Feeling disappointed for DS

[changedmyname24]

My DS2, 13, has SEN - autism, ADHD & epilepsy are the main things, he's also probably hyper mobile & dyspraxic.

He is a lovely boy & is at mainstream senior school, which he loves. He is very popular there among staff & has a little group of friends who invite him to a lot of their get-togethers (not all) & who look out for him at school.

He will probably take the standard 9-10 GCSES & get 4s & above in most of these (according to current predictions). He is very much encouraged & celebrated at school & at home, he gets endless achievement points for effort & got 2 end-of-year awards in Year 7, including a Year Leader award.

What breaks my heart a little bit is that however hard he tries & however much he improves, he is always 'behind' most of the others in his year. He took an extra-curricular exam at the start of the holidays & got a High Merit, which we were thrilled about & teachers said they were too. But then I found out today that 90% of the others who took it got Distinction. This made me feel rather deflated.

I'm sure I probably need a slap round the face with a wet fish about this. He is such a happy soul & we have never encountered anything other than support & encouragement at school. I think it's just the knowledge that life will always be harder for him, is pretty tough to take 😥

I'm not sure what the point of this was, I think I just need to vent. Sorry 🙈

So long as he passes his GCSEs it doesn't really matter.

You are right & I'm sure he will pass most of them, although maybe not all. It just feels tough that he tries so much harder than others (going on my other DSes anyway) but still doesn't get the same results! Has to work harder for less reward all round 😏 Although I'm sure I'm overthinking it.

One thing that helped my DD was not taking the full set of GCSES. She did have the lesson, well some of them as we had a lot of school refusal in the final year but concentrating on 6 GCSES seemed to help as she got better than expected grades.

Unfortunately that's not an option at his school. He has been offered to drop 1 language (they all do 2), but they are his strongest subjects so really reluctant to drop those.