I was disappointed, even though it wasn't as bad as I thought

The results of the National Unified Elementary School Student Test have come back.
They weren't as bad as I thought.

And yet, the moment I saw the results, I felt disappointed.

It wasn't as bad as I had expected

In math, the deviation score was slightly above 50,
and in Japanese, it was just shy of 60.

To be honest, before the results came back,
I thought they would be lower.

I even thought it might not reach a deviation score of 50.

My son usually doesn't start his workbooks easily,
and he makes a lot of careless mistakes.

Therefore,
I didn't think he would score that well on an external mock exam like the National Unified Elementary School Student Test for the first time.
Looking only at the results, they weren't worse than my expectations.

In fact, one could say they were much better than I had thought.
And yet, before I could feel relieved,
I felt disappointed.

I found it a bit strange myself.
After all, I know in my head that the test results of a second-grade elementary school student are not set in stone for the future.

I know they can change as much as they want from here on, and that there is room for growth.

Even so, I was a little surprised that the first thing I felt upon seeing the results was 'disappointment'.

I had two feelings inside me from the start

Thinking about it now, I think I had two feelings from the beginning.

One was the version of me that watches my son every day.
I know he doesn't start his workbooks right away,
that he makes many mistakes,
and that he isn't used to exam-style questions.
That's why
I thought, 'It probably won't be that high.'

The other was the version of me that wants him to do better.
My son reads books.
He reads novels borrowed from the library,
and sometimes talks about them while considering the characters' feelings.
He can also explain and summarize the content.
When I ask about the characters' feelings,
he often explains them in his own words.

So, somewhere deep down,
I thought he should be able to score higher in Japanese.
Even in math,
I thought his way of thinking wasn't that bad.

When the results came back,
I think I was feeling both at the same time.

'It wasn't as bad as I thought'
and
'But it wasn't as good as I had expected,' simultaneously.

What disappointed me was the content of the answers, not the deviation score

What particularly bothered me was the Japanese section.

I had always thought my son was better at math.

But this time, looking only at the results, Japanese was better.

While that in itself was a surprise, what bothered me more was that he missed reading comprehension questions.

Even though he reads books.
Even though we have thought about the characters' feelings together.
Even though he can explain and summarize content.
I couldn't help but think, 'He missed those?'

It was the same for math.
It wasn't that he didn't understand the logic at all, but there were problems he missed due to mistakes.

That's why, rather than the deviation score itself,
my eyes were drawn to the problems he missed.

That was probably why I felt disappointed even though it 'wasn't as bad as I thought.'

Even though I thought it would be lower,
in truth,
I wanted him to score higher in Japanese,
and I didn't want him to miss math problems due to mistakes.

When I had him redo the problems, the visible challenges changed a little

After seeing the results, I had him redo both the Japanese and math sections.

However, I didn't explain anything or
give him any hints at that time.

I didn't show him any explanation videos,
and he had come home without listening to the cram school's explanations.

In other words, he didn't redo them with the answers provided; he rethought them himself.

As a result, he got a perfect score in Japanese.

I suspect he didn't even remember which options he had chosen on the day of the test.

But at the very least, when he rethought it alone,
he was able to choose the correct answers.

It seemed like he hadn't read the problem text carefully to the end,
or he had jumped to conclusions about what was being asked.
It was closer to him rushing and misunderstanding the intent of the questions, rather than not being able to read the text.
In math, too, while the last problem seemed difficult as expected, he stopped making errors in the answer boxes,

and only missed a few of the later problems.

Seeing this redo, I became a little confused again.

I thought he 'couldn't do it,' but
maybe that's not the case.

Rather than being bad at Japanese,
maybe his way of reading the problems was just sloppy.

Rather than being weak at math,
maybe it was an issue of precision during the actual test.

Thinking about it that way, the challenges I saw this time
were a little different from what I had thought.

Everyone around me was praising him, but only I was pessimistic

My husband and parents said that his Japanese was good enough.

Considering he doesn't go to a cram school,
and that he was able to get the reading comprehension questions right when redoing them,
they said it was quite good.
They also said that if he hadn't made mistakes in the answer boxes for math,
he would have done quite well.

The cram school teacher also told me, 'He is doing well enough, so please praise him a lot.'

I understand that in my head.
But it seems I was looking at the results themselves, while
in reality, I was comparing them to the 'ideal image of my son' that I have in my mind.

I wanted him to do better.

I thought he could score higher.

Even though I intended not to have expectations, usually,
in reality, I was definitely expecting things.

Everyone around me was praising him, but only I was pessimistic.
I realized that for the first time after seeing the results.

Perhaps I need to re-examine how I set my expectations before looking at my son's answers

I often think I am observing my son.

But what I saw this time was not just my son's true ability,
but my own habit of looking at results.

Estimating low,
while expecting high somewhere.

Holding 'it wasn't as bad as I thought' and 'but I was disappointed' at the same time.

And, rather than the numbers themselves,
my eyes being drawn to the problems he missed.

Looking at the results of the National Unified Elementary School Student Test,
what moved first might have been the contradiction within me,
rather than the evaluation of my son.

What I should re-examine next might not be my son's study method,
but how I set my own expectations when looking at his answers.

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Before seeing the results, this was how my son was on the day of the test.

I feel that the pain of thinking "you could do it if you tried" was connected to this disappointment as well.

I am not so much an educational account as I am a mother who is observing because I don't understand.
I write about the entirety of note here.