Emilie Silverwood-Cope: Parents, step away from the lawnmower
There’s an Instagram account called The Danish Way. It has 478,000 followers and shares videos of children in Danish nurseries and schools. They are usually rolling around in mud, jumping off wobbly crates into massive puddles and having a lot of fun. The message being, obviously, that the Danish Way is better for children.
I agree. The thing is (and this is just between us because it annoys people when I say it) English parents just wouldn’t stand for it. I am told variously “Oh, I would love it for my child” or “I would never complain” and, of course, I know you wouldn’t. However, this has not been my general observation of parents over the last decade.
A report in The Sunday Times last week confirmed my anecdotal data: parents are not only prone to complaining to teachers over seemingly minor things, but are doing so more and more.
Some of the issues raised by parents feel more understandable than others. Parents struggling to get support over issues such as housing, foodbanks, healthcare, CAMHs (child and adolescent mental health support) are hoping teachers can sort these big problems out. As we learned in lockdown, schools are a crucial social hub for more vulnerable children that goes way beyond teaching them. There is also an increase in behaviour issues and violence in our schools. Too many children are bearing the brunt of this and parents understandably want to get involved to help fix.
Other complaints feel much less reasonable. They include complaining about cold weather at break time, whether a child ate all their lunch, their child being told off for breaking a universal school rule, wet hair after swimming lessons, walking to a school trip in the rain. Inconveniences maybe, but the stuff of life.
Teachers are reporting that parents are generally more anxious and more angry. Isn’t that the mood music of the entire nation? It’s no surprise that it’s showing up in our schools. I have seen these anxieties and fears being supercharged by the class WhatsApp groups. It got worse during and following the Covid lockdown and doesn’t seem to be dying down.
Anxious parents make for Lawnmower Parents. We’ve all heard about the Helicopter Parent, the kind who fusses, hovers and is overprotective.
A lawnmower parent is slightly different and describes the type who takes a more proactive role in their child’s life. They want to smooth paths to remove all discomfort and risk. Their child must have success and happiness and they pressure themselves and those around them to make sure this happens. Other children are mere satellites. It’s vital to have a good social circle, of course, but ultimately other children are a ‘non-player character’. What matters is that the child is always well liked and well treated.
Of course it’s OK to want this but the reality of life is that it is unfair. Rather than accept this, a lawnmower parent might email teachers about tricky homework, overly concern themselves with friendship groups, find blame in the people around their child for poor behaviour, and ask for preferential treatment while ignoring their own child’s culpability.
Needing strength in numbers I’ve seen such parents try to rally support for a cause via the class WhatsApp group. One teacher told me a mum regularly shares the WhatsApp polls she’s done with the school to argue with teachers about various policies and decisions. I have watched messages go back and forth for hours. What starts as a micro-issue then escalates into a group decision to all email the school to complain. No detail about the school day is too mundane to be picked over and assessed as whether good or bad.
I have stood patiently to talk to a primary teacher behind a mother waving a water bottle in the teacher’s face. Her issue was that her daughter hadn’t drunk enough. “How was she supposed to learn?” she demanded if not constantly hydrated, perhaps mistaking her daughter for a hydrangea. Little wonder teachers are leaving the profession.
A teaching assistant I know said working for a couple of terms in her children’s primary school has cured her of her instinct to be a lawnmower. We are all mums, we all feel the need to protect (there is a lawnmower in all of us). What she saw though was the children of the complainers are, in fact, the least able to cope. They do cry more easily at break time, they are less resilient and less socially capable. The more intervening you do, the more intervening you’ll feel you have to do because your child is actually struggling. It’s a vicious circle.
One theory is we parents have become disconnected from interacting in good faith with teachers thanks to relying on tech to communicate. It’s far easier to fall out on email than face to face. Typed words are misinterpreted and passive aggressive phrases are liberally included in a way they are not on the telephone. Lockdown introduced us to liaising with teachers via Teams and parents’ evenings held remotely. Perhaps it’s time to get back to resolving issues in person. And to put the lawnmower away.
Read more Parenting Truths from Emilie Silverwood-Cope every month in the Cambridge Independent.
