Why I Hate Parent Teacher Conferences: The Ridiculous Expectations We Have for Our Children

I’m six months pregnant with my second child the first time I have to do it. This terrifying, anxiety producing thing. I have to attend my eldest child’s first ever parent teacher conference.

Okay, so maybe for other people this wouldn’t feel like such a big deal, but for Type A, recovering overachiever me, it felt really scary. 

I’m not exactly sure what I was afraid of. It wasn’t like there was a list of “what ifs” hanging over my head. I just had this sense of fear as I walked through her preschool yard. Yes, this was preschool. Yes, she was two years old. Yes, I can be a bit much. 

My daughter’s preschool teacher, Nikki, is perhaps one of the kindest, most amazing teachers (and humans) I’ve ever met. She LOVES these kids, and she is also incredibly knowledgeable about development and learning. We really lucked out with her, but I was also, at the time, incredibly intimidated by how awesome she was (which I think she would laugh about now because we’ve become great friends). 

So, we all sit down in teeny tiny kid chairs at a very low table (all of which is a bit of a special insult to a pregnant woman who would undoubtedly need help standing up). Nikki goes over all of the aspects of the assessment. My daughter is doing just fine. There are areas where she excels! There are also some areas where there is some room for improvement; where she isn’t exactly where they might expect her to be at that age. Nikki assures me that this means nothing negative, and that at the age of two it’s difficult to do an assessment anyway. 

Whatever explanation and assurances she gives me, my stomach has dropped. I feel nauseous. I don’t really even know why. Nikki hasn’t said anything bad. In fact, she’s talked about what a joy my girl is to have in class, how kind she is to the other children, how well she expresses herself, and how creative she is. Somehow, I am able to ignore all of this and go right to the “not where we expect them to be right now.”

This is the first time I really see that I have a problem. My reaction to this assessment is a big, blinking red flag to me. I know enough by then to know that my emotional reaction doesn’t match my intellectual knowledge. Something in me is screaming “this isn’t right!” even when I know that everything is just fine. 

It’s pretty clear to me with a little inward searching what it is. When I was a child I was “gifted,” whatever that means. I tested well. I learned to read early. I always got really good grades. I was the teacher’s pet. My brother got an almost perfect score on his SATs and has a genius level IQ. All three of us, my brother, sister, and I, tested high on the IQ score. This was a story that was a huge part of our identity. My mother touted our collective family genius as something of which we should not only be proud, but as something that made us worthy and of value. Something that made up for a lot too. 

Yes, we might have much less money than the other kids at school, or our extended families. Yes, we might have what anyone would call a dysfunctional home situation. But you know what? We were SMART! Geniuses! We could feel ok no matter what because we had tested well, and this made us deserving even if so much else in our lives made us feel less-than. 

My mother graduated high school at 16 and went straight to UC Berkeley. She grew up in a family that her brother lovingly dubbed as full of “over-educated white trash”; people who knew a lot about book learning, but not so much about functioning in any sort of healthy way. So, it’s no wonder my mother held onto her genius status for dear life. It was how she was able to escape a childhood of abuse and neglect. 

It’s also no wonder that she passed that sense of intellect-equaling-value to her children. When I was an undergrad I minored in Education and was amazed to learn that the IQ test, which I had held with such pride, is actually incredibly flawed and biased. That IQ tests had, in fact, been used to detrimental effect on populations of color by eugenicists and others to justify the atrocities committed against them. That IQ tests, and many other forms of assessment, create a situation in which those with the most similarities to the test maker (think White, Male, affluent, parents with a higher education) are the most likely to score high on the test. (Here is one of a multitude of articles on the subject).

I also learned that the generally understood concept of intelligence is actually a social construct. That there are actually many forms of intelligence, many types of knowledge, many ways in which children learn and grow and express themselves. I was amazed by this. You might think that this information would make me feel less special, less worthy, but I felt the opposite. I felt a sense of freedom. I felt a weight lifted off of my shoulders, the weight of needing to excel academically in order to feel ok.

