or a nerd like myself, there was no better day than report card day. I waited for my grades with joyful anticipation. With few exceptions (damn you, Calculus), I was excited and proud to have my classroom victories in hard copy. My Mom and Dad were always enthusiastic about my academic success, but presenting them with that list of A’s was an important childhood ritual.
That need for positive reinforcement continued in my professional life through performance reviews. Having tangible proof of my strengths and weaknesses was always satisfying. Meets expectations. Exceeds expectations. FAR exceeds expectations. Like a grown-up report card, without the need for parental signature.
When I left the world of work for stay-at-home motherhood, I knew I’d miss some things about the workplace, but it never occurred to me that I’d suffer from lack of feedback.
In case you’ve never experienced a newborn: Babies are not good at communication. Beyond malodorous clues, the new little person that I was suddenly responsible for was really terrible at telling me how things were going.
For those of us who thrive on positive reinforcement, this was frustrating.
Luckily, the first few months of frequent pediatric visits filled that void. The nurses provided oddly specific data points I found easy to associate with metrics of my parental quality rating: Baby’s head size is 87th percentile? That’s practically an A-, right? Height off the charts? Clearly I was doing a superior job parenting. Weight a little below 50th? Maybe just an off day. Let’s work on that, OK buddy? Cut to me furiously scribbling notes about protein sources and veggie muffins.
In my heart of hearts, I always knew that these percentiles had nothing to do with how I was doing as a parent, but what else did I have? How did I know if I was doing it right without any metrics? Was I meeting expectations or not? There seemed no way to tell without clear goals established through complicated paperwork.
I felt more than a bit insecure.
F