literally, to “lead out”; to develop a human being, to help them be all that they can possibly be. To buy, however unwittingly or reluctantly, into the growing pressure to define young people by their results is to damage their sense of what it is to be a successful human. Of course, education involves effort, and endurance and, eventually, exams. One of the best conversations I had with my younger son was when he had got a relatively poor mark in an essay on a subject he loved studying. After I had commiserated, we had a long talk about much he had enjoyed the subject and how glad he was that he had done it.
As for the worst CCPs in your life, start to wean them off the very thing they are seeking: detached morsels of information that buoy their own fragile sense of self. If congratulations are required, a brisk “Well done” will do. You are under no obligation to provide a report card on your own child or their assumed place in the educational rat race for their benefit.
I have developed a useful technique for those “old friends” who declare themselves keen to hear from me “how the children are”, sadly too often a clumsy code for discovering university destination or nascent professional plans. I reply by actually telling them how my children are, happily describing evolving characters or a recent interrailing trip. That sorts the wheat from the chaff.
I will no doubt be hearing from the same people when their first grandchild is born or their youngest is nominated for an Emmy. As for Glazier Woman, she should now be able to find any number of local suppliers, should she so wish. Very happy to pass on the links to anyone genuinely in search of new windows.
Lizzie Brooke is a pseudonym
