Episode 298: Balancing Expectations
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Visit beautyintruthmath.com to view samples and videos about our products. Also, subscribe to our newsletter on our site to receive emails about new resources and our summer sale. Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I'm Emily Kaiser, and I'm here with Liz Cattrall and Nicole Williams. This season, we have been talking about finding balance.

Each episode has been born out of conversations with many Charlotte Mason moms and questions that we frequently receive. But there remains another sort of inquiry that requires balance and that is what sort of expectations we have of our materials, of our students, and also of ourselves as we pursue a Charlotte Mason education. And this can sometimes create an inner conflict

Most conflict does arise from a mismatch in our expectations. Internal conflict over our educational experience with our children often arises from our own expectations that may or may not match the outcomes of the Charlotte Mason Method. Today, we will be discussing several areas that benefit from balancing our expectations to make sure that they are in line with our educational philosophy.

So let's start, you guys, talking about some of those expectations that we have for our children. Maybe we're not even conscious of the expectations that we put on them. So a lot of them, I think, come from our own upbringing. Maybe they come from a very idealistic place of the kind of parents we want to be to raise the kind of children that we want to have. Maybe they're expectations from society that we're not even conscious of.

I'm also thinking there's some that are rather arbitrary, like my very first homeschooling direction was what your kindergartners should know. As if they're all the same. Exactly. And here I had what I later learned was a severely dyslexic child. So instead of, you know, moving along as he progressed, I was putting these very simple

seemingly arbitrary expectations on him. Do you remember any of those specific ones? I can vividly remember that he was supposed to know his letters by this time and didn't and me pushing really hard. And that is my one

true regret as a parent, as a homeschooler was the pushing I did from him. And it was all based on expectations. Yeah. Yeah. And on the other end of that spectrum, I remember my first, my son, who was my third student getting all organized and ready. And he was kind of my silly, happy-go-lucky child that just didn't, nothing ever bothered him.

And so I said, we're going to learn, begin learning how to read today. And I started working on some phonics thing or other, and he just picked up the book and started reading it. That was an expectation that I did not have. I underestimated the child's ability entirely. So I think it's helpful to kind of do an inventory of ourselves. And we probably need to do this very regularly. Yeah.

maybe the first time we come across some kind of unsettled feeling or, oh, when we think this just isn't working, the first place I think we should look at is what am I expecting out of my child? And then I think we should examine that in balance with what Charlotte Mason said is the expectation. So I thought I would just read a couple of quotes that she has that kind of get to the heart of what she expected a child to be able to do.

The first idea that she talks about is that children learn in order to grow. So are they growing? Are they making progress? She said that learn in order to grow and they learn in order to get ideas. Has my child absorbed any new idea or something captured his imagination?

And we know this because she explains that ideas are what sustains the mind. It's the mental food that it needs in order to grow. And she believed that all, quote, normal children had this ability inherent in them to take in ideas as long as they were presented in literary form. Mm-hmm.

So sometimes if we're expecting them to get ideas and they're not, there might be something else that's underlying that. Because I would say even not normal children still take in ideas in order to grow, right? Because I remember that same little boy, that same age, everything, reading Misty of Chincoteague for the first time. Yes.

And from that day forward, anytime somebody said, what does he want for his birthday? What does he want for Christmas? It was something related to horses for years, decades. Like that stuck with him. So she said, if we realize that the mind and knowledge are like two members of a ball and socket joint, two limbs of a pair of scissors fitted to each other, necessary to each other, and acting only in concert,

We shall understand that our function as teachers is to supply children with the rations of knowledge which they require and that the rest, character and conduct, efficiency and ability, take care of themselves.

So really, she believes children are able to learn. And if there's a problem, it might be we're expecting them to learn a different sort of thing, like know their letters when they are really instead focusing on ideas. Yeah, or we're expecting them to learn too much. Right. You know, we're not content with the little thing they went away with today. Right, and not that they...

don't learn their letters, of course. That is an idea that is presented to them. But to expect at a certain age, we need to be looking at the child and his growth as opposed to comparing him to what some expert somewhere arbitrarily decides. Or what older sibling did. True. Yes, very true. Or what younger siblings are coming along and doing to pass them up. That is also true.

