My Fish Won’t Climb The Tree

On handing the education torch over to my child

The origin of this quote is unclear, but usually attributed to Albert Einstein.

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”.

My boyfriend believes that my daughter just needs to buckle down and get it done… school, that is. He believes it just like her father and many others. And staying true to the cliche, she is everything we are told a high-risk teenager is- unkempt and awkward, stubborn and rebellious, lazy.

She’s also pretty damn intelligent. By all rights and means, she should fly right through traditional schooling, easily. And she did- all through elementary school, although there were bumps that pointed to some off-norm characteristics. For instance, at home, on more than one occasion, she would come out of the bathroom- which she had just walked into- in our tiny home, and remark that she forgot what she was doing.

How many things does one do in the bathroom?! I mean, in the normal course of events, the bathroom is a room of specialty, right?!

But I’m getting off point…

Things really went downhill when she hit middle school. For whatever reason, she didn’t keep up…