With regard to female fear of failure, any idea how I can stomp that out of my 6 year old. She's got it real bad, and I need to stop it.

I’m in full agreement with @tarah when it comes to the question of professional certification. But the issue of perfectionism in grade school kids—boys and girls—is something else entirely. 1/n

In an age of grade inflation, a “perfect” GPA—something ABOVE 4.0–has become the minimum bar for being accepted into the better colleges and universities. College-bound kids have internalized this. 2/n

How do you get a GPA above 4.0? “Honors” classes in many schools give a +0.5 “weighted GPA” bump, and AP classes are +1.0. So an A in AP Chem is worth 5.0 and Honors Chem is 4.5. The top 10 GPAs at my daughter’s school were 4.7+. 3/n

Do the math on a 4.7 GPA and figure out how many AP classes that is. I can assure you my daughter has—she’s asked me to help her game out several GPA scenarios for the rest of her high school career, and she’s only a sophomore. 4/n