At 7:14 this morning, our 8-year old had a melt down.  For 34 minutes, she cried, screamed incoherently, yelled words, and even rolled on the ground. She woke her brother up from the other end of the house. We’re talking TEMPER TANTRUM. The kind toddlers throw in supermarkets when they’re on overload. 
 
Bottom line: Ali feels like she is on overload.

She used to attend a lovely school that didn’t believe in grades or testing. She now attends a lovely school that administers weekly spelling tests. (“Lovely” being one of her 20 spelling words. I just want to show that I can nail the spelling).  
 
The saddest part is that we prepped all week for this: on Monday (her first day of school) she wrote every word out four times, then on Tuesday we memorized 7 words, on Wednesday 7 words and on Thursday the last 6 words. We then gave her a mock test Thursday night and she did fine. 
 
So why the freak out on Friday morning before a test for which she prepared?
 
Performance anxiety.  She is not used to and does not like the idea of being assessed, because within that lies the possibility of not doing well, not measuring up.  She could fail.  But she cannot verbalize this.  It comes out as, “I hate spelling!” (though she loves her new teacher - which is huge because she stayed in LA because she loved her old teacher). She's afraid of the test.
 
But the price of growth in life is to continually assess ourselves and be assessed.  
 
I mean, imagine an Olympics where we didn’t want to time speed skaters because we didn’t want to put pressure on them, or one in which we gave everyone a medal just for making it to the Games?
 
Basically, we approach life and its challenges with either a fixed or a growth mindset.  Sadly, I grew up with a fixed mindset: fear was my language. I was terrified of failing, or being judged, or making a fool of myself.  I therefore greatly limited my opportunities, and spent my 20s in a fundamentalist evangelical cultish church, where Biblical group-think took precedence over personal insight or growth, and, as is also true with fixed mindsets, everything was black or white. 
 
On the other hand, a “growth mindset,” according to researcher Dr. Carol Dweck is one that thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. 
 
Out of these two mindsets, which we manifest from a very early age, Dweck believes springs a great deal of our behavior, our relationship with success and failure in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately our capacity for happiness. That explains a lot in my life.
 
Most of us have known about growth mindset for years, but what surprises me is that despite our best intentions, our 8-year old has the characteristics of a fixed mindset.  Putting her in an environment of “no grades, everyone wins an award, no tests” may have created the illusion of a carefree childhood, but it also taught her to fear tests and challenges because she’s not used to losing, or failing. It didn’t teach her to push herself, fail, dust herself off. Yikes. I've been inadvertently teaching her to be my former scared little self.
 
Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, and the first self-made female billionaire in America, has a lot to say about failure. She said that while growing up at dinner every night, her father would ask her and her brother how they failed that day, and everyone would then acknowledge and celebrate (!!) their failures as signs of growth.  This nightly ritual made her resilient.  For example, her LSAT scores were so low after taking the test multiple times, that she couldn’t apply to law schools.  From that fail, she eventually founded Spanx (and now owns a piece of the Atlanta Hawks and donated a million dollars to Oprah’s South African School for Girls).
 
So to grow, we need to celebrate our failures (even in cooking) and continue to take chances that stretch and challenge ourselves. But, if we’re honest in the days of COVID, everyday chances to challenge ourselves can be limited (recipes aside).  
 
Thankfully, there’s another amazing way to help the brain feel confident so we seek out and take on new trials and quests: humor.  When we feel safe to make light of our mistakes, we gain the courage to seek out and then take on bigger and bolder risks (this from Humor Seriously, which Lillie is frustrated with because so far it hasn’t told her how to be funny.  As of chapter two, we only understand that if we want to be creative, connected or adventurous, we really need levity. She is very concerned that she is not funny, even though half the battle is laughing at other people's jokes to show you have a sense of humor in the first place.  Stay tuned as we read chapter three....) 
 
Abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher noted, “A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road.” I love this.  How often, especially up through my 30s, did I let small things unseat me because I was so intent on something or felt so insecure that I had no room for humor?  For an abolitionist to extol humor begs the question: just what in life is too serious for levity!???!!  Really, what?
 
Humor as a mechanism to seek out growth and creativity?  Sign me up.
 
Well, now it’s all of 10 AM.  Ali ended up with a 100% on her dreaded spelling test and I need a nap.  Because before dinner I need to try something new. Our conversation will focus on how we failed today, and I’ve gotta come up with a doozy, or fail trying.

Turns out her name is Mrs. Collins!!!

​When our oldest started preschool at the age of 3, the search for the “right” preschool was akin to the diligence some put in to finding a mate.  Dropping off Lillie Grace that first day, I fought back tears, lingered at their “observation window”, and then went calmed my nerves with a Mimosa or four…
 
Seven years and a few grey hairs later, we selected a new preschool we felt most at home with...which also happens to have a strong emotional intelligence program, won the National Blue Ribbon Award, and has been recognized for excellence by the Department of Education (well before our current administration).  Even so, in the time of COVID, there are a lot of unknowns…
 
And unknowns and change are scary, whether you’re four or…significantly past four.  So this morning, when my child wanted to stay home with the dog, I may or may not have gotten him dressed by bribing him with candy for breakfast if he made it to the car in time.
 
Once in the car (while he is devouring the breakfast of Bravehearts, M&Ms) I’m trying to reassure him how much he’s going to love his new school.   “Your teacher is really kind,” I say. “What’s her name?” asks a wise sister.  “Oh.  Yeah. She wants to tell Tyler that herself,” I reply, because frankly, we’ve never even seen her. 
 
I try to get Ty excited about his classroom, except neither Jory nor I have seen his classroom either, because when we interviewed, they did not allow parents to tour.  So I remind him of the fish he liked in the reception area, and the bikes we watched him ride in the outside play area, and the swings the Admission Director pushed him on while we spied from her office. 
 
We arrive early, as one does when nervous.  When the office manager arrives, she lets us in. After temperatures are recorded, the principal takes Tyler back to his classroom, and his teacher, a kind woman whose name is Mrs. Collins, sits with us in the admissions office while her other students take their temps and sign in with the Assistant Teacher.  We tell Mrs. Collins about Tyler and she reassures us of the quality of the program (because in my deepest darkest fears he’s lingering in a corner of a room I’ve never seen, with people he’s never seen, friendless, disoriented and scared.) 
 
She tells us that she talked about Tyler with the nine other students yesterday and they are so excited to have him join them. (Ty had sat in on a class reading of The Gruffalo when he toured with the Admissions Director).  I remember that The Gruffalo is a story about a little mouse who overcomes, practically befriends, his fears, earning the respect of everyone in the forest.  
 
I take a deep breath, realizing that my Littlest Mouse is going to thrive in this beautiful school, and as a parent, so am I.
Jory and the girls and I then go out to celebrate with donuts.