I write a lot about my parenting fails – not just because there are a lot of them (though there are), but also because writing is how I process things. So when my daughter presses all my buttons and I finally react, I come to terms with how I acted, and how I can act better, by sitting down and writing about it.
But last night, my husband and I experienced a parenting win – a win that was HUGE, so huge that our daughter will likely never understand it, even though we kind of explained it to her.
Yesterday, Pop Tart took a math test. They take them on computers and get their scores back right away. She got a 90%.
Pop Tart came to live with us when she was 9. At the time, she was repeating 3rd grade and still on an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). She struggled with spelling, reading, math – school in general. Luckily, it was 3rd grade, so the most homework she had was studying for her spelling test each week, but guess what? We made her study. Every day on the drive home from school, we would quiz her on her words. In the mornings, we took turns reading from a tongue twister book on the way to school in order to work on her reading.
But math was another story. Pop Tart was very compartmentalized. School stuff belonged at school, and she was not open to parents being teachers. She would often simply shut down when we tried to work on anything (like math) that was openly “school work”.
Things got better as she advanced in school and had homework – because suddenly she needed our help in figuring her math out. And we knew exactly what she was working on to help her with it. But she was still resistant when we tried to help her extrapolate from there, to take it one step further, or even teach her a slightly different method than the one she was learning in school. She also remained on an IEP. While she was getting better at school work, she still struggled to maintain grade level work. And not because she is not smart, or has anxiety, or even because she was in turmoil during the years of educational foundation. The biggest part was her attitude.
Regardless of how little time a child spends in their family of origin, those families still have a huge impact on the child. Pop Tart was with her family for 7 years. It was a family that did not value education in the same way C and I do.
Pop Tart’s biological mother is quite attractive. Pop Tart herself is a beautiful child. The messages she got from her family of origin were that her looks were what mattered – that, as a girl, being pretty was more important than being smart. And while I do not believe anyone ever told her she was dumb, it is very clear that none of them expected her to be smart. Those were messages that Pop Tart internalized. For her, it has always been more important to be liked than to be smart. In some cases, she would actually sabotage herself because she did not want to be seen as smart. Because people do not like smart girls, they only like the pretty girls. And she needed people to like her. Because she needed people to take care of her…
Pop Tart has been with us almost three years now. We have fought this idea that she should not be smart because people do not like smart girls more than anything else. We have pushed academics and refused to accept her compartmentalization. Oh the fights we have had about school work over summer. But we have done it.
And last year, at the end of 5th grade, it seemed like we were winning. When we had her IEP meeting, the math teacher was actually surprised she had an IEP. She was keeping up in class just fine, and even volunteering to go to the board to answer questions.
Then this summer, we moved to a more affluent neighborhood – one with significantly better schools. And the struggle was back on. What was review for her classmates at the beginning of the year was actually all new material for Pop Tart. Math homework once again became a battlefield.
Her school’s policy is that passing is 80%. I am not lying. If kids got less than an 80% on their test, they studied some more with their teacher and then retook the test. At the start of the year, she was having to retake every math test. She would get over 80% the second time, but never the first.
Slowly, we started coming out of that. But she still fought it. She still fought the idea that she should (or even could) be smart. But the work we (and some pretty great teachers) have done with her the last few years finally started coming to fruition.
Then her IEP was re-evaluated this year, the tests she took showed her at grade level, no longer in need of the IEP. As we moved further into the school year and she had the same kind of math base as her classmates, her test scores rose to 80-85% on a regular basis – no need to retake the tests. She could see the results of those tests – see that she was at grade level (or above) in some areas. Suddenly, she was starting to feel smarter.
And so yesterday, my amazing little girl got a 90% on her math test, for like the 5th test in a row. And this time, she believed she could have done better.
Cue heavenly choir.
I do not necessarily expect this to last. As she moves on into middle and high school, the fact that she is a conventionally beautiful girl will start playing a bigger role in her life. She may very well revert back to the idea that academics are nowhere near as important as the social side of school, that being attractive is more important than being smart.
But for one night, for one night I had a child who believed she was smart and capable and expected more of herself. And I am going to hold on to that a lot longer than I do any of those parenting fails.
About the author: Erin Shanendoah is an author, editor, and blogger who… Oh, let’s face it, Erin is “the man”. She works in management. She has been known to use the phrase “my staff”. But as happy as she is being the sole earner for her family, she can’t not write. She has experimented throughout the years writing multiple blogs and submitting her fiction for publication. She now has her “one true blog” at Dear Alien Anthropologists, where she writes about parenting, pets, personal finance, and even posts some original fiction.
1 Comment
This resonates so much with me! Our daughters have so much potential. Keep on keeping on!