She believed also that it is our intellectual habits that make up what is called a child's ability. And so it is primarily habit training that is going to be reflected in the outcome that we see from their lessons, right? The intellectual habits are attention, concentration, thoroughness, which she also calls best effort.

Intellectual volition, like wanting to use their mind. Accuracy and reflection. And so are they growing in these habits of things is another, I think, balance to check on their ability when we're looking at our child.

And I also should say perfect execution. She talks about that a bunch. And a lot of people get hung up on, well, my child can't do this perfectly. That also needs assessment of our expectations because she thought they should only be expected to do something if it was within their compass, right? Exactly. Something within their already existing ability. Exactly. We're just going to be stretching them a little bit further each time. Finding just that little sweet spot of change.

challenging them but not going further than they would be capable of doing. Right. And so just to remind ourselves that that is not some objective standard of what your child needs to know at this age. Right. But it is a subjective standard according to your child. Exactly.

So then another expectation for our children, sometimes that falls into play here of a mismatch with our educational philosophy, is our expectations about his interest. What are some ones you can think of that maybe we fall into one side or the other of being out of balance? Well, for sure, what the child's interests are, maybe being the thing that we want to

their education around. Doing a unit study on horses, ships, horses. Right. Because that's what he's interested in and trying to pull those pieces in together and having his interest direct the education that I lay before him. And really we are aiming for a child who has many interests in life, she said. And so our job as the teacher is to present different things that he's never thought about before.

Because you don't know which of those is going to trigger an interest. Yes. I think personally, we've probably talked on this podcast ad nauseum about that, about the things that we got interested in that we never would have chosen. I'm so glad my parents did not encourage some of my early interests. Yeah.

But also I see in my kids things that flourished out of it, not just me, but my kids too, that was not even in our family's wheelhouse. It wasn't something they were going to be introduced to just because they were part of our family. It was something beyond that. So one side of...

being unbalanced in our expectation is really trying to create a curriculum around their interest. The other way is really the same, the other side of the same coin. And I think that we take their interest. Oh, they don't like that book.

Oh, they don't like that thing. And so we remove it. Right. It's not just catering to it's also the removal of anything that doesn't catch their interest. And we do have a whole episode on children liking their books that I think falls into this conversation. That's episode 272 if you want to look it up. But Charlotte Mason said, we need not ask what the girl or boy likes. She very often likes the twaddle of goody goody storybooks. He.

He likes condiments, highly spiced tales of adventure. We are all capable of liking mental food of a poor quality. And we do like physical food of a poor quality, right? Exactly. There's a place that we see this happen. It's kind of subtle, but I see it all the time with regard to science in form one. Because people get used to these really fun things.

about the animals and they're jumping around the pond and everybody has names or they're in the farmyard or whatever. But then when I say Arabella Buckley is the science book, but we call it nature lore. So I think there's like a mismatch there. But the reality is that's their science in that form one. She wants them to learn information. It's not really that fun. And the ideas. Yeah. It's not just entertainment. Really.

Yeah, that tale is a lot of fun, but that's not what we're doing at this point. Right, right. She also reminds us, Charlotte Mason said, it is a wide program founded on the educational rights of man. Wide, but we may not say it is impossible, nor may we pick and choose and educate him in this direction, but not in that direction.

