I grew up with strict parents and a fear of bad grades. I'm raising my son differently.

• I grew up with near-daily grade checks and believed anything less than perfection meant I had failed.
• It took me nearly 30 years to let go of the perfectionism I learned as a teen.
• When I check my son's grades, I make sure to focus on his effort instead of the score.

Sophomore year of high school, I recall sitting at my desk in chemistry class, head down, working unsuccessfully to hold back tears. I'd done poorly on a quiz in the previous class, and I knew there'd be hell to pay when I got home.

My mom checked my homework and quiz results every day, and anything less than an A or a B meant trouble.

Decades later, I don't remember the grade from that day or even the subject, only the dread I felt. And the nagging question I kept to myself: Why do we treat a daily quiz as if it's my final grade?

I believed anything short of perfect meant I had failed

As someone who loves a good sports metaphor, I can also see the situation from another perspective. What's a quiz if not practice? You go hard every practice. Even more, you aim for flawlessness.

"Practice doesn't make perfect," my mother, a brilliantly successful high school softball coach (four state titles, National High School Softball Coach of the Year), would tell our team. "Perfect practice makes perfect."

She had a point.

She was hard on me, and I understand now it was probably the "Because I know you can do better" approach. And the pressure to perform was as much self-imposed as it was external.

One basketball game, my disgust after missing a shot must have been scorchingly obvious because a teammate's father called teasingly from the stands, "You can't make 'em all," and I heard a few parents chuckle.

He meant it in a "You'll get the next one, take it easy on yourself" way, but I wasn't thinking of the next one. I staked my worth on being a perfectionist.

I saw everything as a win or a loss

It would take me nearly 30 years to learn that perfectionism is a fool's errand.

The aha moment came when I discovered psychologist Carol Dweck's research on fixed mindset versus growth mindset: the difference between believing your abilities are set in stone and believing they grow with effort

After reading her book, "Mindset," I realized how rigid, how black-and-white, the thinking in my teen years and much of my adulthood had been.

Win or lose. Success or failure. A grades were rewarded; C grades were punished. And a D? It happened just once, in the spring of my freshman year, and the fallout was nuclear. No fall sports.

My son and I review his grades together, and he isn't nervous about it

My son is a sophomore in high school, and we do things differently.

I check his quizzes, his homework, and his projects, but I don't focus on the grade in isolation. I look at effort.

My son's not afraid when I log into PowerSchool or Google Classroom to check his progress. He stands next to me at the kitchen table, watching over my shoulder.

"What's going on here?" I asked recently, pointing to a few late assignments. I always start with questions, not accusations.

He was ready with a reasonable answer. Some were glitches in the system, and some were teachers who hadn't updated grades yet. A couple of items were due to his confusion about steps in the process. The conversation was easy, and we were both fine.

I want my son to hold himself to high standards without fearing failure

His biggest challenge has been speaking up, and we've been troubleshooting ways for him to do that. How can he approach the teacher to ask for help? How can he make sure to speak up sooner rather than later? I make it clear those are his responsibilities.

I've told my son something my mother never would have told me: the grade matters less to me than the effort behind it.

I want him to go hard in that metaphorical practice every day, and it seems to be working. He gets good grades — including making all A's once, which I never did — doesn't procrastinate on homework, and has good rapport with his teachers.

When he struggled in a couple of subjects a few years ago, we worked together. No tears.

I'm raising a son with high standards, not a perfectionist. If and when something goes poorly, I want him to be resilient. I didn't do well with that as a kid and as a young adult, but so far, he's got it. Maybe that's what perfect practice is all about.