Am I Failing As A Year 12 Mother?
My 17-year-old son is laughing, and asks if I want to see his latest TikTok effort. I don’t. My thoughts are on more serious things. After 13 years of Vegemite sandwiches for lunch and Tiny Teddies for recess, it is nearly the end of his school days. For him and his fellow students sitting final exams in October, it is crunch time – with an added layer of COVID-19 complication.
I can’t help but worry about the exams. Although he seems to be doing more work than ever before, which is reflected in improving results, I am plagued by a feeling that it could all fall over in a heap.
For most boys his age, a fuller life is starting to beckon. There are boozy 18th birthday parties, romantic possibilities, spontaneous outings with friends turning up in cars and, being a social type, he is lapping it up. So, yeah, who would really want to study?
He has his sights set on a uni course with a competitive entry requirement but he has never been particularly studious, bagging the nerdy kids for their focus and preferring to be seen as a rebel with a sardonic wit. The disruption of a remote learning period contributes to my feeling of disquiet. But I don’t want to transfer my anxiety to him, to allow him to think for a minute that I don’t believe in his ability, or to make him unnecessarily jittery.
Exam pressure on our teenagers is onerous enough. When I sat the NSW Higher School Certificate in the late 1970s – admittedly, a very long time ago – it didn’t seem a particularly big deal. As one of my cohort confessed at a recent school reunion, the night before the big exam she was at a friend’s home until late, and they may not even have been studying. She is now an esteemed neuropsychologist.
An uncomfortable sense of the unknown blankets most things these days, including the future that awaits my boy. There must be some way of helping him that doesn’t involve tetchy questions about how much study he’s done this week or probing conversations about his social diary. There must be some way that doesn’t create stress.
I find myself being extra nice to my son and cutting him slack. This might mean turning a blind eye to minor annoyances (picking up towels, putting laundry where it ought to go), or not hovering and asking annoying questions. Is this too much slack, is it coddling? I like to think I draw the line at buying him gummy bears and ice-cream to “help him with his work” but often I just do.
“Pressure or no pressure, I know in my heart there is nothing I can do that will make him work hard; it has to come from him.”
There seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to Year 12 outcomes: the popular “there are lots of pathways in life, the exam isn’t everything” position and the pragmatic “work hard and make it count” position. Which to subscribe to? Pressure is bad but some pressure, surely, is good.
Pressure or no pressure, I know in my heart there is nothing I can do that will make him work hard; it has to come from him. Many of my fellow parents agree.
“You can’t do much,” one says to me as we watch our boys playing football. She tells me her son is in the throes of his first serious love affair – “he’s on the phone with her all the time.” She concludes with a sigh, “In the end, they have to do it themselves.”
Agreed, you can’t do that much. But to keep everyone sane, a balance between cracking the whip and the que sera sera position works best for me and our family because I know it’s not easy trying to focus with so many distractions competing for his attention.
Rather than worrying, I look for the positives: praising his good grades in favourite subjects and keeping a lid on stressors. I aim for calm and keep household routines ticking over in the hope it will contribute to consistent study and the best mark possible. I make sure I attend his football games as a show of support and I’ve even started ironing his school shirts (no one in my house irons anything) as if in doing so I may work a magic spell that bestows wisdom.
I have to trust him to work as well as he can. But I also check in and make sure he is feeling okay about the forthcoming tests, and that he knows we can help if he ever feels like he is sinking. And I always make sure there is food that he likes in the house, which includes, of course, mountains of gummy bears.
Words_ Patricia Sheahan
Photo_ theceokid/UnSplash