And what, exactly, do we mean when we say "first grade"?

Madeleine, sitting at the dining room table this afternoon, announced to me: "Daddy, everything is first-grade for me."

Of course, Madeleine is in the first-grade, but I figured she had some nuance at the core of her statement.

"What do you mean?"

"First-grade spelling.... first-grade math..."

In the world of my Celtic upbringing, this continuity of curriculum and grade-level would go without saying.  But now that I think of it, in Madeleine's world, this distinction is meaningful, what with Daniel, in third-grade, doing fourth-grade math, and  Ashkenazi-Mom pushing for Ian, in the fifth-grade, to do seventh-grade math.

We have the long-term-asset-meets-discipllnary-liability of having children who are smarter than us.  So I guess it makes sense to reflect on how much of our coursework happens to match our coincidental, biological age.

(November 29, 2014)