A few minutes, about your own kid
You’re not imagining it
Most parents who find this have been carrying a feeling around for a while with no words attached to it. Something about how school is going for your child is off, and every time you try to say it out loud it comes out sounding small, like they’re just tired, they’re a bit sensitive, it’s been a long term.
Read down this list and tap anything that’s true about your kid right now. Be honest rather than fair.
There’s no score and nothing to be good at. This gives the thing you’ve been watching a name, which is usually the part that’s missing.
One more
Who have you said this out loud to?
Not the tidied-up version. The actual worry.
What you’ve been looking at
Here’s what I’m not going to do: tell you to pull your kid out of school.
You came here with a feeling and no words for it, and the useful thing I can do is hand you the words. What happens next is genuinely yours. It might be a conversation at the school, or a different school, or less homework, or a changed evening, or something bigger than any of those.
Anybody who tells you there’s one answer at this stage is selling you something.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll send you the rest of what I know about this: what I watched happen to more than two thousand students, what the system is actually optimizing for, and the much wider range of things “doing something about it” can mean.
I write about childhood, education and attention. You can leave whenever you like, and I don’t share your address with anyone.