It’s the time of year when parents are less frenzied over the cut-offs on jeans (could your shorts be any shorter?!) and more about the cut-offs in marks. Will the offspring make the grade for that Jack-and-the-beanstalk STEM to transport them up to another world? What if Maths just doesn’t add up? Or Chem explodes? Will the kids deliver to us bragging rights or not? Honestly, it’s that time of year when a parent test is called for, as well.
Q1: Biology: What does your teen need to change physically to present a more successful image? Stronger memory? More focus? Better eye-hand coordination? Surely, at least his hair needs cropping?
A1: Chop off the umbilical cord. If he’s looking a bit pale lately, it’s for want of Vit D. Let him off the hook, off his books and into the sun. Not to play a list of organised sports, but to roam around, street-eat, bus it, or do anything with his day that you’re not remote-controlling for him.
Q2: Maths: Calculate n as the number of hours your kid needs to be pumped with x tuitions and y nutritional supplements, to crack the exam.
A2: He’ll crack, all right, and not the exam. Could you perhaps allow your kid to do the maths problems without turning him into one?
Q3: Foreign Language: How do you talk to a kid whose head is always stuck in some gadget?
A3: You talk to the back of the head, the headphones, the hand, the closed door. Your kid’s got the superpower to hear you through any of that, tough as it is to believe.
Q4: History: Whose kid topped which class in which year by doing what?
A4: This is every kid’s nightmare question. So any answer is going to start a war. Bury the past. It won’t predict the future. Utilise the present in taking him out for pizza.
Q5: Geography: Which direction will your child’s career take? Which college, country, corporate, climatic zone will he land up in?
A5: Answer to be found in the Computer Programming course, if he were a bit of bytes you could code. But he isn’t. And you can’t. Move to the Chemistry class then. Mix yourself something that sorts you out. If you stop hovering over him, he’s going to turn out just fine.
Your score: You’ve graduated with an A. All parents do. We’ve done our best, and more. The only thing, the toughest test to pass now, is to just let go.
Where Jane De Suza, author of Flyaway Boy, pokes her nose into our perfect lives.