Our part, it seems to me, is to give the child a vital hold upon as many as possible of those relationships proper to him. And that's what you were saying earlier, Mom. What about...

our own desire for our child's success. I mean, I'm reading right now with my reading group, the end of volume six, and it's a series of essays or letters that Charlotte Mason wrote to the London Times, right, that were published nationally for people who were like, okay, so what is the state of education in our country and how should we be thinking about this? And it's,

And it is like in every single letter, you know, she talks about it is not utilitarian. Education should not be utilitarian. But do you know what I see every single week is moms being concerned that their child is going to get a good job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're I'm thinking I'm thinking of Liz and I and watching our children.

after this kind of a homeschool education and having them exceed our expectations for each one of them individually. - And they're all doing things we never dreamed of. - Never dreamed of. All of them really successful in their own right and thinking that our scope, our expectations of what is success

is too limited, really. And we have too narrow of a view of what that would look like. And we fail to keep in mind that God has a plan for every one of these children that is, like, we weren't consulted. And so it is so fun. But I will say that when I watch my kids and who they are and who they're becoming as these young or, you know, early 20s people,

I was nowhere near there. I had a conversation with my oldest Mitchell yesterday, who's 25 now, and he was feeling behind in life. Oh my. Felt like he hadn't accomplished enough. And I was sitting there like, where was I at 25? And I started to tell him a little bit like, this is what we were doing at 25. This is where we were at. And I was thinking, no, you, these ideas that have seeped into their lives through this kind of an education have, have,

have put every one of them so far ahead of where I was at that age that I wish I could just infuse that hope and faith into every mom who's listening that

we just don't have an idea you know this whole balance thing we're talking this ditch or that ditch yeah um are the moms that don't think their child needs to read charles dickens in high school because they just want to be a welder or something like that and charlotte mason is literally writing to the trade schools and saying you need to have literature right or they're just not academic or they're just not that bright well i had a couple children that weren't the

the brightest bulb in the box or whatever people say, in a worldly viewpoint.

unbelievable the stuff they think of and do, you know? Well, and they're the kids that, Charlotte Mason specifically talks about this, that they can be thinking about these stories and these ideas while they're doing the job that maybe is boring. Yes, because they do need, their minds still need food, right? Even if they're working, when we do value the work that they do with their hands. Gosh, I read books when I'm doing mundane things around the house. That's how I get through them. So I think, you know,

you know, just to keep in mind all of these areas when we look at our child that we can have expectations on. But if we have chosen to pursue a Charlotte Mason education, to go back to what did she tell us? And I think every one of us, you know, because we don't do this thing lightly. Like there's a whole lot of other ways we can educate that would require far less effort from us, right? Exactly.

But we have bought in, and it's usually some very simple thing like children are born persons. Right? Or we do this for the children's sake. And so when we start focusing on all of these external expectations that have crept in from who knows where, we can lose sight of that. But she helps ground us and remember that they really are persons, unique persons. As always, thank you to our season-long sponsor, Living Book Press.

Please visit livingbookpress.com to see their selection of literally hundreds of living books. Anthony's books are extremely high quality reprints of living books in every different genre. Please visit livingbookpress.com slash delectable to receive 10% off your order.

Okay, so if we have expectations of our child, what about the lessons? So this kind of incorporates us as teachers and how we teach or how we are conducting lessons, but also books. What are we expecting from the lessons themselves or the books that we're giving to our children?

I think too often we're expecting too much of a single lesson. We're expecting to make more progress than is probably reasonable. It's definitely more progress than Charlotte Mason was thinking we would make in a single lesson. And we're failing maybe on the other side, like Liz said, the other side of the ditch. Maybe we're failing to have that consistency there.

in that lesson so that it's a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit there can work over the long term. We're not realizing how this all plays out. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think back to just combing over those notes of lessons that her trained teachers prepared and were published in the Parents Review and they're online and I can throw a link in the show notes to where you can view those. But basically you could boil down every expectation, which is right there at the lesson objective. You know, that's the expectation of the teacher.

um, to that they would get some new idea, some new idea, some new idea, some, or even just to grow in a little deeper, this idea that they've already been trying to wrestle with for a long time. And there has been a trend and I'm not sure where this comes from because she, Charlotte Mason does talk about this term captain ideas. She got it from Coleridge. Um,

