Five years ago, my mom came to visit and brought a plastic tote full of drawings, worksheets, and other papers from when I was a kid. I began to look through it, but after flipping through a few preschool paintings and coloring book pages, I became bored and overwhelmed by how much there was, and I set the box aside. It remained closed through three moves and ended up in a closet that collects miscellaneous junk.
When I did the 30 day minimalist challenge in January, I was determined to tackle that closet. I pulled down the plastic tote and spent several evenings working my way through it. The box contained everything from day care drawings and hand-made cards to report cards, individualized education plans, and reports and short stories I’d written. Looking over everything provided a sweet and fascinating perspective on my childhood. Rather than seeing my youth through the lens of my memory, I got a more objective glimpse into my early years.
Before doing this, if you had asked me to describe myself as a child, I might have said I was a good student who loved school, enjoyed reading and writing for fun, and showed an early knack for drawing. I wasn’t shy, but as an only child, I spent a lot of time alone, and I would have told you I wasn’t super social.
These impressions of myself must have been shaped by later events or subsequent self-reflection, because the assessments of my elementary school teachers paint a very different picture. It turns out that I received mediocre grades not only in gym class (which does not surprise me at all), but also in art, reading, writing, and math. (Mind you, I basically read and write for a living now, and I think I’m pretty good at it!) My kindergarten teacher wrote on one assignment, “I talk instead of work.” (I had a good laugh at that one.) In case I were tempted to write that off as an unfair assessment by one mean old lady, my second grade teacher similarly commented on a report card that I spent too much time socializing and took far too long to complete my assignments. Apparently I needed to learn to focus on the task at hand and manage my time wisely. My third grade teacher suggested that I might have ADHD, though I was never tested for it.
My fourth grade teacher described me as “bossy” on several report cards and warned my parents that if my behavior didn’t change, I was going to lose friends, which would be such a shame. I can’t help but wonder if that teacher would have written the same comment about any of the boys in her class, or if in today’s world, my bossiness would be fostered as leadership potential.
I don’t remember much about fourth grade, but I do recall one accomplishment of which I was very proud: I got a perfect paper on a math problem-solving contest and was the classroom winner of the competition. This shocked me as much as anybody else, as I had the impression (and I’m pretty sure I’d been repeatedly told) that I was bad at math. Despite my performance in the contest, the teacher continued to give me mediocre math grades. Did I do poorly because I failed to apply myself, or did the teacher have some idea in her mind that girls aren’t good at math? I really don’t know the answer to that question, though I suspect it’s a little of both. Regardless, that one success was incredibly confidence-boosting for me and changed my whole relationship with math going forward.
My academic performance began to turn around later in elementary school, after I was placed in an academic enrichment program for gifted students. Perhaps being told I had a high IQ changed my perception of myself, or maybe I had just been bored in earlier years. A note in my IEP records indicated that my mom had told the team leader that she was worried I’d become lazy if I wasn’t challenged enough. She was probably right about that. I enjoyed the enrichment program, and the teacher’s notes reflect that I was engaged with the topics we were studying. By middle school, I had become the conscientious and successful student my adult self remembered, and while I didn’t go on to graduate from Harvard and haven’t achieved national or international acclaim in any field, I think I’ve been fairly successful in life despite my somewhat rocky start.
My point in saying this is not to laugh in the face of my elementary school teachers or to talk about how smart I am, and I appreciate your indulgence with this bit of navel-gazing. Looking at these records while eight months pregnant, I began to view my younger self not so much as me, but as a child, with a child’s psychology, shaped by her environment and experiences and in need of nurturing. I don’t think I really cared much about grades in the first few years of my formal education, and the negative remarks on my report cards probably didn’t impact me greatly, if I was aware of them. I asked my mom about some of the grades and teacher’s notes, and she didn’t even remember them; I doubt she ever shared them with me. That was probably for the best, as these criticisms might otherwise have become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Instead, my parents believed in me, saw my potential, and focused on the good. They never pushed me to get high grades or even to do my homework, and they didn’t reward those things either. They allowed me to pursue whatever interested me in my free time, which led to a love of reading, learning, and creating that eventually took on a life of its own. When I worked hard on something and did well, like on that math problem-solving contest, I felt the joy of achievement and sought to replicate it. This internal drive was far more valuable and effective than any external pressure could have been.
Going through the box of papers, and thinking about my infant son, I was struck by a key takeaway: where we start is not necessarily indicative of who we will become. We should resist the urge to label children or to treat them as though they have fixed characteristics. The little girl who had trouble focusing did very well on her college and law school entrance exams. Any early problems with reading comprehension were inconsequential when she graduated at the top of her college and law school classes, and her occasional middle-of-the-road marks in elementary school art class didn’t keep her from obtaining an art degree.
Young children are particularly malleable. They all have potential, and we owe it to them not to focus too much on their perceived flaws. When my little boy brings home report cards with negative comments or less than perfect grades, I hope I will put the report cards in some box in a dark closet, praise him when he tries his best, and encourage him to explore whatever sparks a fire in him. The rest, I suspect, will take care of itself.
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