My oldest child goes to a charter school that gives out grades to kindergartners (which is idiotic).

He comes home from school with graded spelling tests! They don’t have happy faces or gold stars, they have percentages.

I kinda thought kindergarten was the place where you acclimate to school and learn to use glitter and paste, turns out that was what we did in the early 90’s, now kindergarten is where you take tests.

My son typically scores high, but occasionally he will choose to talk during the test or draw a picture of a ninja and score low.  When he brings these lower scores home I have to stop myself from asking “Why didn’t you get an A?”

Let me give you some context.

I am the oldest child of an immigrant father. B’s were not acceptable in our house, truth be told an A- wasn’t acceptable either. I think my dad’s favorite phrase was “We didn’t leave the camps for this!”

The pressure to succeed was there from… well from an early age.  I was the kid that would wait by the mailbox to intercept my report card before my dad could get it. I would wait until he was out of town for business and then have my mom sign it, she was a bit more relaxed about grades.

Actually there was a period, let’s call it my entire freshman year of college, where I rejected responsibility and… well let’s not go down that road, but just say we didn’t leave the camps for that crap.

As the oldest child, it wasn’t just the grades that needed to be great, it was everything. And that need for perfection has carried with me into my 30’s.

When I fail, I can hear my parents’ saying “Be a good example for your siblings!”

I find myself in odd situations thinking, “Are my siblings going to find out about this and make bad choices because I wasn’t awesome?”. Truth be told my siblings don’t care what I do they’re busy living their own lives, but that voice is still there.

I worry that I am creating this need to be perfect in my oldest son.

I find myself in situations saying something like “you have to [insert action here] because your siblings are watching you!” and “Be a good example!”

Is he hearing these things, and worrying that he isn’t going to measure up? Is he going to find himself in the grocery store in his 30’s wondering if his choice of bread is going to negatively impact his siblings (nope, that’s just me).

I try and bite my tongue over grades, I don’t want him to stress like I did (plus grades in kindergarten are stupid).

I don’t want him to sit in the awards ceremonies in elementary school and cross his fingers that he will win everything so he can be a great example for his siblings.

Don’t get me wrong, I want him to be awesome, I want him to be a responsible older brother, but I don’t want him to worry that his missteps will result in his siblings future failings.

So where do you set the bar?

How high do you set it so your kids know they need to push themselves to succeed, but they don’t lay awake wondering if they disappointed you?

How do you set the bar high enough that they can’t become lazy, but low enough so there is room for failure?

Is the oldest really just the “practice kid” or is there a way to parent them just as well as their younger siblings?