As Amaya struggled to catch her breath, I tried to reassure her that she was OK, that one grade didn’t define her and that we would figure out what went wrong. But as I watched her, I wasn’t just looking at my daughter. I was back in sixth grade at Molo Middle School.
Technically, a C isn’t failing. But you couldn’t have told sixth-grade-me that. Worse, I turned one grade into a statement about who I was: I wasn’t good at math.
I began to hate it and convinced myself I couldn’t learn it the way I learned everything else. More than three decades later, I still occasionally count on my fingers. Amaya catches me doing it and reminds me that, as a grown woman, I really should be better at this.
Watching her panic over her own C made me realize I had a choice. I could pass down the same anxiety I had carried for years, or I could teach her something I wish I had understood then: You won’t be perfect. You won’t knock every assignment out of the park.
Sometimes you will work hard and still come up short. That doesn’t make you a failure. I want my daughter to hold herself to high expectations.
But there is a difference between teaching a child to strive for excellence and teaching her that anything short of it is unacceptable. If I’m not careful, I’m not passing down ambition. I’m passing down anxiety.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
