Skip to main content

My baby's graduation

Elisheva Chaya was my baby for 9 years, until I remarried and Naomi Rivka came along.  When I thought she was my last child, I cried and cried at all her school events and milestones.
 
Not much to cry about last night; the event itself was actually incredibly dull.
 
But I was looking at the other girls, hearing their speeches, etc., (okay, those are the valedictorians and class representatives, so maybe not a fair sampling, but still) and thinking that she's probably the LEAST mature of her entire graduating class... which maybe makes sense because (born on December 31st) she's probably the youngest.
 
I'm kind of off-and-on reading an interesting book (YM keeps swiping it) called Outliers, which is about the surprising statistics of success. 
 
The author, Malcolm Gladwell, claims that the people who tend to succeed in athletics are the January to March babies... being so much older in the early grades (almost a year older than the December babies), they were bigger, stronger and physically more agile within their cohort, and were thus seen as "better" and having more "potential" and therefore selected for more advanced training and more focused energy on the part of teachers and coaches.
 
The effect is most obvious in pro hockey, where a highly disproportionate number of players are apparently born between January and March.  But it's apparently visible in certain other areas as well, and it's hard to say what kind of unconscious bias a teacher might have against a younger child who is physically smaller, less adept, and - at least in the early grades - less able to grasp concepts than her nearly-one-year-older peers.
 
This is striking to me as a December baby.  Could explain a lot.  :-)))
 
So I was sitting there last night thinking this over and kicking myself (but not hard!), for the millionth time ever, for not finding a way to hold Elisheva back a year.  She didn't need to start Grade One until she was 6, and I doubt it would have damaged her self-esteem to repeat SK... and it might have made a world of difference.  She wouldn't have been freakishly older than the other kids in the next grade. 
 
At the beginning of every school year, I have thought that, and not just in the general "my baby's growing up" kind of sadness way.  In the way that I know her well and she really REALLY isn't ready.  Every year.

Comments

  1. As the mother of a late december boy, I think I must read that book!! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

It's Heart Month: 3 days left to save lives!

Dear Friends & Family: Hi, everybody! Sorry I can’t stop by in person... you're a bit out of my area.  :-) We’re out walking up and down on our street on this beautiful afternoon to raise money for Heart & Stroke.  This cause is important to me (I won't say it's close to my heart , because that would be tacky!).  I hope you'll join me by donating online. Growing up, I watched as every single one of my grandparents' lives were shortened by heart disease and strokes, and my father had a defibrillator that saved his life on more than one occasion.  Heart disease and stroke kill 1 in 3 Canadians and are the #1 killer of women. Please click this link to be redirected to my main page at the Heart & Stroke website: http://tinyurl.com/AtlasHeart Thus ends my personal appeal.  Official information follows.  :-))) ----- Heart disease and stroke is the #1 killer of women - taking more women's lives than all forms of cancer combined. But no one is immune. Th