Tag: school

Learning to Separate Grades and Self-Worth

I love my son’s school. I’m grateful every day for what they’ve done for him. He’s had many of the same teachers for years, and this is the first year the school expanded to 10th grade. My son is part of that first cohort, which made our first 10th-grade parent–teacher conference feel like a milestone.

When his homeroom teacher started talking, something tightened in my chest—because she wasn’t talking about grades at all. She was talking about him.

I don’t remember my mom going to conferences when I was growing up. What I do remember is bringing home my report card, as if I were handing over a verdict. Straight As weren’t celebrated—they were expected. Anything less felt like disappointment and shame, from both the people around me and myself. The focus was always on performance.

That pressure fed my perfectionism. At school, and then at work, it felt like I was constantly being graded—on every email, every meeting, every interaction. It wasn’t about getting better; it was about avoiding failure. Anything less than perfect wasn’t “something to improve next time.” It was proof that I wasn’t enough.

My son’s school feels like the opposite of that. They use grades to track progress, but grades aren’t the focus. He is.

And with the right support, he’s thriving. He’s doing math. Writing paragraphs. Learning skills we weren’t sure he’d ever be able to do until we found this place—this environment that encourages him, believes in him, and helps him believe in himself. He feels capable.

His new homeroom teacher told me how he encourages other students. How he volunteers to show them they can do it. How he asks thoughtful, timely questions on their community field trips. She said he feels like a leader.

Hearing that felt like healing something in me I didn’t even know was still hurting.

My son is proud when he gets good grades, but he’s just as proud when he gives his best effort, even if the grade isn’t perfect. He sees value in trying. I never learned that. I tied my worth to my performance. Anything less than perfect felt like failure. And letting myself be proud felt like giving up on perfection.

Watching him, I’m learning—slowly—to separate my performance from my identity. To recognize that being imperfect doesn’t make me a failure. That I can be a good, caring person even when I make mistakes. That disappointment doesn’t have to become a shame spiral reinforced by old messages from my childhood.

My son is learning what I didn’t learn until adulthood: that effort matters, growth matters, and who you are is more than any grade. And I’m learning it, too, because of him.

Fine.

On days when I work from home, I like to pick my son up from school. I sit in the line of cars slowly making their way to the exit and wait for the teacher to send him out.

As he walks toward the car, he looks exhausted most days. School asks more of him each year—more performance, more endurance, more emotional regulation, and more social navigation.

He throws his backpack into the back of the car and plops down in the front passenger seat.

“Hi, pal. How was school?” I ask.

“Fine.”

That’s it.

Fine. One word. One syllable. Full stop.

“Well, what did you do in…” and I’ll rotate through his subjects.

Sometimes I get a short answer, but most of the time he says he doesn’t remember.

As a parent, it’s frustrating. I can see that he’s tired, but I don’t want him to think that—by not asking how his day went—I don’t care. I genuinely want to know how his day was, what he did, and what he learned. I’m curious about his experiences and want to understand more about what he does and how he sees the world.

Additionally, my son struggles with his memory, so I feel pressure to ask the question right away—for a chance to hear any details before they fade. If I don’t get an answer, it feels like I’ve lost the opportunity to connect with him. It becomes an unmet need when his answer feels like it shuts the door.

But that’s my need.

His need, after working so hard all day just to get through it, is not to engage in that moment.

I recently read an article about how school is harder for kids today, and something clicked.

It may seem simple, but a genuine answer to the “how was school today” question requires considerable effort and decision making to synthesize information from a busy day.

When my son gets in the car, he’s not just carrying books in his backpack. He’s carrying the weight of every demand he had to meet. He’s carrying the exhaustion from seizure-disrupted sleep. He’s carrying the side effects of his medication. He’s used up every bit of energy just to make it through the day.

“Fine” isn’t a brush-off. It’s an exhausted plea for peace.

The article offered a simple but powerful suggestion:

Consider the purpose. Ask yourself whether you want to gather information or simply connect with your child.

As much as it feels urgent to gather information about his day—as a way to connect—it often does the opposite. It leaves me frustrated and leaves him more drained, trying to process my question, reach into his memory, and find the right words. Instead of connecting, in those moments, we drift farther apart.

My goal, always, is to connect with him.

I want him to know I’m happy to see him. I want him to know that I feel lucky to be able to pick him up. I want him to know that I see him. I want him to know that I appreciate how hard he worked to make it through the day and that I hope he’s proud of himself, because I am.

Instead of starting with a question that requires him to do more work, maybe I will start with a statement. Maybe one of those.

Or maybe I’ll just tell him how lucky I am to be his dad.

Here We Go Again

Here we go again
Same old stuff again
Marching down the avenue
Six more weeks and we’ll be through
I’ll be glad and so will you
U.S. Army Marching and Running Cadence

I was never much of a runner. I had the look of one. Tall and skinny, with long legs that should have made running easier. I was even a fast sprinter. But anything longer than the size of a football field, and my brain would scream at every one of my moving parts to stop.

Imagine how much fun I had when I joined the army, where nearly everything involved…you guessed it…running. We’d wake up early every morning, head downstairs, and fall into formation. Our drill sergeant and his team would stand in front, bark out a few orders, and then my fellow soldiers and I would turn and follow our leaders, matching the rhythm of our steps to theirs, for however many miles we’d run that day.

A few minutes into the run, one of the sergeants would begin calling out a cadence. Military cadences are rhythmic chants used during marches and runs to maintain a consistent pace, foster teamwork, and boost morale. They help synchronize movements, improve endurance, and build unit cohesion.

They were magic. They kept me focused on the rhythmic call and response rather than the fact that I hated running, that my lungs and legs hurt, and that I should stop. Because I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t let my squad down. I couldn’t let myself down. I had to push through.

One of the cadences, “Here We Go Again,” summed up basic training perfectly: the same grueling routine, day after day. Wake. Run. Eat. March. Train. Eat. March. Train. Eat. Chores. Bed. Every day, for 8 weeks, the same thing.

Anytime I find myself repeating a pattern, especially a challenging one, I think of those early morning runs. I think of that need to push through, to not let my squad and myself down.

Here we go again
Same old stuff again

We’re approaching one of those times. Toward the end of the school year, our son is always exhausted. He’ll have a harder time waking up in the morning and randomly fall asleep in the afternoon. Around the same time, baseball, one of the few non-school activities he still enjoys, starts demanding more energy and mental bandwidth. We also start figuring out what the following school year will look like, scheduling IEP meetings, and talking with his school and the district about our son’s challenges, needs, and potential. It’s mentally, physically, and emotionally draining on the entire family.

Six more weeks and we’ll be through.

Six more weeks until the school year ends. Six more weeks to push through. Six more weeks of having a routine, structure, and certainty. Six more weeks until the story that has been written ends, and there are only blank pages unless we can write down a new plan before then.

It’s exhausting. It’s like those basic training marathon runs, where somehow we’d run in a circle but only be running uphill, defying physics, logic, and any sense of fairness. It tests our endurance and commitment. Parts of my brain are screaming to just stop.

But we can’t stop. We can’t let our son down. We can’t let ourselves down. We have to keep going. We have to fill those pages with a plan for the next year, until we find ourselves again six weeks from the end of the school year with the same cadence echoing in my head.

Here we go again.

Same old stuff again.