School projects, Stepford children, and coping with feelings of inadequacy

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m trying to help my kid with this. She’s 9, she started 4th grade last month, and she just turned in her first big project of the year - a topographical map showing the three regions of North Carolina.

With our encouragement she started work early and parceled it out in reasonable chunks over the month. She came up with some ideas of what she wanted to do, and we helped make that a reality by obtaining supplies, printing maps for her, and helping to bridge the gap with her motor skills on a few tasks. She tried to go “above and beyond” the requirements a little.

She was very pleased with her work . . . until she saw the other kids’ projects. A lot of them had a lot more vision and creativity than hers, and a lot of them, rather than doing 10% more than required, were more like double or triple what was required. Now she feels like hers is dog shit, and she’s flailing to prop up her self worth by pointing out that one kid is late turning his in, and his will probably suck.

I squelched that, and told her it’s tempting to value ourselves only in comparison to other people, but we really need to just look at our own actions and effort, and “grade” ourselves on that. I told her I wasn’t going to blow smoke up her skirt and tell her hers was the best, but that I liked hers, and more importantly, I’m proud of how well she planned it, her discipline, and her hard work. I allowed that some of those more stunning projects might have been the work of the kids, but some probably had a lot more parental work in them than hers did.

I told her if she wants to have a preeminent project next time around, she knows now to put 300% in, not just 110%, and if that’s important to her, she can put more work in. She feels like she’s just not naturally creative though, and that’s a hard one. I suggested lots of brainstorming at the outset in the future.

But I still feel like I’m not helping her much. The last thing I want to do is to just say, “No, yours was the best!” How do I help her without just patronizing her?

2

You handled it beautifully in my opinion.

Now it’s up to her how hard she wants to apply herself. The best you can do is offer support and keep your fingers crossed.

3

Tell her the other kids probably cheated by having their parents do it all.

4

What school starts in July?

5

Specific praise. Talk about what parts of the project you thought she did really well on. Focus on her successes and prop her up a bit. Don’t just say, “Your project was great!” but rather say things like, “I thought you did really well on _____ because _____.”

Then ask her what she saw on the other projects, specifically, that she really liked. Brainstorm with her about some of those things and come up with some ways she might incorporate them into future projects.

6

Probably a year-round one - we have those here in NC.

That said, my husband is a teacher in a Triangle-area school and he is pretty good at ferreting out a kid’s real ability and what has been ‘enhanced’ by the parents (even though he has guidelines for each project which emphasize that work must be done by the kids, some parents just can’t seem to help themselves) and he grades appropriately based on what portion of the project he thinks the kid actually did.

7

I think you nailed it, honestly.

Sometimes, our kids feel bad. And that makes us feel bad. But we can’t fix it. She feels bad because she knows she could have done more…and she’s right. That’s her lesson here. Don’t take the lesson away from her by making her not feel bad!

In fact, you’re more likely to make it worse - kids are amazingly good at sensing insincerity. As you say, you recognize that the other kids made some really, really good projects, while hers was only really good. She knows it, you know it. The more you argue against it, the more you risk making her feel like she’s not strong enough to handle the truth, reinforcing her feelings of inferiority. (It’s, if you’ll forgive the comparison, like petting a dog and cooing at him when he’s cowering under the bed during a thunderstorm. If you’re so intent on reassuring him, why then, there must really be something to be scared of! Better to ignore the behavior and pet him when he calms down and comes out.)

That’s not to say we should go out of our way to make our kids feel bad as Life Lessons; that way lies madness and therapy. But when the natural lesson from her choices and actions is that she can choose another way to behave that she might like better next time…yeah, go with that.

You did very well by pointing out specific things you liked (her planning, her discipline, her hard work) and identifying things she may choose to do differently next time. Sure, if there are specific concrete project things that stand out to you, mention those, but then…let it go. She’ll be fine. That’s *your *lesson. :slight_smile:

8

I agree with this; and I’ll add that one of the things that I think she did very well on was the planning. “Parceling it out in reasonable chunks” over a period of time is a skill that will serve her well on future projects.

9

Agreed. And it’s an amazingly advanced skill for a 9 year old.

10

This happened to my kids in grammar school. Some of the projects were bs science. Some were obviously done by parents. I made my kids do their own science fair projects until it became clear to me that pseudo-science projects (how many chips are in chips ahoy cookies) and parent projects (let’s examine dna codes in 3rd grade:rolleyes:) prevailed. I finally told the kiddies and the school that my kids would no longer participate in the science fair*. The kids were relieved, the school was unhappy, deal.

*I was also one of the judges before I saw the silliness of it all, heh. The kiddo’s now both have Phd’s and still thank me for not making them do science fair projects ever again.

