Benchmarking my kid
Joelle - a Practical Parent Friday, September 11, 2009 at 1:04PM It’s an unavoidable consequence of society that parents compare their child’s development and accomplishments versus the child’s peers – our friends’ kids and their classmates. Dr. Jessica’s daughter is an incredibly voracious reader – she’s 12 days older than my eldest who is not, shall we say, voracious about reading in spite of the fact that both his parents love to read. As the Rabbi taught us – kids are wired and our job as parents is to figure out their wiring. This benchmarking comes at a cost...
It’s frustrating to be face to face with something imperfect about your child. A lot of us want to “fix” them. The proliferation of tutoring programs and the overreliance on standardized tests to both fix and measure the progress of our children is testament to this compulsion. And the message we’re sending to our kids is that you have to be the best at everything and if you are not, I’m going to force you to spend extra time on the things you like least until you are the best at everything. No wonder the most depressed group of teenagers are upper middle class children – parents with unrealistic expectations. I recommend this article from the American Psychological Association – it made me think about how we are raising our kids and draws from multiple studies.
It’s not only academic – we benchmark against each other for extracurricular activities too. Experian released a report today about K-6 children’s involvement in after school activities - a perfect benchmarking tool. My husband will be thrilled to see the increasing interest in lacrosse starting in 5th grade. Soccer peaks in third grade. Massive internet usage is around the corner. Hockey peaks twice – 3rd and 6th. Anyone have a theory for that?
It turns out that third grade is the year when most kids start to pick up and focus on hobbies and sports. I notice this more already – Benjamin has much clearer preferences about what he wants to do (prefer drums to piano, golf to jujitsu) than he did 4 months ago. I thought he was just being a little cantankerous – but it turns out, he’s normal. Benchmarking perfectly. And we’ll have to work with him to cultivate his strengths and interests. And maybe, over time, he’ll come to love reading.
How do you deal with your own need to benchmark?
Joelle - a Practical Parent
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Reader Comments (3)
Joelle, this is an interesting topic.
I found being a soccer coach of a club soccer team for the same group of boys for 2-3 years to be very helpful for providing me perspective on the overall topic of benchmarking as a parent. This was an athletic group of competitive boys and one of the best soccer teams in their age group in Chicago.
Here is what I saw that has been helpful to me as I parent:
The boys individually had good days and bad days. As I thought about it, who doesn't? I certainly have days where I feel I can perform in a world-class manner and other days when...not so much. This helped me to grant my kids permission to not always have to be at the tip top of their game.
Sometimes I would notice lackluster play from a player and then learn that he was not at school the following day due to illness. After 2-3 years with the same players, I could almost begin to tell if a player was getting sick before he knew it. What I learned was that the physical state of our bodies many times dictates how we can perform. So now when I see what I consider under-performance from my kids or my subordinates, I will take a moment to look at at bigger picture before I make assessments.
Something else that I saw was that the players' bodies were changing and they were learning to use those changing bodies. A player would be dominant for a period of time would then struggle four months later for many weeks and then return to outstanding play. There almost seemed to be a cycle of performance that I could observe related to their physical development. This made me a lot more patient as a coach. If a player was coming to practice, giving effort, and seeking to learn, I became much more satisfied than just measuring the 'on the field' results. In the long run, I imagine those players will do fine if they continue to show up, learn and give effort. I have translated this to my children's academics. Who cares who is reading what and how much? Show up, seek to learn, and give effort, and I will be satisfied with the result.
I think if I have learned anything it is that growing up is a marathon and not a sprint. If you ever 'win' at all, you certainly don't win in elementary school. And you don't lose in elementary school either. There was an interesting article that none of the recent valedictorians in our local high school, one of the top in the state, were ever placed in an elementary gifted and talented program. I think patience and broader perspective are what I think are helping me as a parent deal with this topic.
Thanks JW - I think the marathon approach to parenting is the right one AND you sound like a terrific soccer coach. I'm trying my hand at that tomorrow as a substitute for Neal while he's out of town...
Show up + learn + make an effort seems to be a formula for life success.
While it may be human nature to look for evidence that validates your point of view, I found this article to be broadly relevant. It is a study about which high school students are most likely to graduate from college:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20090910/ts_usnews/whichhighschoolstudentsaremostlikelytograduatefromcollege
In a nutshell...
"The high scores identify students who study hard, pay attention, and do their best. It's these qualities that parents and teachers should aim to develop. And if they succeed in doing that, then those students are likely to do better in their eighth-grade tests and in later life," McPherson says.