My friend Iris has her children in a private school that has a strong academic focus. At the end of each school year, the children are given a workbook to complete over the summer to help them stay focused on learning and prepare them for the next grade. Now personally, I would probably forget the workbooks until the week before school started and then have to cram everything into a week, but Iris is a much more conscientious mom than I am, so she has already started.

Last week, her son Cameron handed in his assignment. As Iris checked his sheet against the answer key, she was pleasantly surprised that he seemed to be getting every one of the multiple choice questions right! Wow, he must really be applying himself to this work, she thought.

Then she got to the final question in which the child is asked to write a sentence. She suddenly understood how Cameron did so well on the multiple choice. He neatly wrote the exact thing that was written on her answer key, “Answers may vary.”

Diane appears Wednesdays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Di on her blog Live and Let Di.