Achievement Bragging

I had a mini rant about this last week in Mislaying The Positives but since then, other things have happened, not even to me, and I’ve got hot under the collar all over again. So, here we are: a whole blog on the subject.

First of all, parents should be proud of their children. I am proud of every new book level, every goal scored, every positive comment, every spelling test, every homework completed. Everything. I think both of my boys are amazing and I cherish every single achievement, no matter how big or small. So does my husband and so do the grandbears.

However, I do not feel it necessary to tweet or publish every single accolade on Facebook. As explained last week, I do think we should shout about amazing achievements, especially when a child has overcome some sort of hurdle or adversity to get there. Those not-so-braggy-brags are hard earned and I think anyone reading about them would genuinely be happy for the achievee (not a word but clearly should be) and their parents. For those of us whose children have additional needs of one type or another, these amazing moments can be harder to come by. We often have to hunt around for them in a miasma of ‘can I have a word’s and phone calls home and red lights in the ‘below expectations’ box. These amazing moments shine brighter for it and I’m very much in favour of people being able to share them and other people being happy for them. This was the motivation behind the #glowmo hashtag invented by @mumdrah (I think) which many of us in the online adoption community use to highlight these hard-won moments of glowing pride.

What I have much more of a problem with, is parents of children with outstanding reports, outstanding scores, amazing comments, publishing the lot on social media. Why are they doing it? I know they’re proud and rightly so, but why can’t they just congratulate one another, praise their child, tell the grandparents, share it on a family whatsapp group and leave it there? They’ve already got the warm glow of their child’s amazing achievements – why do they need public acknowledgement too?

I wonder whether they publish these things genuinely without thinking about how it might make others feel or whether, actually, they want to show off. Either way, it’s not great. And I do have to wonder whether if their child got all low marks or all negative comments, they would still feel moved to post it on Facebook. I rather suspect not… I can’t help feeling it smacks of a certain I’m alright Jack-ness, without a care for the not so lucky.

When you see your child’s report on its own, you can see it for what it is: the achievements of an individual child with their own individual set of strengths and difficulties. You can consider it within the context of them – the only context it should ever be considered in. As soon as someone else publishes their child’s report, you have a comparator. You would never mean to compare them but if their child has all these high scores and yours doesn’t, it would be pretty much impossible not to notice. No matter how proud you are of your child, and how well you know the context of their achievements, these sorts of accidental comparisons can wound.

As I write this, I don’t know whether I’m practising some form of inverse educational snobbery. My experience of school was one of being branded a swot for working hard and gaining good marks – not attributes that improved one’s social standing. So perhaps the experience encouraged me to keep successes to myself. Or maybe it just highlighted to me, from a young age, that dangling achievements in people’s faces naturally upsets them.

It’s very unpleasant to inadvertently make others squirm, just by getting a higher mark or a better grade. Sometimes people make their feelings on the subject known, even if you haven’t flaunted anything, and I think, at times, I have probably been guilty of down-playing achievements out of embarrassment. This isn’t right either – surely we need some sort of non-braggy, non-hidey middle ground.

What it does tell me is that the child who has been bragged about on social media is at risk of alienation from their peers – anything that marks a child out as different can be (and often is) used against them. Their wellbeing is equally as important as the child who has not achieved highly and feels lesser because of it.

More to the point, knowing how divisive achievement can be, I have absolutely no idea what would motivate someone to provoke these difficult reactions in others on purpose.

Perhaps it’s just me, but the reward for doing well, is doing well. That’s it. No pats on the head or public bragging needed. I suspect I have my mum to thank for this – who, whilst all my friends were bribed with x amount of money for A’s, less for B’s etc., refused to give me any amount of money for any grades, because, in her words, “You should want to do it for yourself, not for money”. And as annoying as it is to admit it, I think she was right. The reward was the satisfaction of the achievement itself. I’m sure she’d add that it isn’t about the public glory either.

I’m wondering to myself now, whether when a young person works hard and does well, they should be able to shout it from the rooftops, whatever their circumstances, if they so wish. But then I know, that if it were me up on a roof, I’d collect the words ready to shout out, and at the last moment, I would stop myself, because I would be worried about how that shout-out might make others, who couldn’t make the same shout-out, feel. I don’t know if this is right or wrong. Do we want a generation of children hiding their light under a bushel? Do we want a generation of children shouting every attainment loud and proud? Or, more importantly, do we want a generation of young people who work hard, do their best and, crucially, care about those around them? It’s possible to work hard, achieve high, be appropriately proud of oneself yet not demean others with your successes. It is.

It just requires a bit of thought and consideration and not posting children’s reports on social media.

As a parent of two very different children, with reports at very different ends of the spectrum, I can honestly say that being on the receiving end of someone else’s less than humble report brag has always been unpleasant. However, when you are already worried about your child and already on it with the school and already accustomed to keeping your head down at pick-up and already concerned about the future, someone’s less than humble report brag is akin to them pouring a whole bag of salt into your already open wound. No thank you. A little more consideration for others would be marvellous.

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Mislaying The Positives

I think everyone knows that the last few weeks have been a little trying. Between school residentials and transition, there has been plenty to get my knickers in a twist about (if you somehow missed it, see Hysterical , The Big Trip and Is Dysregulation Rocket Science? ). This isn’t unusual, I’m frequently banging on about some issue or other, more often than not relating to LB’s education. I’m aware though, that in getting caught up dealing with the myriad issues, it can be all too easy to skip over the positives. It means that things, that when you stop to think about them are actually amazing, can pass you by with barely an acknowledgement. I don’t want to skip over these things – these achievements of LB’s – because they are massive within the context of his history and should be given the credence they deserve. I’m going to share one thing, in particular, today. First, I need to tell you some facts.

