Was I young or thick? You decide…

Very shortly, my twins will be doing their GCSE’s.

This makes for a stressful household.

Stressful for the boys, obviously.

Very stressful for their mum and their mum being my wife, this is a stressful for me as well.

This is because I am not huge on formal education – whereby children are trained to pass tests rather than being educated – and I think the idea of sending 50% of all school leavers to university is good for lecturers but much less  good for students.

Not that I am not fully invested in my boys development and that they get the best results they are capable of. Nothing worse than underperforming and especially so in a period of their lives on which they will be forever judged.

So my big mistake then has been to let them know how I got on in my O levels.

I failed English Language once and Maths O Level twice and I didn’t manage a single ‘A’ in any public examination despite my working bloody hard.

So how come?

Well, I now put my performance down to being a summer baby coupled with being such a late developer – I was practically hairless doing my O-levels and I figure in terms of maturity I was probably up to two years behind my peers during the formative years.

Or else I am just thick but either explanation, my problem remains because my boys have figured out that as long as they fare as well as their old man – then I can’t be cross with them?

Which is true to a point but I can still be disappointed with them and I figure that understanding this is enough to inspire them and get them fired up.

Which means also that I can avoid trotting out the trump card of –

The exams are a piece of piss now.

Which makes none of us feel particularly good about ourselves – and is best avoided. But true though. I’ve just glanced through a maths past paper and even I could have…

(To the astute reader, you are correct to assume that neither of my boys read my blog)