Some time ago my eldest talked about writing and stated that she already knew how to write.

“Great,” I said, “then you don’t need to go to school.”

At which point she started crying and saying that she wanted to go to school. I quickly changed my mind to:

“I meant, since you can write you’re now ready to go to school.”

That could be just a trivial tale, something cute to tell my grandchildren some day. Except that it’s more than that. It’s me doing a cardinal error: assuming that her expectations are the same as mine. (more…)