My six-year-old daughter, Bethany, is doing very well at school, but she hates to get anything wrong. Her teacher informed me that if Beth gets even a single answer incorrect on a test, she falls apart. So the other night, we had a heart to heart while I was putting her to bed. "Daddy and I don't expect you to be perfect, you know," I told her. "Mistakes are how you learn. And no-one gets 100% all the time."

"Katie* does," she said. (Katie is Bethany's very bright friend and classmate.)

"Oh," I said, stymied for a minute. "Uh ... well, everybody has stuff they're really good at, and other stuff they have to work harder at."

"What is Katie not good at?" she asked. Rhetorically.

"Uh ..." I stammered. "I don't really know her well enough to say, but I'm sure there's something."

Bethany suddenly smiled. "I know!" she exclaimed.

(Phew.)

"What?" I asked.

"Katie is really good at being tall, and really bad at being short."

I could never have come up with that.

When it comes to my kids, I'm very good at being proud, and very bad at being humble.

CA

*name has been changed to protect the high achieving