I know IABU because I have a lovely child who is healthy and happy. So really this is more about asking for anyone else’s stories and to help to sort my own head out, because it’s really getting me down with worry.
Aged 7, DC is struggling to do well with even the basics at school, and I mean things like copying out short sentences without multiple errors, knowing spellings well at home but then getting less than half when tested, unless watched like a hawk written sentences are just a massive mush of mispelled unintelligible words, maths might as well be a foreign language for anything to do with even basic additions or subtractions. Times tables draw an absolute blank, even the 2’s or 10’s. Concentration is less than zero. Reading is adequate.
School is very small with only about 10 children in the class and a teacher and TA. No concerns about dyslexia or anything else have been flagged which does seem to be consistent with what I see. Last report/assessment showed improvement required in every single area of maths and English.
Conversely I was very academic and I can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that the honest truth seems to be that my child just simply isn’t that way inclined. I wonder if the attention and praise I got for getting top marks as a child has perhaps made me absorb a belief that worth and success is somehow tied to that. (I was always the fat unattractive friend too, which I mention because again I always felt that I had academics as my “thing” even when nobody wanted to snog me at parties and when all my friends had boyfriends!)
Homework this morning has been an absolute disaster with zero concentration, total lack of giving a stuff about any of it on DC’s part, sadness and frustration on mine. DH just gets cross with me for bothering about it; he took them to do their homework and it’s even worse when he’s been involved!
I am feeling really worried that they are going to get further and further behind despite the school trying hard. I am very upset about it but also very cross with myself that I seem to feel so deeply disappointed and sad when I am lucky enough to have this wonderful little person in my life. Being brutally honest and shameful, I also feel twinges of jealousy when friends have dazzlingly bright kids.
So, AIBU to ask if anyone else has ever felt this way when a child doesn’t perhaps meet preconceptions or expectations that you didn’t even realise you had? How do you have a word with yourself about something like this, and what should those words be?