When People Quiz Your Kids
We don’t live in an unschooling bubble, do we?
Our kiddos have to get out there in the community and brush up with people who have no idea what we’re trying to do. And while that’s a good thing, in general, it can be tough when they’re faced with An Interrogator. Maybe it’s Aunt Jeannie who wants to see if your kids know their times tables. Or maybe the neighbor wants to see how they do in spelling. Sometimes it’s even another kid who’s basically trying to prove that his education is better.
No matter who it is, it helps to prepare them. So if your kids are away from you and you can’t run interference for them, they may need a couple of quick factoids they can rattle back at their quizzer:
“Do you know the capitol of Angola, or San Salvador, or Malaysia?”
(Here’s a wikipedia cheat sheet
, so he can pick which countries they’d like to know)
Or how about a math question?
“What’s 2358 x 137?”
“What’s the square root of 196?”
(here’s a square root calculator
, so she can pick her own!)
Or,
“Do you know which word the spelling bee champion knew that no one else did?”
(and then google the answer with him to see what it was)
The point being that the child can give some demonstration of knowledge and then happily skip away. You know your own child best - they may like having a couple of these handy facts up their sleeve. Even if the other child has more, just lobbing a few back may be how they'd like to play this.
Or, maybe engaging in this kind of one-upmanship game is not their cuppa tea. My daughter reminded me, "What about when we run out of these memorized facts. Some kids will always have more! Then what??" True. Some situations (or personalities) may be better off not engaging.
Simple responses like this may be better: "Who cares about that ? Let's play... <<whatever is available>>!"
Someone else suggested pulling out their phone, or borrowing someone's nearby, and looking up the answer right there on the spot.
Another option is to talk to those people yourself. You could even suggest that your child say this:
Mom said if the quizzing starts, you should probably take it up with her.
No reason your child should have to go head-to-head with an adult with an agenda.