But I have seen it applied in a way that we, the teacher, are supposed to be pulling out the caption idea from every single lesson. And I do not think that that is quite how Charlotte Mason was talking about that. I think that she was saying, because she says, we don't know what the caption idea is going to be for their life. And that those caption ideas that the child takes hold of really do determine the direction that they're going. And that really is the work of the Holy Spirit.

in our child between their material that they're taking in and then doing that. So I think that is sometimes an expectation that we put on ourselves of we need to identify what is the idea that they need to get here. And again, that is not Charlotte Mason at all, right? That's why we do narration is so that the child can approach the material and get what they want out of it. So part of holding our balance in this to me is that we have to make the best lesson possible

but not it's just one piece for the whole year and for the whole day and

And I used to have a pastor that used that story. I'm sure you all heard before that life is not about hitting a home run every time. It's about being a consistent single batter. Like you consistently can hit the ball. That's all you're after every day is for your child to hit some ball in that lesson, you know? Or even in the day. Yeah. You might not get it. In the whole morning. There's some other things about this too. Like, um,

I started with what are they getting out of it? You know, how much are we getting out of it? But also we've said before that,

There is a structure to a lesson. There is a method to the lessons, but that is not a cut and dry recipe. Right. So we have to follow. So sometimes we're going to show a picture and sometimes we're going to have a discussion afterwards and maybe not having those expectations that every lesson needs to be this four course meal either. Right. Because it's the lesson material. I always say this about geography. Parents are like, well, when should I do a sketch map? And I'm like,

when the material demands it, you know, when that would help bring the idea or when your child has to get that out in order to communicate what they've just taken in. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll say another thing is that a lot of times you will not know your child has a secret thought life. A lot of the most precious things they get out of lessons, they tuck away for themselves and you don't know about it for a long time. Yeah. And I think too, back to what kind of what you were saying, um,

the single lesson. Oh, and I think this feeds into our checklist mentality. And we get questions like, oh, we didn't finish, you know, X number of lessons out of our science curriculum or whatever. And you would always say, fine.

They got what they got because we at one time are placing too much expectation on a single lesson and the other time we're not placing enough. And I think we can place too much on when we're saying every single one is important. But really, they're going to come back to all of these ideas. This is the beauty of how she structures.

the curriculum with all of these, we call them streams and rotations, you know, trying to convey this, how we keep cycling back a little bit deeper, a little broader, a little more abstract as they get older, but they're coming back to it. And so that one idea that they got, I mean, my son is in sixth grade this year and this past fall,

So we've been doing nature studying his whole life, really. And I'm obsessed with birds, and we've had bird feeders around. Literally, my father-in-law put one up the day he was born. So his whole life we've had bird feeders around. But this fall, he became obsessed. He would sit at the window all day.

for two hours straight and just watch all of the birds that came. So I would never have before said, oh, he's gotten the idea of birds or that's really captured his imagination. But it is that little bit over and over that really kind of blossomed, I think. Right.

I think about the subject of recitation, this 10 minute little tiny lesson. And we're going to do multiple things per term. So really like once a week, 10 minutes, and that includes some transition time and warm up. So maybe we're going to actually work on, say, a poem five minutes a week.

for 11 weeks we're not going to know that poem inside and out but we are making progress on our abilities to speak this poem or speak any poem we were just it's this continual little dripping into their lives she talked about linking one lesson to the next and this is like a long chain every day is a new link in the chain

And, you know, moms are always extremely and understandably, I can remember the same anxiety about reading. You know, they've been at it for a year and their child is still stumbling and mumbling along, you know. But...

I always say that it takes five or six years to become a really proficient reader. And that's if you keep at it constantly that whole time. For anybody, not just quick readers or slow readers. Because there's a lot more to reading than just learning how to decode. It also is...

the people who are like think Charlotte Mason isn't strenuous enough. Yeah. Oh boy. You know, I'm very tired of this. Maybe we're ricker. Yes. And because it does start out so slowly, just these little 10 minute, you know, drips. Mm-hmm.

