Lost money on online parenting courses

Contents like "magic spell to help children stop being stubborn", "tricks to help children study independently", "controlling anger" say exactly what Hoang Oanh, in Son Tay, Hanoi, is experiencing with her 10-year-old son. Recently, the boy has tended to oppose his mother.

"Because of the knowledge I received, when they invited me to register for the 500,000 VND course, I joined as a thank you," the 35-year-old woman shared.

But Oanh did not expect that her original goal would be diverted in another direction. From raising children, the learning content changed to "self-development", learning to get rich with tuition fees increasing to 8 million VND, 220 million and 270 million VND. "I was convinced when the teacher said that the 500 million VND tuition fee divided among her three children, each child would receive 170 million VND, could not help. Instead, going to school to improve personal knowledge and develop the family economy, the value left for the children is much greater", said Ms. Oanh.

The incident only stopped when Mr. Thanh (her husband) discovered that his wife had borrowed money everywhere. According to him, his wife and son did not have any major problems, but the teacher's threats made her realize that the situation was very serious.

For the past two months, he has had to work less and stay home more to monitor his wife, control her finances, and contact relatives to stop her from borrowing money. "I had to threaten to inform her grandparents about the 500 million VND debt to get her to stop studying. Many people I know have gone there and lost their lives," he shared.

In Kon Tum, Khanh Ngan, 31, has attended many parenting courses. When she gave birth to her second child, her first daughter showed signs of depression because she thought her parents no longer loved her. Ngan could not understand why her daughter did not love her younger sibling and understand her parents.

Of the dozens of courses she has taken, Ngan said the good ones helped her change her mindset, heal, and apply them to raising her children. But there were also courses that were "false advertising".

In mid-2021, Ngan joined a course from someone who called himself an "NLP instructor" (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). Initially, it was free, only bringing up problems and pain, not providing solutions. "I wanted to get rid of it, so I signed up for an NLP course to heal and teach my children at a cost of 50 million VND," Khanh Ngan, the owner of a veterinary pharmacy, shared.

After three months of diligently waking up at 4am to study, the results were not as expected. At the same time, she also knew many people shared the same feeling of being "cheated" as her, they even had to sell land and borrow money from banks to study. "If only I had researched carefully at the beginning, I wouldn't have lost money and time like that," said the mother of two.

Raising children in today’s society puts parents in a tougher position than ever before. In a 2023 Pew Research Center study of nearly 4,000 American parents, two-thirds said parenting was harder than they thought, and one-third said it was much harder than they expected. They spend more time and money on their children than previous generations, and they feel a lot of pressure to constantly teach and interact with their children. The age of technology, the pandemic, violence, and bullying have also contributed to making parenting more difficult.

Where there is demand, there is supply, so in recent years, especially during and after Covid-19, there has been an explosion of parenting courses. Just searching for a word related to "parenting course" will bring up a series of results that can make you feel like you are in a maze. Many teachers attract students with beautiful words such as "world record holder, leading expert in Vietnam, NLP certificate, international degree".

"Flourishing is good, the only danger is that there are places with poor quality, making money on the pain and fear of others," said sociologist and psychologist Pham Thi Thuy, lecturer at the National Academy of Public Administration, Ho Chi Minh City Branch.

Ms. Thuy has heard a lot about these "high-profile, low-quality" parenting courses from parents. Most recently, a mother came to Ms. Thuy after taking a 100 million VND course with an advertisement of "lifetime warranty commitment", but with no results.

According to Associate Professor Tran Thanh Nam, Vice Principal of the University of Education, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, parenting courses are a profitable business market. There are many people who attend a course, read a few books, call themselves experts, and open classes to teach others.

Mr. Nam affirmed that unqualified people who teach are like teachers who use fake degrees. When they lack knowledge and teach incorrectly, the child will be affected the most, which can cause damage to the child's mental health. Not to mention, they take advantage of these courses to make a profit, making it impossible for these parents to stop, leading to conflicts in the family. In some aspects, many cases have constituted fraudulent and illegal behavior.

"There are loopholes in management. We need a tighter management mechanism, especially in the education market to ensure that it does not harm the community," said Mr. Nam.

According to experts, there are three characteristics that can identify courses that "advertise sheep's head but sell dog meat". First, these courses are advertised very strongly, appear densely on social networks and have a team of consultants following and soliciting. Second, even though it is a "parenting" or "healing" course, gathering dozens or hundreds of students while each child and each person has different wounds, it is certainly not effective. Third, initially opening the class for free but then using psychological tricks to attract students to expensive courses and the content of the course is no longer only about raising children.

"There are people who do education business or use psychological techniques and NLP to sell their products. Once lured into classes following this multi-level education model, there are many tricks that make parents easily buy based on their emotions," said a parenting expert in Hanoi.

Dr. Thuy advises parents who want to teach their children to find out if the teacher has expertise related to the teaching content, how many years of practical experience, and even learn about their personal background. Next, they need to find out if the course information is correct. Some teaching programs apply a multi-level model, so the people around them may be the bait and the henchmen of this group. It is necessary to find out diverse information, including good and bad reviews. Everyone needs to practice critical thinking in this era.

"Raising children is a process that cannot be solved in one go. Ways to make children stop being stubborn and obedient may only be temporary measures and cannot solve the problem, which requires in-depth knowledge of child psychology. In some cases, in-depth psychological therapy is needed and cannot be solved with a few general tips and advice for all parents," said Dr. Thuy.

Thu Hong, founder of an English center in Ho Chi Minh City, said she once attended a two-day course that cost more than ten million VND. When she entered the course, she found that the content was mainly in foreign parenting books. At the end of the class, the consulting staff pressured the students so much that they felt embarrassed if they did not register for the next course of 200 million VND. Ms. Hong said she did not have money, but they urged her to "prove that you do not procrastinate, that you can do it", and in the following days, they continuously called to invite her. "Luckily, I know how to control myself, otherwise I would have gone bankrupt", she shared.

For Ms. Oanh, after more than a year of studying, she has changed a lot, such as learning how to handle emotions, no longer hitting her children, and no longer scolding her husband. However, thinking about the tuition fee of 500 million VND, she feels unwilling.

"I don't expect to get my money back, but I want to share my story to warn parents who want to go to school to raise their children to be alert," said the mother of three.