School Was Easy For Me And That Is The Problem

This one is difficult to say out loud in most rooms, so let me say it for you.

School was fine. You do not remember struggling. You remember being mildly bored, and you remember finishing things early, and you have a vague sense that the whole enterprise was simpler than everybody made it sound.

And now you are sitting next to a child for whom it is not simple, and you have nothing. No map. No memory of the inside of that experience.

So you do the only thing available, which is explain it again. Slower. Then differently. Then with an example. And each time it does not land, something tightens, and eventually one of you says something neither of you meant.

And there is a shame around this that nobody talks about, because it sounds like boasting. You cannot say at the school gate that the trouble is that it was easy for you. So you carry it privately and it comes out as impatience at a table.

To think soberly

There is an instruction in Romans about self assessment that is more useful here than it looks.

For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. (Romans 12:3, King James Version)

The famous half is the warning about thinking too highly. The useful half is the alternative: to think soberly.

Sober thinking is accurate thinking. Not low, not high. It is an instruction to see the actual dimensions of a thing, including your own.

And look at the grounds given for it. God hath dealt to every man the measure. Different measures, dealt out, not earned. Which means an ability you did not work for is not a rank. It is an issue of supply.

You have been handed a way to hold an ease you did not earn, and no measure dealt out has ever once been a position above anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes sober thinking possible about your own mind, and Romans 12:3 grounds the whole thing in what was dealt rather than achieved.

And here is where it bites. Thinking soberly about yourself includes seeing what your ease did not give you.

It did not give you a method, because you never needed one. It did not give you the experience of being stuck, so you have no memory to reach for. It did not teach you patience with slowness, because slowness was never yours.

You were never given the thing you now need, and an easy education has never once handed anybody a map of the hard road. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a person see their own gap without it becoming shame, and the written word calls for an accurate view rather than a flattering one.

Explaining is the wrong instrument

Here is the practical part, and it is the reason the evenings go the way they go.

An explanation broadcasts one route, and the route it broadcasts is the explainer's own. That is all an explanation is: here is how I get from the question to the answer.

And your route runs through a country your child is not standing in. So the explanation is technically correct and functionally useless, and repeating it louder or slower does not move it any closer to where she actually is.

You are able to stop repeating a route that does not start where she is standing, and clarity has never once been the same thing as usefulness. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a parent that their method is a route rather than the road, and Romans 12:3 asks for accuracy about the measure dealt.

And there is something else, which is harder and more important.

Nobody in this house actually knows how she thinks. Not through inattention, but because it never had to be found out, since your own thinking never needed examining.

So the first job is not teaching. It is reconnaissance.

You have a child whose mind has never once been described to you, and nobody has ever handed a parent that map at the door of the hospital. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a parent curious rather than corrective, and the written word deals out a different measure to every man.

And I want to be plain about one thing. Her route may be slower and it may be stranger, and it may also be better. Plenty of people who found it hard early understand it far more deeply later, precisely because they had to build something rather than receive it.

You were never looking at a worse version of your own mind, and a different measure has never once been a smaller one. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a parent from grading a child against themselves, and Romans 12:3 says God dealt to every man, which rules out a single scale.

Ask her to show you

So here is the thing to do tonight, and it reverses the room.

When she gets stuck, do not explain. Ask her to show you how she gets to the answer.

Then say nothing at all until she has finished. Not one correction. Not a helpful noise. Nothing.

She may say she does not know how she does it. That is normal, and it is worth waiting through. Say: show me the first thing you do.

You have the whole of tonight's job inside one question and a long silence, and it has never once required you to produce a better explanation. The Spirit of God is the one who does the work in the part of the evening where nobody is talking, and Romans 12:3 asks for a sober view of the measure dealt.

And when she has finished, say what you saw before you say anything else. So you do this bit first, and then you go back up to the top.

That is the whole exercise. You are building the map you never had, and you are building it in front of her, which tells her that her way of getting there is a real thing worth looking at rather than a broken version of yours.

Romans 12:3 tells a person to think soberly about the measure they were dealt, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table where a parent asks instead of explains.

You are permitted to be the one who does not know here, and not knowing has never once disqualified anybody from the chair. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a parent teachable in front of their own child, and the written word grounds the whole instruction in what was dealt rather than in what was earned.

You have an evening available with no explaining in it at all, and it has never once been the case that silence taught nothing. The Holy Spirit is the one who supplies the patience for a long slow demonstration, and Romans 12:3 asks for sober accuracy.