'Being friends with your children can ruin their prospects': Parents warned that trying to be too close to their kids is damaging Headmistress says adult conversations have 'negative influence' on children
Sympathising with children's school struggles is like saying 'don't bother'.Misguided attempts at support often restrict 'children's paths in life'.Parents who treat their children as if they are their friends do them more harm than good, a leading headmistress has warned.Alice Phillips, president of the Girls' Schools Association, said mothers and fathers have a 'negative influence' on their children when they try to involve them in adult conversations.She added that parents who sympathise with children's struggles at school by telling them their own childhood problems were likely to damage their development.
Parents who sympathise with their children's struggles at school by telling them their own childhood problems may be having a 'negative influence', Alice Phillips said (picture posed by models).Mrs Phillips, who is headmistress at St Catherine's School, in Bramley, Surrey, said that parents' misguided attempts at offering support often backfired, severely restricting the 'path children take in life'.She also said that parents who told struggling children about their similar woes when they were at school were essentially telling them 'not to bother'.Writing in Attain magazine, the journal of the Independent Association of Prep Schools, Mrs Phillips said: 'Parents’ desire to react quickly in a crisis or to make their children feel better about something they’re finding difficult often manifests itself as an expression of solidarity.'"Don’t worry, sweetheart. I was no good at maths either," you say. Or, "Yes, history’s boring; I hated learning facts". And, "It's all well beyond what we ever did, so we can't help with the homework any longer".'This is tantamount to telling them it’s okay not to bother. Instead, get on the internet with them and find a YouTube clip or TED talk to help them get to grips with the topic. Anything to give them the idea that when you don’t understand something you don’t just give up.' But one of the headmistress's biggest gripes was parents who are too friendly with their children. She said: 'This is a practice which causes children to grow up far earlier than is necessary or good for them.' Discussing school matters in front of children even reacting in front of them can turn small disgruntlements into huge issues. Your child will latch on to your ideas and repeat them as ‘gospel’.”Mrs Phillips, whose fee-paying girls' school was attended in the past by poet U. A. Fanthorpe and television presenter Davina McCall, also criticised fathers and mothers who push their children towards specific school subjects and careers. She said that while this may not have an immediate effect on their children, it may have a 'negative influence' on their attitude to studying certain academic subjects and could effect career choices in later life.
