My husband left school in the 80s with just three O Levels, despite being very bright. He blames his poor attitude to school on his lack of academic success (the classic, chippy working class boy), but also believes that his teachers and parents could have done so much more to push him to meet his potential. He went on to achieve an honours degree in his early thirties, but feels that his early underachievement has held him back throughout his career. He therefore had very high hopes for our DD, who completed her GCSES this year. Bright, creative, with a naturally enquiring mind, she breezed through the Key Stage 2 SATS and by the end of Year 9 was predicted to achieve a cluster of As and As in Year 11. My husband's aspirations for her extended beyond even Oxbridge - he believed that scholarships to Yale or Harvard were within her grasp. These expectations were not entirely misplaced. At the age of three she wanted to be a palaeontologist and she achieved a score of 135 in a non-verbal IQ test at the age of 11. But having always found learning so easy, she took her foot off the peddle a little bit in the final months leading up to the exams, especially in the non-science subjects. Today's GCSE results were therefore a reality check for both father and daughter. One A in Additional Science, 4 As in maths, core science, Italian and Religion, and Bs in the two English papers, History, Drama and ICT, might be considered a very solid set of results and are enough to get her into the Sixth Form of her choice. She appears to be delighted with her results and is staying out with friends tonight to celebrate. But my husband has been brooding on the Bs in English and History and the lack of an A in maths all day, and his disappointment has tarnished any sense of celebration or achievement that we might have enjoyed in the family home. Writing this, I can only feel sad that so much expectation is being placed now on pupils to achieve As and As, not just with my husband and daughter but from society in general, that anything less seems inadequate. Can a 16 year old child's future aspirations really be dashed at this stage, just because of these results? How do I manage my husband's disappointment, which I believe is a projection of his own sense of failure?