Unlike ‘onewheeljoe’ your post wasn’t fun for me to read because it brought some painful things to the surface about my parenting decisions when my 2 sons were at pre-school and school age. But it was a brilliant read, a post full of so many things to highlight and think about and come back to. I’m going to resist commenting on everything but it’s obvious that apart from all the learning you’ve had about learning, and obviously your thinking about teaching, you have a fantastic instinct about what’s good for your child. Stick with it. My favourite section was the one where you talk about ‘what they forgot to ask’. I want to take those words and put them into something like a song or slideshow so they don’t get lost, and help other parents of young children keep the faith about themselves as parents who know what is truly valuable and interesting about their children when they start to feel down about the soulless graphs which try to capture children in cold statistics – which can be helpful if they are trying to be – but often make parents and child feel inadequate. They are who they are! And there will always be the part of them that doesn’t come out for everyone at school. So we should hold onto that as parents in case we all forget about that part, and worst of all, in case our children start to evaluate themselves against these evaluations.

School can be great but let’s not romanticise – our children won’t tell us everything. My oldest son (who was always off the charts in terms of academic achievement – but told he was ‘too opinionated’ and not liked by all teachers) waited until he was almost done with secondary school to tell me he was deeply unhappy throughout most of his secondary education. How come I didn’t know? That will take too long to write out.

Thanks for the post – and all your posts, Maha. It looks like your education left you intact with exactly who you are, and that’s what makes your posts much more than academic summaries – so much more human.