A few weeks ago, I joined a money manifesting challenge with Denise Duffield-Thomas. Before you close this tab because it's too "woo-woo," manifesting just means to make real...and this post isn't even about manifesting. Now that I've got that out of the way...One of the first steps of manifesting is decluttering.
I hate cleaning, and I mean HATE. I like to save things, so decluttering was HARD. But once I got started, I couldn't stop. As I was decluttering the bookshelf, I found my son's report cards from kindergarten and 1st grade. And there was one thing that left me dumbstruck.
It was his Spring conference paper form 1st grade, from the 2020/2021 school year. On the paper, his teacher had noted that the reading goal for 1st grade was to read at a level J by the end of the year, and based on this reading assesmetn, he had already met that goal.
Compare that to second grade where on his first 2nd grade report card the "AR" (at risk) marks on reading and writing had left me shellshocked. It had left me feeling utterly defeated, wondering what I had done wrong.
But what if I hadn't done anything wrong? And what's more, what if YOU haven't done anything wrong?
Because here's the thing that I've learned since then. Reading levels are completely arbitrary. They don't mean anything. They don't tell you how well a child can read but how well they can memorize a pattern and guess words based on pictures. What would have happened if I had had the confidence to know that he was doing fine, that I WAS in fact doing a good job?
That is my message for you today. You ARE doing a good job, even if nobody sees it YET.