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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The Virtual World & Me

Well, things have turned a little unpleasant of late, in the Twittersphere, let’s just say that. Despite my better judgement, the unpleasantness has temporarily silenced me and called into question the wisdom of blogging at all. I say ‘against my better judgement’ because haters gonna hate, it comes with the territory, and I don’t want to be someone that easily cowed. However, I am human and fallible and, it turns out, impacted by unpleasantness whether I want to be or not. I’m just as vulnerable to over-sensitivity as anybody else. In fact, within the current context of multiple writing rejections, perhaps even more so than usual.

This has all led to feelings of being conflicted about blogging and my use of social media. Should I be doing those things? Why? Why not? Do these things have a purpose or are they merely a reflection of narcissism?

Sometimes it is good to stop and re-think and I’m grateful for the reminder to do so.

My pause has taught me several things.

Firstly, Twitter (my main social media platform), plays a more important role in my life than I would have thought feasible or healthy. When I back away from it, I’m left with a hole in my support network. I want to explore this a bit because I am fortunate enough to have a very supportive network of living, breathing, touchable humans around me, so why do I need virtual ones as well? This thought has led to me analysing my network, who it is made up of and what role they play in supporting me. I’ve realised that I have a range of friends/ family and they support me in different ways.

I have the friend who is always there at drop off in the morning, has observed my difficulties at this very specific moment in time (as well as at other times) and empathises with the challenges. I have the friend working with many children whose backgrounds involve trauma. She is extremely knowledgeable and truly trauma informed and we have many an in-depth discussion about Little Bear, but also about work and families and cake. I have the friend I’ve known since high school, who reads my stuff and champions my writing and fills my brain with filth. I have the friends who are always on the end of Whatsapp no matter what we want to discuss. They are the completely un-shockable ones who are as happy talking parenting as they are strange gynaecological issues or niche celebrity crushes. There is the friend who is my longest friend from way back when who I don’t see often and who lives an entirely different lifestyle to my own but with whom I have long, deep and meaningfuls on the rare but brilliant occasions we get to see each other. There is the friend I have from University who is also on the end of Whatsapp or Twitter or a text and knows exactly what I need to hear when I’m fed up or self-doubting, but who is equally happy having a detailed conversation about The Voice or football or shopping. I name but a few (please don’t feel unloved if I haven’t mentioned you).

There are, of course, also my parents and Gary (my mum in law but forever more known as Gary because Little Bear couldn’t say granny) and my brother, who know and take a keen interest, in all the ins and outs of our day to day lives/ challenges/ high points and low points.

All of these people play vital roles in my life and also our lives. Not one of them is an adoptive parent or adoptee and I don’t need them to be. They still support us in multitudinous ways.

I should also point out that none of these relationships are one-sided. I hope that I am also there for all of them, in all the different ways they need me to be. Some of these ways are related to parenting, some of them are not.

I know that I’m very lucky to have this varied band of supporters in my corner. However, I still find myself reaching out to a band of strangers on social media. The main thing I have in common with virtual friends is that the majority of us are adoptive parents and there is undeniably something to be said for talking with people who just get it; no explanations. They just get it because they are living very similar daily experiences to us. It’s natural that a group of people with so much in common will gravitate towards one another – it isn’t exclusive or cliquey, it’s about commonality – a commonality that people often can’t find in their ‘real lives’. It’s a commonality I also feel with other parents of children with additional needs, adopted or not. Similarly, I have many online friends who are speech and language therapists because I too, am a speech and language therapist. I also have online friends who are writers, because I too am trying to make my way in that career.

Though I talk to different groups about different things, when I blog, it’s for anybody who is interested. Consequently, there are now speech therapists who are much more trauma informed and adopters who have heard of Developmental Language Disorder . That has to be a good thing. Social media has allowed a cross-pollination of knowledge and experience we couldn’t have achieved otherwise.