But you get to sixth, seventh, eighth grade, and those are now like fully flowing rivers. Right. Because it circles back to what you said in the very beginning, that we are challenging them, but we are always expecting this perfect execution. We're setting them up to succeed in every lesson. So-

you know, after years, we get to a point where what they are succeeding at is huge. It is. Yeah. It's really incredible. Yeah.

So just to bring it back to, and we've already talked a little bit about our expectations of a book. We do have this, I think, prevailing expectation as a society, or as Charlotte Mason moms, really, that they should love every book. Like, we're giving them the literary books. These are the living books. But really, each child is a unique person, and they're not all going to connect with each book. But that doesn't mean it's not a worthy book, right? And that they're not still going to get some privilege.

idea out of it even if they never want to read Sir Walter Scott again in their life you know they enjoy some meals better than others but they grow because they've eaten them all that's a great analogy and we also I think we expect them to come to a book and be able to completely understand and take it in right and

the first read through. Like the people who say, well, we already read that Shakespeare play. And it's like, you know, there are Shakespeare scholars who spend their whole life just reading Shakespeare plays over and over. And I mean, if we said that about the Bible, can you imagine like every day I come to the Bible and every,

New ideas are coming out, right? Because the Bible may be the same, but I am not, right? And the same is true of great literature. And so to release some of our expectation that they're going to literally master the material, the first read-through or the first encounter that they get when they get Pilgrim's Progress in first form, second and third grade. No.

They haven't, but they have got some ideas that have been formative for them. Right. I was excited just this week because a mom, I said, well, here you go. I was doing her consult, and she has several children in four different forms. So she's coming to her second grader. I said, so this is the year you get to start Pilgrim's Progress over again? She goes, oh, good. I just love it. Every time I read it, I love it more. So, yeah, it happens. Mm-hmm.

So just to come back to Charlotte Mason's expectations of what outcome we should expect or what our standards should be to help us balance our own expectations, she said, Therefore, if the business of teaching be to furnish the child with ideas, any teaching which does not leave him possessed of a new mental image, so that should be our goal, a new mental image, has by so far missed its mark.

It is not too much to say that a morning in which a child receives no new idea is a morning wasted. However closely the little student has been kept at his books. So I think that is something helpful. It's also, do you notice there, she says it's not that they should get a new idea in their 15 subjects that they have and not in that morning. In a single morning. In a single morning.

a new idea and that each lesson should give a mental image which might not be a fully formed idea but they have a new mental picture of something I think that helps us calm down right yeah it gives us some assurance um yeah it also is outside the scope of what we're talking about but I'm thinking every if you have a new idea every morning you have something to play with in the afternoon when you have your free time yeah that's so true that's so true

So then finally, and I think this one also cuts to the heart of our expectations on ourselves as a teacher, is that's how we view the end-of-term exams as a, not just a marker for our children, but also a marker for ourselves. And so that can be a demoralizing affair sometimes. You can be so discouraged. I have cried many tears after an exam morning. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, mostly because I think where my expectations honestly came wrong was all the Charlotte Mason, you know, the kids love exams and they, she includes many of them in her volumes. And I'm like, my kids aren't at this place. So exams sometimes were hard for us. Yeah. Yeah.

Emily's doing a good job, though. Because her kids last week, I said, so you guys had exams this week? They said, yes, we did. I said, you sound like you enjoyed them. We love exams. There you go. But they had, each of them had total answers. Things I thought, now I know I've heard them talk about this. We've discussed it. Like, this is a question that they will, like, if I ask about this thing, they will have a lot to say and completely not remember. So, yeah.

