Not only have we had to come to terms with me going back to work full-time (after 18 months’ part-time maternity leave); we have also had to deal with something far more scary.
My five-year old daughter doesn’t turn six until early next year, yet from this month she’s expected to read one book a night, practice her spelling and her maths for a (gulp) weekly test.
The first spelling test was a bit of a fiasco as she was accidentally given a list of Year 2 spellings to do, ones which she firmly refused on the basis of they were “too hard”and she’d “never read them before”. She’s also in Year 1 by the way.
Yet other parents, also in the same class, must have sat down with their little Year 1’s and helped them learn those words.
I soon realised that my anxiety and strict approach, not to mention my own questioning of the appropriateness of the words had probably stopped her from learning them.
She has always loved reading and writing, but when forced to do it, every bone in her body wanted to rebel.
She had probably sensed my reluctance too.
So my lesson of the month was to make sure I provided an enviroment where it became second nature to question, but also to learn and to enjoy learning, without it feeling forced and give her confidence.
Once we are made to do things, or have them lumped on us, whether it’s regulation or saving towards a pension, we start to question why.
The financial services industry has, in the 18 years I’ve been covering it, rarely been given a chance to catch its collective breath before more tests, more exams, more powers to the regulator seemed to be introduced.
All this is apparently aimed at building consumer confidence.
But it may actually end up putting consumers off the indsutry even more. More regulation does protect consumers but it also means introducing more bureaucracy, which now appears to be undoing the very thing the indsutry set out to in the first place: empower consumers financially.
It’s a bit like too much homework all at once - and something has to give.
I notice that many financial advisers will no longer just give advice on mortgages. The client has to have something else - like a pension or a lump sum to invest.
It’s getting too expensive to advise ordinary people, thanks to all this homework.
I’m not happy about all the tests my daughter has to do, but unless I meet a signficant number of other parents who feel the same I will just back down and get on with teaching her, otherwise she may get left behind.
But it doesn’t mean she will be happier, or even - at the end of the day - brighter.
There must be a happy medium. I think my daughter would be better off just concentrating on reading and doing a bit of maths; writing and spelling will come later, as long as she can read.
Like these education reforms, there may come some good of increasing homework, sorry, I mean regulation, but I’m not convinced that being so heavy handed is in the interests of anyone. Least of all the consumer.
