A Parent's Pride

There are moments in a parent's life when you're just proud, such as when your child makes an A, earns an award, or graduates from school. But today I realized that even the somewhat smaller things are often the moments when your pride just swells and you realize that your child is turning into someone special, someone you are proud to know. Today was such a day.

Hannah's taking AP World History this year, and she's struggled with it, not because she's not smart, but because it's taken quite a bit of learning to adapt to the teacher's style and expectations. What she's always done well just wasn't going to work on this guy this year, and she's been frustrated. This is a child who wants to be a journalist, who has always written stories and had an active imagination; now she second guesses what she writes, though she has learned to adapt for a specific audience. I suppose it's all been a learning experience, though she's still bemoaning her 3.9 average in lieu of a 4.0. Anyway, she has put a lot of time and effort into this class, really trying and stretching herself. So when she got an essay back today and had earned only a 1/5, she'd finally had enough. All year she's worked and wondered when essays were graded capriciously, and she hasn't had the courage to confront the teacher to find out what she should do differently or to ask why she earned the grade. (She does not get this from me, obviously). But today was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back; her best friend earned a 5/5 and even two friends who consistently do worse in the class than she does earned 2/5. So she stayed after school and talked with the teacher, asking him specific questions and pointing out that he'd only given her two lines of ambiguous feedback. He read over the assignment and agreed that he probably should have given her more credit than he did, and he raised the grade to a 3/5 (which she still thinks is too low, but hey, it's definitely improved!). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------My point in all this is I'm just so proud of her for recognizing that she'd worked hard and deserved to know what she'd done wrong. As it turned out, she hadn't done as much wrong as she'd thought, and her grade improved. She approached it perfectly, simply asking him what she could have done to improve, and from that, her grade rose. I am just full to bursting with motherly pride...My baby's learning to stand up for herself. Really, could a mother hope for or ask for more? I don't think so. ~taminator40