Testing... 1, 2, 3

Today Hannah took her kindergarten readiness testing. Most schools do it at the beginning of the school year, ours does it now so that they can balance out the classes based on the results. I've been excited for this for some time, while also much more nervous/unsure then a parent really should be. I think too often I find myself judging myself as a parent based on my child's success -- if she is good, I am good and doing a good job. If she is...well, not good, I am failing. I know parenting has a lot to do with how children thrive (I sadly have too many examples of poor parenting resulting in children who struggle to think otherwise), but that some is honestly up to the kid-- their own ability, their own talent. I'm not sure when I'll be able to divorce myself from grading myself based on Hannah's grade (and I think Hannah will most likely get the brunt of it, maybe because she is the oldest, maybe because I see too much of myself in her), but hopefully it will happen--after all, at some point her success will purely be hers and her failures also.

Today was not that day. Today I felt my parenting/teaching on the line as a colleague, someone I work with every day, judged my child's readiness to learn, while I sat and tried not to interject (yes, it was painfully hard). And, at the end, the results I could have predicted. Hannah's number sense is fantastic, as is her early reading skills. Her drawing of a person lacked certain details and her diamond was... lopsided? (Which of course makes it a square.) I also found myself just as competitive as I was in my high schools day (when I swore I'd put that all behind me, but really, just buried it down deep). Honestly, today's test was how good am I at viewing my child's success objectively and not taking it personally. I give myself a D-. Hannah, of course, gets an A. (in a fit of restraint, I won't put her actual score--see, I'm doing good!)

All this is just exacerbated by the fact that next weekend my parenting really will be judged.

[Funny story: later on, while getting a celebratory ice cream cone, Hannah managed to get her foot stuck in a rather tricky place (tricky like: how did she do that?). Kevin freed her foot and while she skipped off, muttered "that is our advanced child." Glad her readiness testing did not include walking across a flat surface without tripping or running into a wall--the results would have been much different. And I again felt a pain of kinship-I will not tell you how many walls I've hit.]