Comparison Is For Shopping

So as you may know, we are a homeschooling family. I ended up in that pigeonhole totally by accident- though I do believe that God put certain key people in my path at the right times, which led me to where we are in that journey today. I always figured we'd put our kids in school like "everyone else" when the time came; the problem is, we were blessed with a November baby for our firstborn, and in California, that means he could've started Kindergarten at age 4/turning 5, or a year later. We decided to try preschool part-time when he was 3/turning 4, and it was okay, but not great, and I decided that I'd rather he be one of the older kids in his peer group. As such, we did not rush to register for kindergarten after that experience. But, he was so motivated to learn to read that we pretty much covered kindergarten at home in that year following the Preschool Experiment. Truth be told, once I had visited the classroom at the school we were considering, I saw how much time the poor teacher had to spend just trying to manage a roomful of K/1st graders, and I couldn't bear the thought of sending my baby away to school every day when we were doing so well on our own. So we just kept right on going from there!

Fast forward a few years and I'd say now the same firstborn child is working at roughly 4th-5th grade level or above in most subjects. He's a voracious reader, which makes my job so much easier; just don't ask him to write a book report! Writing is definitely high on our list for things to tackle this year. I think we're a bit "behind" in math, but he knows the basic operations and how to solve problems. Math in general comes pretty easily to him, so I haven't been concerned. However, I thought it would be nice to jump ahead a bit from where we are, and so I printed off a placement test for the Singapore Math curriculum we've been using to see if he might be ready to skip a book or two. He was excited at this prospect at first, (Ooh! A math test! No, really, he wanted to take it! Silly kid) but quickly became discouraged as he started going through the test.

He kept asking me questions and clearly needed me to sit with him, or at least nearby, to be available for questions- mostly terminology that we haven't covered yet, like "write 4972 in expanded form". (Heck, *I* had to look that one up...) Unfortunately, it was lunchtime in the middle of a busy day at this point and so I hollered from the kitchen to just put it aside if he couldn't do it and we'd either go ahead and order the next book, or go back and figure it out together another time. I walked back into the room where he was sitting a few minutes later and my poor, sweet boy was fighting back some mighty big tears. Surprised, I asked him what was wrong and he blurted out, "If I can't pass this test I will be BEHIND and I won't be in 5th grade!!" Oh dear. How did that thought get in his little noggin? Furthermore, WHY does it matter?

Well, so much for lunch. I dropped everything, sat right down in the chair across the table from him, and we had a talk. I reiterated to him one of my biggest goals, which is for my kids to KNOW HOW to learn, and, hopefully, love it- not learn how to memorize facts long enough to pass a test. He has heard me say this a million times, he knows this, and he gets it. I want my kids to have time to explore and play, and to experiment with things in order to find their strengths and passions. I am also a big fan of life lessons, and perhaps my number one rule of homeschooling is this: "homeschool" does NOT look like "school at home". My kids do not need to be sitting at a desk, looking attentively at me, in order to be learning. They are learning all the time; I couldn't stop them if I tried! So their "grade" doesn't mean squat in our world- simply tells them which kids to sit with in Sunday School, to be perfectly honest. But lately, he has been preoccupied with what he "should" know and what grade he would be in if he went to a traditional school, and I'm really not sure why.

I reminded him that at 9 years old he has accomplished a lot: there are few books he would be unable to pick up and read on his own (this is the kid who has already read the entire Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series cover to cover, at least twice each). He has an advanced belt in karate. He is gifted with music. He is GOOD at math, no matter what "level" his next book is. I said, "even if you weren't in fifth grade, why would that matter?" He couldn't really give me an answer but it broke my heart that he was so upset about it. And I think the poor kid has started to wrestle with the same lesson I find myself having to re-learn every year: Comparing ourselves to others is a bad idea, and rarely can lead to anything good when it comes to homeschooling. What works for one family may not work for another; heck, in my experience what works with one CHILD may not work for the others! But nevertheless, every fall I start to feel the pressure of what I "should" be doing, worrying about what I may have forgotten, and it makes me feel like I will never measure up.

Here's the cool part of this dilemma: Every time I feel this way, I end up reaching out to someone who has walked the path a lot longer than me, and they always, without fail, pick me up, dust me off, and set me straight again. God sent me the person I needed to hear from just this weekend, and I am so thankful!

It's been a few weeks since The Math Test incident. We've decided we won't skip ahead, we'll just order the book that comes next, and likely will be able to skip parts of it and move on from there that much sooner. And while I realize there are still some things I need to change, and I've got to somehow get more organized- it turns out I have just been measuring myself with the wrong yardstick.

"Marilla, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?" -Anne of Green Gables