Best Or The Worst Mom Ever?

Story time! Part 1:

So I’m either the best mom ever or the worst mom ever because I basically don’t care about my kids’ academics! Whaaaaa!! Hold your horses, people and let me explain! First of all, what that means is, that I don’t force or push anything on them at these ages (6, 4 and 3). There are a ton of researches clearly showing that pushing early academics (ages 0-8) does absolutely nothing for children except annoy them (burnout), kill their natural desire for learning, and adding my own observation, create a strain between the parent-child bond. (I will add the research links in the comments). So I mostly send my kids to school to have a really great time, to practice social interactions, to make life lasting bonds, to discover things through their own play, and if they learn some academics in the process, cool, and if they ‘lag behind’ in this or that, meh. (Again research says all kids are about the same academic level by grade 3, no matter where they began). I also don’t make them do any homework. I tell them what it is and if they need help. Sometimes they do it, others not so much. Again, lots of research to show homework is useless. And of course, I had to advocate for them and talk to their amazing teachers about it who were completely on board, and so supportive alhamdulilah!

Now you know the background. My kids go to a masha’Allah lovely Islamic school. I’m so grateful that they’re able to experience their religion at school. Now my son dislikes doing the Arabic homework just as much as his English homework. Ideally, I’m supposed to read some basic Arabic with him every day but we only do it rarely, when he’s up for it. My goal at this time is to instill a love for Islam in my kids’ hearts and that’s mostly through experiential things and not just reading some lines. So when Parent Teacher Meeting time rolled around, I was hoping I could just skip meeting the Arabic teacher because I figured I already knew what she’d say. He’s lagging behind in reading blah blah... and then I’d have to say I don’t really care, it’s all good. So I was kind of glad when it turned out all her spots were full. I just sent her an email saying, it’s cool and not to worry. But to my dismay, she actually CALLED me and said she REALLY needs to see me. Eikes! I felt a little bit like the kid who knew she should’ve prepared for a test but didn’t and is now sure to fail! I’m always happy to advocate for my kids but I have to admit, I was a little intimidated by this Arabic/Quran teacher. She was much older than me and just seemed a little bit like a stern grandma to me ha! Anyway, I told her I’d love to see her of course and we set up a meeting time. I’ll share next time what transpired when I met her! Stay tuned!