The links I have made with all sorts of different people on social media have been my richest source of CPD for a long time, if ever. I know more about stammering, attachment, adoptee voice, inequality of PAS, the impact of austerity, homelessness, issues around leaving care, what makes a good flash fiction, how to query literary agents, which Netflix series everyone is watching and about a gazillion other things, than I ever would have without Twitter. At its best, Twitter is a rich tapestry of information and knowledge.

Up until recently, groups of like-minded individuals have found safe corners of the tapestry in which to meet, chat, and in the case of the adoption community, hold one another if necessary. I know that sounds weird and like a virtual hug from a virtual stranger wouldn’t do anything for anybody, but I know that it has been a lifeline for some. Earlier this week, due to the unpleasantness, I was feeling fed up and more than a little over Twitter and took the uncomfortable step of admitting as much. Many of those virtual strangers reached out to me, with kind words, reassurance and encouragement. They’ve got me, in the way my physical support network also have. Those people are not holograms inside a computer cable. They are real people, with real friend networks, real hobbies, real challenges and real care for others. And as weird as people might think it is, I need them. We need each other.

There are those who will argue that you can’t be friends with people you’ve never met. You can and I am. And just as I hope to be there for my physical support network, I also try to be there for my virtual one. Isn’t that what friendship is: still being there when the shit’s getting thrown? Brushing each other off, making each other laugh, answering those pleas from the darkness?

There will undoubtedly be those who say that adopters only care about other adopters. I wish I didn’t have to say this, but I will: I love my disparate Twitter friends, of whom there are adoptees, birth parents, adopters, foster carers, grandparents caring for grandchildren, social workers, teachers, psychologists, authors, accountants, musicians… (insert any role you can think of), of all genders, nationalities, colours, creeds, sexual persuasions. I will happily engage with anybody who behaves respectfully towards myself and others. I will offer a listening ear; a virtual hug.

Sometimes, the people who need those things most are unfortunately unable to reach out for them in a respectful way. That saddens me and I wish them well down the virtual waves and hope they find what they need somewhere out there.

The messages of loveliness restored my faith in what I’m doing in the virtual world. I’m not wandering around, lost. I’m learning, connecting, sharing. I’m becoming informed and informing others. I’m hanging out with my friends.

As for the blogging, there will be people who like it and want to read it. There will be those who learn from it, feel challenged by it, feel reassured or heard by it. There will be those who are disinterested or opposed to it. I would suggest they don’t read it. There will be those who wouldn’t miss it if it was gone and those who would.

I know I need it and that might be a selfish thing, but where some people talk or cry or box or run, I write. That’s what I do. It helps me sort out my head, organise my thoughts, get objectivity. It helps me be a better parent.

There will be those who say I shouldn’t write about my son, but, ultimately, that is between me and him. He knows I write, and as much as he is able to understand consenting to it, he does. Where I can include his voice, I do. I also write about my other son and my husband. Today I wrote all about my friends. I would argue the consent issues are universal, across all people, and I would never disparage those whom I love.

I use what small voice I have to spread the word about DLD, the impact of trauma, cuts to speech and language therapy services, how to improve parent relationships with schools and little talked about issues like PMS or continence. I try to use my (teeny) platform for something constructive.

I heard Mary Portas speak this week too. She talked about how we never hear people being honest about their vulnerabilities, especially with regards parenting, and how this impacts upon the cultures we create – both inside and outside of the business world. She’s right. We often think everyone else has it all sewn up because being honest about finding aspects of parenting difficult is hard and taboo. If I can make one parent, adoptive or otherwise, feel able to ask for help, take advice or just feel heard, then the blogging is worth it. Does that involve putting myself and my own vulnerabilities out there? Yes. A writer’s greater source is themselves and their own life and experience. Is that hard? Yes, sometimes it is.

As I’m learning with most things in life, nothing is wholly good or wholly bad. Blogging is the same. It has huge plus points but does it also have risks? Yes, of course it does. I’m more than aware of them. But, as with everything, you weigh it all up and you do what you see fit. Of course I exercise caution, of course I double and triple check my words for appropriateness and future readability, of course I keep my children at the centre of everything I do. Then, I make sure we are wrapped in the arms of our support network – physical and virtual – and try to remember that everything else is extraneous.