I now knew all of these things intellectually, but we all know that knowing something in the thinking part of your brain doesn’t always translate into feeling it in your animal brain. All of my daughter’s subsequent parent conferences have gone pretty similarly. She is amazing in many ways; she is behind in some ways. But now, when I go into my daughter’s parent conferences, I prepare myself. I have mantras when I go in, “intelligence is a social construct created to reinforce white male dominance and we don’t go for that shit in our family.” I list in my head all of the wonderful things about my daughter. I work on that inner voice that told me I could only be enough if I was “gifted” so that she doesn’t have to hear it at all. I remind myself that perfectionism isn’t a trait I’d like to pass along to the next generation.

And, sure, I sometimes still feel a sense of impending doom when I walk into that room. But I also remind myself what’s important about her. When they say that she is a little behind where she is supposed to be in reading, I still sometimes feel my stomach drop. Even though I know it’s wrong. Even though I know there is nothing wrong with her. That no matter how she learns, she is worthy and valuable and precious. I can sometimes feel that, somehow, I’ve failed her because she doesn’t get to jump on the “genius” train and be worthy. This is because I, like all humans, am a work in progress. 

But here’s the thing, I know how valuable my daughter is. She is valuable because she is a human child, and all children are incredibly important. They all have their own forms of intelligence and creativity. This kid has immense emotional intelligence. She can tell you what she is feeling and why, and she always notices if a classmate is feeling down and tries to make it better. She expresses herself creatively as if she can’t even help it. She draws and sings and dances and paints constantly. During this crazy time, she is full of joy even when the world around her is falling apart. When she starts her zoom classes every morning she says “hello!” in the most excited voice. When she’s done every day, she says “goodbye! I’ll miss you! I love you!” to everyone. At the final Parent Teacher Conference with Nikki that year, we were both very pregnant, and she told just how special my daughter is, that she was sure every teacher would fall in love with her like she had. We both cried (like I said, we were both very pregnant). 

My kid is perfectly herself. She has loads of her own kinds of intelligence, creativity, and strength. Her mom is the one with the problem. This is a perfect example of how our own issues, if we don’t deal with them, bleed into our parenting. I don’t blame myself, but I do need to make plans to make changes, and to hold myself gently accountable. So, I am working on it, hard, so that she gets to live a life in which she knows that she has infinite value, not because of some test she takes or some metric that doesn’t take her individuality into account, but because she is a human being, and all beings are valuable. I don’t want her thinking she’s better than anyone else, or that anyone else is better than her. 

Judging and making value assumptions on our children based on how they learn, their abilities, their language, or really any other category, is just plain wrong. We as a society have created a situation in which we categorize the value of children based on their output, rather than on who they are. As parents, we then connect our own value to the ways in which our children are judged by others. This affects how we parent, and how our children feel about themselves and their life’s possibilities.

I’m aware that we do need ways to gauge the learning needs of our children, and I know that assessment is necessary in some form. I also know that the systems we have in place now are not working, and the ways in which we attach value to the outcomes can be damaging. We have a warped and flawed view of value in this society, and when I feel that sense of Parent Teacher Conference dread, I know that it is my own internalized oppression and training rearing its ugly head. Parents feeling that they will be judged, and that their children will be judged, because of learning differences is a sign that something is just not right in the way we conceptualize value.

Our children don’t need us to force them into some cookie cutter version of what is “smart” and what isn’t, not only because it does not really exist, but it is oppressive. When we see embracing and guiding our children based on who they really are, rather than based on who society has decided they are supposed to be, as an act of resistance, an act of empowerment, those feelings can change. Sadly, these tests have real world consequences for millions of children. The silver lining is that us parents are the ones who get to help our children through the process and show them what perspective we take on value and learning at home. And perspective really matters. 

Kids get to be themselves. Sometimes teachers will see their beauty, sometimes they won’t. Sometimes we’ll have a great conference, sometimes we won’t. As parents, we have to be the ones to see all their strengths and shout them from the rooftops. I have to work on my own disfunction so that I can see my kids clearly and remind them of their worth every day. 

All I can do is to keep working on it. That’s the beauty of seeing life through a coach’s perspective: I know I can change my own flawed perspectives. Lifelong patterns aren’t changed in a day. I’m hoping one day I’ll walk into a parent conference and feel nothing but excitement to hear all the wonderful things about my child. Or at least openness to hearing where she is at that moment so I can help her in the best way I can. I’m hoping that the work I’m doing will create a different relationship with the concept of intelligence for my kids. I’m hoping that all of our children get to feel that however they learn and express themselves is perfect for who they are; that they are deserving of love and support because we all are. I hope I can do that for myself too.