Measuring Up – 2

I asked a question in my previous post “Does your child measure up?” Now, I would like to rephrase that question and ask, “Do you measure your child against other children and for what purpose?”

My son, Jeremiah, is my first child. He took his first unaided steps at 9 months of age, which is really young. This happened soon after watching his 3rd cousin, who was 6 months older, walking. (I searched on Google to find out exactly how they were related.) However, sometimes he would wet his bed up until around 6 years of age. He played hard all day and slept deeply at night, so deeply that he couldn’t wake himself up when he needed to urinate, not even when we took him ourselves. Was something wrong with him? No, and he eventually outgrew this problem. Some things just take time and don’t need medical attention or parental pressure.

The same morning that I pondered on this topic, I began to read the 1st book of a trilogy that my daughter, Samantha, borrowed from the library. The book is called, The Wind Singer, by William Nicholson and is the 1st of the Wind on Fire trilogy. I haven’t been able to put these books down. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that the theme in The Wind Singer is about the lie behind measuring people by using exams on certain subjects. The people in the story are living inside a large city and are tested every year to prove their intelligence and their worth from as early as 2 years of age. (By the way, these books are not for sensitive readers as the author doesn’t sugarcoat his storytelling, although I do recommend them.)

My thoughts on this subject are best expressed through an encounter I had with a near stranger. Earlier this year, we had a visitor whom we hardly knew. For some reason I was talking with our guest about the education system. I told him how school systems are only able to measure certain types of intelligences, like mathematics and language, but how there are many children sitting inside these schools who might be good in other areas. As an example, I suggested that a child who is good at gardening would not be recognized in his or her area of intelligence. Our guest then told me that his son struggled in school, but was now happy as an adult doing landscaping.

I hadn’t known this about his son before the conversation, but I don’t believe the example I gave was a coincidence. I believe the Holy Spirit was speaking through me even though I wasn’t aware of the significance of my words until he shared his own son’s experience. If you would like to read more about the Holy Spirit then you can start by reading my post in my blog, Happy Moms, Happy Homes called “Discovering Your Potential – Part 3 of 5.”

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Measuring Up – 1

Jessica walking Amanda to school.

As I was working on my last post “Some Things Take Time,” I began to ponder these next two posts on measuring up. It’s such an important topic that I took my time writing this, wanting to make sure that I communicate it as clearly as possible.

Does Your Child Measure Up?

Most of us have seen charts that measure a child’s developmental stages from infant to toddler. These charts help us as parents to know when our baby should be rolling over, sitting up on his or her own, crawling and the like. We need to be informed, because we spend more time with our children than the medical professionals do and we might notice something out of the ordinary that they never saw.

It’s important that our children get the professional care that they need, but that is not what these posts are about. They are about addressing the kind that parents do with one healthy, normal kid against another. Pride, not the interest of the child, drives this kind of comparing.

Let me use a short scenario. Dad takes his son Jimmy at age 2 ½ to his very first day at playgroup. While there, Dad meets the father of another boy named Johnny who he finds out is the same age and has a birthday in the same month as Jimmy. Both dads are standing proudly by watching their boys at play. The boys run up to their dads, telling them excitedly about something they had been playing. Johnny is speaking in full sentences, but Jimmy is not yet able to. Up until that moment, Jimmy’s dad had thought his son was a bright spark, but now he begins to wonder.

What would you say to Jimmy’s dad? I’d love to hear from you, but I might not respond to comments on this post as there is more that I want to say on this topic in “Measuring Up – Part 2.”

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