But I think that is telling that even though like whereas if that had happened to me and I had not remembered a whole section of an exam that I took in school, I would have been

totally depressed yeah right yeah devastated yeah um but that did not phase them because they are getting a chance to tell and maybe that's the one thing i'm doing okay is i'm cultivating a that's okay you didn't fail your exam it's more this is a chance for you just to show what you have learned yeah yeah and also as they get older reminds them that we need to pay attention during our lessons which i think is one of the things that happens as they get older

their brains chemically things are happening and sometimes they are less alert i think in the older years and so doesn't she even say something about that they should have that expectation that there will be an examination she says there is no reason for them to pay attention if there isn't if there isn't going to be an exam i think it's very true yeah so i think primarily what we need to reevaluate our expectations or hold them against is

are our children making progress? Right. You know, not how did my other student do on this question? How did my other student do when they had an exam on this book, you know, in a previous year or something like that. But for that one child to look back at their previous term or the previous year or the previous couple of years and see, oh, they are making progress. Yeah. You know, my oldest who has been really resistant to writing narrations for the last three years. Yeah.

He's finally starting to take some pride in when he does give a thorough written narration. And I saw that come through in his exam. So I think he has made progress, even though he told me about the wrong queen. I'm like, oh, yeah.

Interesting. But you can look at that same exam and say, oh my goodness, he capitalized everything. He's using really good words. Yeah. Yeah. So it wasn't a complete loss. It might have been a loss for history, but composition, it was. And he still had an idea about this other queen that I still didn't.

didn't know before I read the book that he was going to read, right? Like as a almost 40-year-old woman. So I think that Charlotte Mason's expectations for exams were that they were to be an encouragement

and a help, both to the teacher and the student. And so when we hold that rightly and we're not like, oh, you know, taking that burden upon ourselves, like I failed, it can be a help and say, you know, I maybe do need to show a few more pictures because it didn't seem like they had a personal connection with that material.

Or I could do a better job of following up after they write their narration and have a discussion or maybe reminding them to connect the previous lesson with the new lesson. Right. Something like that. Yeah, things like that. And introducing the lesson. Sometimes we get really busy when we have multiple children that we don't do that as much. And that made a huge difference with my children. Part of that introducing the lesson is remembering what happened last time, pulling that chain forward, like you said. Right. And that is...

Even as a mom, you know, you sit there and you're like, wait, I just opened this book. What did, what happened last time? And we all have to sit there for a minute and, and see if it'll come to us. Yeah. And get our mind back in that space. Right. That's that practice. Yeah. Yeah. So,

They also give it a chance, as I said before, for students to show what they can do instead of how our culture practices exams, which is really trying to catch what they don't know and pull that out. And Charlotte Mason said, if it is the best a child can do and shows interest and effort. So are they interested in the subject? Are they putting effort into answering it?

Then it is satisfactory or good. That required it. That was all that was required for a good mark. Were they interested in it? Even if it was wrong, were they interested? And that came from the exam pamphlet that went out to all of her inspectors. These are the people grading the exams from thousands of students. So just, again, it is subjective to the child. Mm-hmm.

We do have a whole episode on exams if this is still an area that causes fear and trembling for you or you've never done it before and think, what is this? Children like exams? You can go back and listen to episode 229. And our exam planner that we have as a teacher help I think is very helpful also. And it links to that exam pamphlet. You can read all of the criteria for giving marks on it, the kind of marks Charlotte Mason thought were acceptable. Exactly, yes.

Well, in conclusion, I think it's really helpful when we're thinking about expectations to also remember how little a Charlotte Mason Educating Parent had.

at their disposal when they were alive and a member of the parents union school. Yeah. That's a great point. They got every term, just one term's worth of work. I mean, we're real nice. We give you three terms at a time. Most curriculum, you see the plan for the year. They got one term. They got a book list with very cryptic notes sometimes. That was all they had. And they were forced

literally it was a requirement to be in the school. They had to take the parents review. So they might get, you know, it was a bi-monthly magazine. So it came out every two months and there may or may not have been an article about the question that you had. Yeah. And that was all your support. You did not have email to write to us. Or if you finish your material early,

Can you give me another book? No, it was just what it was. I don't like this book. Can you give me a different book? Oh, can you give me another one? Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I think that helps balance our expectations of what we're asking for our curriculum too. Yeah. Yeah. If we think about that, that just sitting in the term, this is what we have to work with. This is what we're going to study this term. We have a finite amount of time we're going to work on this term's material. Oh, yes.