I don’t like bragging. That’s a fact. I can’t bear it when people go to parents evening then write #giftedandtalented on Twitter or Facebook. Or when someone asks you if you’re concerned about your child and you say yes, and then they say how they aren’t at all worried about theirs because they are exceeding expectations in every area. I don’t like it when people brag about how expensive their house is or how much they earn or how clever they are or any of the others ways that people try to seem better than other people. Just, no.

Here’s another fact. When LB started pre-school, his development was measured to be two years behind the typical expectations for his age – so he was functioning round about the level of a two year old, when he was four. That’s a very tricky educational starting point. There were many barriers between LB and formal learning – behavioural, emotional, linguistic.

When LB started reception class, he couldn’t count. I’m not exaggerating – he literally couldn’t count to three in the correct order. This was not through a lack of trying on anyone’s part – it was mainly due to his Developmental Language Disorder (DLD See Developmental Language Disorder or DLD & Education ), as well as his tricky start. It did mean that numeracy was going to be extremely difficult. It is impossible to do sums if you don’t understand the currency you’re dealing with. It literally must have been like adding apples and pears for him.

By the end of year 1, though LB had made incredible progress in all areas, he had never quite managed to hit an expected level in any subject. It didn’t matter. We were extremely proud of him because of all the things he had achieved and really, from a starting point of 2 years behind, how could he?

Year 2 felt like a big jump. Year 2 had SATS. SATS were going to be hard for someone working below the expectations of the curriculum; someone who had only been able to count for 18 months or so. Fact. We didn’t even know if we’d let him sit the SATS – if they were going to feel too big an obstacle.

Somehow, despite all those facts, at the end of Year 2, LB managed not only to sit his SATS but to pass his Maths SATS. Not only that, but he smashed it, gaining close to a ‘greater depth’ score. He has also been deemed to be working at the overall expectations of the curriculum in numeracy, so in his report, he got his first green light. In fact, he got one for science too.

Why are you telling us this, if you don’t like bragging? I hear you whisper.

I’ll tell you why.

The ACE’s index (Adverse Childhood Experiences index) came about as a way of measuring the impact in later life of various different adversities that could befall a child. This is important because it is only fairly recently that society has begun to acknowledge that things that happen during childhood can continue to impact a person throughout their life. It is important we understand that childhood abuse, neglect or the disappearance of a parent through divorce, death, imprisonment or moving into the Care system doesn’t stop impacting a person once the event is over. It is really important these things are widely understood. The old adage that ‘the child is safe now so the past can be forgotten’ really does need eradicating and something like the ACE’s movement helps with this.

The ACE index also tells us that the more ACEs a person has experienced, the greater their risk of mental and physical health difficulties, substance abuse and unemployment. In short, the worse your start in life, the higher the likelihood of your life outcomes also being poor. A double-whammy body-blow.

 

It is beginning to be recognised that though this information is well-intentioned and to some extent needed, by encouraging people to count numbers of ACEs, you are really misunderstanding the way trauma works. It’s feasible that a person could score just 1 on the index, for an event that may only have occurred once, on one specific day. The index would suggest that this event would only have a minor impact on the person. However, from what we know of trauma, this is isn’t accurate. Depending on the person and their own reactions, that single event could have anything from a minimal to a profound lifelong impact upon the person. Similarly, because you have a large number of ACE’s, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will end up homeless, addicted to alcohol and drugs and suffering several health complaints, and I think there is a danger in suggesting you would.

 

For a young person, growing up with the knowledge they have a high ACE score could well make them feel hopeless about their future, and is that really what we want for our most vulnerable children? Surely the message should be that, yes, rubbish things that happen in childhood can impact upon a person and as a society we acknowledge it. We should also be offering all the extras a child could need – therapy, education, social/behavioural/emotional support – to help them in overcoming the impacts of those ACES. We should be acknowledging that children with any ACE score need more from us – more care, more love, more support. We should be flagging them up as at risk of the future harm the ACE index suggests whilst providing them with what they need to negate that risk.

I think there’s a danger in suggesting that something that happens early on will categorically lead to x or y later. These things are not set in stone. With the correct support, children who’ve had adverse starts in life can and do overcome the barriers their early lives attempted to block them with. I’m not saying it’s easy – it will undoubtedly be harder for them than for children without ACEs – but shouldn’t we try? Shouldn’t we aspire for the best we can for all children?

So, when a child comes from two years behind expectations, having experienced neglect and the severing of links with their biological family, and several moves, and despite all that catches up with expectations for children who have dealt with none of that, shouldn’t we be shouting from the roof tops? I think so.

Often, it is the most privileged who brag the most. It is hard to be impressed by the gains of those who already had a head start, but when the one who was lagging behind, who joined the race a long while after the others and kept on running despite being so far back, manages to catch up, that’s truly brag-worthy.

This is not all about catching-up though. Even if LB hadn’t have caught up, but had kept running, that would be a significant achievement too. He’s still running when it comes to literacy and he may always be, as may many of his other adoptee peers who have educational mountains to overcome, and I think it’s important we acknowledge that every next reading level, every percentile, every point on every scale, is harder won for our children with ACEs. But they’re doing it. They’re out there, surpassing expectations all the time. And I don’t want that to be lost in schools that don’t understand their behaviour or in parents having to fight or getting dragged down by the multitudinous battles they’re facing. We mustn’t mislay the positives. These positives are huge and indicative of something bigger even than ACEs. They’re about human fortitude and our ability to overcome. And a beacon of hope for what can be achieved, when we properly support our most vulnerable.