I got a near-hysterical phone call from the ten year old a little while ago.  While normally a whiz in math, she had got sloppy on her most recent quiz – forgetting to simplify her fractional multiplication answers – and had been dinged good and hard for it by her teacher.  She is now in anguish because she thinks she’s blown an “A” for the grading period.  (FWIW, I find this hard to believe, given the rest of her work.)

My reaction? A calm, “Well, now.  Bet you won’t make that mistake again, will you.”

Good ol’ Dad.

I think the gel had some vague notion that we could be persuaded to step in and try to bail her out, but I made abundantly clear to her that we were not going to interfere when her bad grade was simply the result of her own carelessness.  In fact, I even managed to slip in the old expression about the burned hand teaching best.

Indeed,  upon further consideration of the matter I am almost rayther glad she got dinged.  In the long run, it’s not going to make any real difference as to whether she gets into Harvard Med or not, but it will certainly teach her a valuable lesson about personal responsibility.

Once I got the gel to calm down and to admit that her grade was a problem of her own making, I then suggested that she take a hot bath and go lie down with a nice book.

Which in my experience, is good medicine for any ill.

UPDATE: I spoke with the gel again when I got home.  I assured her that while I thought it too bad that she should blow her quiz in such a foolish way, I wasn’t mad at her because I could see that she was mad at herself.  This, I said, showed me that she was learning to take responsibility for things, which is good.

Oh, and it turns out that there is an opportunity to retake the test later this week.