How To Know Your Child Is Succeeding Academically

This is a question I get so often and have for many years. It was even something that I remember my mom being asked about me and my siblings when we were being homeschooled!
"How do you know they're succeeding?"

The problem I have with that question is this.. What is academic success to you? Is it straight A's? Is it their ability to blab out some memorized text? Or is it, perhaps, their love of learning?

In our household and schooling methods, I want to create a love of learning, because there is absolutely nothing more valuable. Memories fade. Random facts are forgotten. People get bored of subjects. But that love, that passion, for learning more will never go away if you instill it in a young child.

I don't give my kids grades in the traditional sense. They do their work with me present, so they know when they have made a mistake and it is quickly fixed (as I don't want them creating the habit of making those mistakes), so there is no point in giving them a letter grade. What I absolutely do make sure they know is how amazing their questions are. How happy I am to help them look up information they seek. How excited I am to learn something new with them OR to teach them something I know.

Our value of academic success just does not ride on that delicate teeter of where they will fall in a letter grade. It rides on the desire to keep trying and to keep learning more. This way, they will never do the bare minimum... and those who seek to do more, will always be successful.