In other news there is no such thing as 110% or good gracious 300% effort. You can only give your all, no more.

11

I think you handled it beautifully, too. And I just want to throw in a tiny rant about all the freakin’ grade school projects for social studies or math or whatever that seem to rely heavily on artistic skills, which were never my son’s strong suit. He always found them frustrating.

12

There’s no such thing as 300% effort, but there is such a thing as doing more than the project’s requirements. If you’re required to list 3 geographic features of the state, you can list 3 or 4 or 5 or 10.

13

Honestly, I think going above and beyond like that is a waste of time that could be spent doing something more important. But I think that’s something you have to learn on your own. Always maxing out your effort is a surefire way to burn out.

I’m not sure you can help the kid learn this lesson, I mean. No one helped me learn, that’s for sure. I spent up until fourth grade making my handwriting perfect, meaning I spent 4 hours on just one assignment. It was only in fifth grade where I realized that there was too much work to get done to worry about getting an E+ in handwriting. (The fact that I finally had a teacher who didn’t make you do remedial handwriting work if you weren’t good probably didn’t hurt, either.)

14

Now we would have been downgraded for overkill here - I’m not saying do what’s asked and nothing more but at the same time stick to the project - that’s what your kid did. A good teacher would be saying all that extra work is lovely Joey, but I’m going to grade you only on this bit because this was the project.

15

We ran into the same issue with California mission projects last year, when my daughter was in 4th.

First - the teachers (and other parents) know a kid-done project from a parent-done project. A mission in my daughter’s class had electric mood lighting that lit up sections on a timer for gods sake. No 4th grader did that, and everyone knows it; in our school the teachers also graded accordingly.

Then - as others have said it is ok for your daughter to learn this lesson, even if it doesn’t feel great. Some people will send in a PowerPoint video resume instead of a snail-mail letter…what she should do is give the effort that feels good to get and makes her feel like she tried hard. If she’s bright and honestly didn’t phone it in then she may not have gotten the bragging rights, but she got the lesson right.

Finally - if you are like me, you may be feeling some personal chagrin at not understanding the competitive set she was up against. I certainly felt that way looking at my daughter’s cardboard and paint mission vs the electric kool-aid missions other kids (parents) did. But hey, lesson for you too. Will you helicopter and some day electrify her resume for her, or let her try and learn within her own parameters? Your call.

16

I must admit curiosity over what is more important for a 4th grader than school work?

17

This whole subject has got on my nerves since I spent a lot of time producing, with absolutely no adult help whatever, an admittedly completely crappy musical instrument for a school “make your own musical instrument” competition in school when I was about your daughter’s age. The winning project was so completely obviously built by the parent it just wasn’t funny. It involved woodturning and welding fer chrissakes. Even if you assume the girl did do some of it, you have to ask exactly why the kid in the class with the father who had the best equipped workshop should have won the prize.

OK, rant concluded. It’s been over 35 years since this occurred. Guess I should get over it, huh?

18

Completely agree. I hope I do as well when my son is that age. I especially like that you introduced her to the idea of “scoring” her work against herself and not against others. My SIL is 15, and for the last several years whenever she’s tried out for something she didn’t get (play, choir, etc.), my MIL has responded by denigrating he talents of the kids who did make the cut, and telling her daughter that it’s all “political”. I think that’s an unfortunate message to send.

I was just reminiscing about my mission project the other day! Mine was one of those where you could tell the parent had done most of the work (as were most of the others). My dad just couldn’t help himself. He stepped in to help with some of the cutting, then (because he was a perfectionist and I lack any artistic skills whatsoever), slowly took over art direction of the whole thing while I became the helper. It’s still a really fond memory of mine, all the hours we spent together at the kitchen table working on that thing.

19

No idea about the codes thing, but you can extract the DNA from an onion with common kitchen stuff, I did it with 2 of my goddaughters.

20

Thanks for talking me down guys! I was raised with a “we can’t let her precious feelings get hurt!” approach (which for my mom was a fabulous step up from her parents’ “we don’t give a rat’s ass about you as a person” approach, so I’m not going to fault her for it). But as a result, I have trouble coping with life, so I would like to be more balanced, and it’s extremely helpful to have a reminder that it’s OK for my kid to feel bad, sad, and disappointed sometimes.

I am keeping in mind the idea to be specific, as well as telling her that it’s up to her whether she wants to expend massive amounts of effort to get a slightly better grade (or to feel like she has one of the best projects). I agree that there are diminishing returns on some of the stuff they assign! I also told her that once she’s done with fourth grade, the grades she got won’t have much impact on the rest of her life.

I think I will be very happy when we’re done with the project phase, and it’s all tests and papers. She’s pretty good at that stuff!