IMO some of the parents who push so hard don’t believe in their kids, a la the Varsity Blues parents ‘fixing’ things that aren’t broken. It’s not good enough not to succeed in something but their kids have to be the best.
The kids seem to just go along with it.
Honestly, our kids didn’t want our help from early on in school—ok, I take that back, mom did drive when a driver was needed.
In college, I admit I did look at the kids’ final grades and progress toward graduation periodically. That was about it. It worked for us. I did NOT assist our kids in any of their homework or assignments—if that was part of our job, we never got the memo.
Our kids grew into happy and successful young adults who have many skills, are self-motivated and happy. They are now late 20s, early 30s. Wouldn’t change anything.
I started backing off academically once the kids hit middle school. The schools all seem to have transitioned to having projects completed during class time so I never even saw most of the assignments. With my oldest it was pretty easy to let go as he is very strong academically and didn’t really need any help. He also had a great peer group of high achieving and ambitious friends that pulled him along. My younger son needed quite a bit more support as he has had some learning challenges but he was pretty resistant to me being involved so it required a delicate balance. He’s not as academically inclined as his brother (though equally capable) and I while I have impressed upon him the implications of not doing well academically I have mostly left it up to him to decide how hard he wants to work. At some point you just have to accept your children for who they are and setting unrealistic expectations is just going to end up causing you both unnecessary angst. That isn’t to say I don’t give him the occasional nudge now and again.
Once the kids hit high school I took more of a “guide on the side” approach. I do all the needed research to keep myself informed so I can advise them but it’s strictly recommended (though sometimes strongly) and it’s up to them to follow it or not. I know their strengths and interests pretty well so I’m not recommending anything they aren’t capable of. Mostly they go along with my suggestions but I sometimes get some push back from them and that’s fine.
I am fully in agreement with ultimom. I disagree with jmnnva06, that it is totally the parent’s choice about being involved. When my daughter was in 8th grade, she had an assignment to build a Rube Goldberg device with at least a specified number of simple machines and at least a specified number of varieties of simple machines. The directions for this project stated that the students should choose times to work on the project when their parents could help them. It was pretty clear that parental help was anticipated.
From my viewpoint, this was perhaps the worst project of middle school, due to the timing of the due date. A friend’s child took over most of their garage with the project.
I gained some consolation by looking forward to the years when the various teachers’ children would be in 8th grade and have to handle this project. The project became optional just before the teachers’ children became 8th graders. I am sure that was entirely coincidental.
My spouse and daughter hated the reed boat project more. In my humble opinion, the reed boat model that we produced collectively was near-small-regional-museum quality.