This?
I still don’t really get what your point is but I guess you’re never going to expand or explain it so I’ll leave you to do you.
For those strugging to understand:
- UM01 is suggesting that I respond to the teacher advocating that children should learn self-control with "So you’re saying that the schools including all teachers are useless and a waste of money because the children should teach themselves instead”.
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People have called my approach ‘extreme’ but I don’t think it is extreme at all, and it works!
My son came back home for lunch today and after a quick chat, he sat down in the play area and got a few wooden train tracks and toys to play with.
Because he’s not used to having TV and computers all the time, simple toys are plenty entertaining for him and he has to use his imagination.
The other day, he asked me to buy a toy boat to play with in the water. I gave him a piece of wood and told him to use his imagination! 
in the end, he had great fun, with the piece of wood being a small boat and then he found a bigger piece which he then said was a ‘cruise ship’ (learned from peppa pig).
That’s pretty concerning for a 13 yo
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You could have removed the half quote and just left Phil’s post and then it would have been perfectly clear who you were responding to and perhaps make it clearer what you actually meant.
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he’s 5 years old.
We were pretty similar with ours - no TV but Thomas the Tank engine episodes on an old computer sometimes. Drawing, painting, reading, paper-mache, cooking and imaginative play.
But, now they are teenagers, all they seem to want to do is watch something or look at social media.
Leading by example or getting them involved doesn’t work either. It did, when they were younger.
One of mine would diligently dead-head the roses once a week and cut the grass - when he was around nine.
Now I don’t think he knows where the garden is.
It’s a bloody nightmare!
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As all their peers do. Even the Töffli crowd is similar, just that they have to work on the farm occasionally. And more often gang go suufe.
Maybe it will be all OK. I remember when TV was meant to be so harmful. And I watched a lot and turned out OK. Although some here might disagree.
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I think this is an important difference. You can reasonably easily distract a 5 year old with a chunk of wood or box of Lego or whatever but when they hit teens parents are just not cool any more so you don’t have the same leverage as you did when they’re littlies.
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If it’s any consolation in my experience it’s a phase they go through and then they seem to discover the outside world again and reach some kind of balance.
You just need to give them time to figure it out for themselves.
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My both kids didn’t use devices when they came for lunch break in KiGa at the age of 5. I think it is a normal approach, not an extreme. The problems that you have with toddlers and preschoolers in the matter of consumption of digital content are nothing compared to teenage years.
We even didn’t have TV at that time. We only bought it after Billag was replaced with Serafe and we had to start paying TV tax anyway.
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It was just an hour break anyway, maybe a bit more. And they’re supposed to eat , brush their teeth etc which can occupy their whole time…we had a lot of toys to play with, maybe too many toys.
We had a very big issue and just went nuclear and took all away. We have had a contract from the start that if rules are breached we could do this as the devices belong to us.
We now told him he needs to gain it all back bit by bit (we made a plan). It’s not easy and I wish we had not gotten to this.
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I wish you good luck!
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I agree and I am not sure what to do about it.
Sometimes I pay attention to details so I personally got what UM was trying to say. But I don’t agree on this one - imho it is rarely a good idea to antagonise the teachers who might confront themselves with a whole set of issues we are not even aware of. I learned this from a former colleague of mine who went all guns blazing on teachers in a school somewhere in Wollishofen, where more than half of the kids were kids with a foreign background with various degrees of language (and other) abilities and various degrees of family support. I know her hubby too and in hindsight I do believe she should have let him deal with this school stuff. (which I, for one, did do in the end because some people might be just better than us at dealing with “adversity”) 
IMHO, it’s better to take the high road and try to make a compelling argument with the teachers instead; if that doesn’t work, raise the issue with other parents and then with the school director (who might prove to be “useless” as in our case, but here we go again)
On a different note, we have some acquaintances who determined a senior neighbour to agree with kids playing near their home; he was always out and screaming at kids to keep it down. One of the moms of the kids is a kindergarten teacher and she explained him very nicely that kids need to play outside for a healthy development and she had this professional authority on her side, so it is possible. She is a very gentle woman anyway and she convinced the old guy to agree to have a playground installed there. Now I know where to look for my younger one when she’s out of sight lol.
When my older child was in primary school, I raised some issues with the parents and everyone seemed supportive and kind, but then nothing happened. They also criticised the teacher(s) but told me nothing can be done as it is her last class and nobody wants to confront her. Some of them complained that kids have too many tasks for home for the English classes, which was a total BS imo. The English language teacher was a competent and cool guy. But we’re all different, I guess.
In a similar situation to ours, a Swiss friend of mine just moved her child to a private school. I don’t know if it was better there, maybe it was better from some pov and worse from another pov. Sure thing is this decision has put a lot of financial strain on them but hey ho… We didn’t even think of this solution as our older one did well in school otherwise and the other teachers (like the one in Begabtenförderung) were really nice…so it wasn’t a school issue.
Frankly I don’t have any advice to give, just don’t antagonise the teachers… 
Telling them something along the line of “maybe you’re useless” it’s bound to provoke some negative and even counterproductive reactions.
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Which is why I think it is important to set their behaviours, routines and attitudes when they are young, otherwise you’re fighting a losing battle when they enter their teens.
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I agree, and know of cases whether this backfired and the teacher became vindictive towards the child to the extent that the child had to be removed from the school and put into private school.
Also you can’t please all the people all of the time. Some complain there is too much homework, others complain there is too little.
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But some teachers are just not suitable for the job and should be doing something else more suited to their temperament.
There are some great teachers but I’ve got loads of experiences here when teachers (and school heads) have failed miserably.
Do you think it is OK for teachers to antagonise, or mistreat kids but for the teachers not to be called out on that?
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We live in eternal hope.
The best advice I had was from my dad who told me when my son was young to “choose your battles”, which works pretty well especially with teens, and saves your sanity. Routines and behaviours which were easy to instill when they were pre-schoolers / primary don’t always carry through to teens and either you can pick them up on every transgression or you can concentrate on the stuff that really matters.
The most effective ones that stick are things we all have to adhere to - meals at the dining table, no phones in the bedroom at night, no outdoor shoes traipsing through the house, that kind of thing.
I agree that a structured environment at home is good so they get much needed boundaries but I think they also need to feel safe enough to let rip and challenge. This way they learn to do “adulting” in the safe environment of home instead of somewhere less forgiving or tolerant.
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