I just think that would have created a lot of peace, really a change of expectation compared to what we have now where I hear from people all the time, you know, I'm using your science curriculum, but I also have them reading this and this thing over here. And I want to make sure this is included. And I'm thinking overload. That's like, that could be too much. But if we were limited in the way that Charlotte Mason's people...

people were at that time I think it would create a new level of peace for us. This is where our internet does not do us any favors. We have an embarrassment of riches at our disposal. Even from when we started the podcast 10 years ago. Think of what materials were available. That's why we started the podcast. People were floundering trying to make these wise informed decisions and they didn't have the

or the specifics in order to know how to do that for themselves. And they were at the mercy of some big overarching curriculum. Yeah. I also think something that kind of transcends all these

that we've been talking about is the perfectionistic attitude that we put on ourselves. And we think if I can't do it perfectly, I'm not going to do it at all. I can't do the whole feast, therefore I'm not going to do it at all. And then that same mother wonders why her child will not

try to do his copy work because they can't do it perfectly. And I'm like, where did they get that idea? Yeah. And we, we never recommend cutting out an entire subject. You know, there are lots of moving parts in science and geography, you know, maybe even history, depending on your level Bible, you know, with all of the different streams that are going to math. Yeah. But, but,

It's still an important, as Charlotte Mason said, and I quoted earlier, we don't have the freedom to pick and choose which subjects or which directions we're going to educate the children in because she said it was an educational right of man. Every man had the right to be educated in all of these directions. Yeah.

But we can start with what we do know how to do or one thing that we want to try and implement. Like, okay, well, I know how to read and narrate, so this is how we're going to start. But don't stop there because the more you know, the easier it is to build your science of relations and you see, oh, this is how that fits into that. Yeah. I think also it's kind of related to this perfectionist, this expectation of our being able to do it perfect. Right.

When we put expectations on the child or on ourselves and they aren't met or, you know, which often they aren't because, again, arbitrary, you know, that that is very demoralizing to us and can often make us just, you know, I give up. I'm not good at that. Or the child's not good at that. Or I've actually listened to moms who were in a workshop about dyslexia asking parents

Should we just quit because our child isn't learning how to read? So should we just focus on other things? And having a child who's 25, who's severely dyslexic, I see his reading improve every year. So no, we should not quit. But when we put those expectations, we think that, oh, if you don't meet those, maybe that's just not your thing. We'll just skip that. Right, right. And also when we come to the end of a term,

The term is done. Yes. And we can move on. Yeah. And you can let go of all those boxes that were unchecked. Yeah. Yeah. People ask me about the science curriculum. Should we pick up where we left off next term? Yes. And I often tell them, I mean, Charlotte Mason wouldn't have done that. No. She had to just...

Like, that's done. Yep. And I mean, again, back to what the PUS had, you would be given a set of exam questions that were on the work of the current term, not the past term that was over. Right. Exactly. Yep. And then those were sent up and evaluated as a whole. Yeah.

And yeah, and if you do have a child who achieves all of their work early, before the end of the term, because we do know it, looking at the amount of work assigned and the amount of time she allotted to it, there is usually ample, above and beyond time to accomplish all the work that was set for the term. Then they just are rewarded with a job well done. And that's all they need to do in that subject. So hopefully this discussion...

calm your nerves and not give you any more irrational or extremely inflated expectations of your child, but also underscores the need to just return again and again to what Charlotte Mason said. If we have chosen this

way of educating and I call it a way because it is a walking along a direction right the method is the way to an end and also the step-by-step progress in that way we need to return again and again to what she said because it does help us balance out our expectations for the lessons themselves the books themselves our students but also for ourselves yeah absolutely

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