In this moment of gentle parenting, the idea of high academic expectations seems almost abusive. Can we really expect our kids to work hard, achieve excellence, perform well?

The words expectation, excellence, and performance feel loaded with pressure, scrutiny, evaluation, and tension. The “good parents” nurture. They create space, are helpful and kind, never raise their voices, allow a child to quit, and put a child’s comfort ahead of achievement. They support a child’s pace and avoid comparisons to peers.

I like to help parents become good at seeing the world through a child’s eyes. I encourage making room for mess, creativity, curiosity, and rest. I believe that rushing doesn’t lead to the best academic outcomes. I trust children to grow and learn when they feel supported and free. All of this is true.

That said, sometimes it’s worth slipping over to the other side of the teeter-totter to see how the world looks through a different prism.

• Is there room for “expectations” in parenting and home education?
• Is there ever a time when “pushing” a child to work a little harder is appropriate?
• Do our kids benefit from being called on to “perform”?

In 1968, a study (that came to be known as The Pygmalion Study) revealed that teachers influenced an improvement in their students’ IQ scores simply by having higher expectations of those students than they had previously. The study has not been duplicated effectively, but the net result of that study and its lingering influence is the idea that whether high or low, a teacher’s expectations of their students influence academic performance.

How does that translate to teaching at home?

Parents are not trained teachers, usually. They’re oriented to family harmony. They want peace, they want warmth, they want cooperation with family culture and values.

Home education is built from parenting skills more often than teaching tactics. What worked for potty training, we surmise, ought also to work for teaching a child to read or divide fractions.

The soft underbelly of homeschooling, though, is the defensive posture that when our children aren’t performing at “grade level” (determined by the state), it is because they aren’t ready. We rarely wonder if our own attitude toward their education is a part of the equation.

While we can take more time than schools to teach school subjects, sometimes our family lifestyle is a mismatch for the consistent intentional instruction that some skills require for mastery. We have to ask ourselves if we are giving the skill enough attention in collaboration with our child.

When a child is, for instance, struggling with phonics, one of the most common responses of the homeschooling community is that the child will read when ready. A kernel of truth lives in that belief. We can’t force a child to “catch on” to reading.

But, sometimes in our desire to preserve harmony and to prevent distress, we back away from a challenging subject. We think time will be an effective teacher. We avoid supporting that struggling during the struggle and remove the challenge all together.

In fact, phonics instruction requires consistent practice, patiently delivered over time with faith that the child will read. It requires being a bit of a detective to identify what is blocking a student from catching on! Sometimes it means involving a specialist with training to help determine whether or not there is an underlying disability.

Swapping the word “faith” for “expectation”

It’s not that I expect my child to read, now, without struggle. It’s that I have faith that regular practice and instruction will lead to the important breakthrough.

• There’s a difference between pushing and coaching.
• There’s a difference between honoring a child’s feelings and leadership.
• There’s a difference between forcing a style of learning and providing regular chances to see the skill with fresh eyes.
• There’s a difference between the thought that time will lead to the breakthrough and activity of using that time to offer instruction.

Your kids are so smart. They are absolutely capable of learning everything they need to learn, if they have adults in their lives who stand beside them with faith in their abilities and regular opportunities to address the challenging skills.

Will your kids sometimes whine or express distress? Yes! Working hard is annoying. It’s tiring. A child expressing fatigue or annoyance may simply need validation, not to back away.

“Yes! It’s tedious to keep sounding out. Let’s do one more sentence. I know you can do it! Then we’ll take a break.”

Avoiding struggle is not necessarily the goal of good instruction. Sometimes that moment of effort may simply need support. Offer a shoulder rub, a glass of orange juice, and then one more try. Helping your kids build stamina for learning when they feel challenged is as much the job of homeschooling as learning to handwrite, read, or add.

I have faith in you!

This post was originally shared on Substack.