Parental angst

Complete results for kids' second exams are out, with the useful average of the whole form included.

The younger son did not disappoint, his grade continues to improve, and while fell short of his targeted position among his form, he has passed every subjects and is within the top 20 percentile.

The elder son on the other hand, is a major headache. Not really surprised from his attitude throughout the semester but still disappointed. I guess I am still trying to believe him, even when he has not delivered on his promises. His words are cheap.

At the beginning of the school year I emphasised that he no longer has any buffer, he should treat it as a 'do or die' situation, and put in everything he has into his studies.

He continued to scorn study and prefers to waste his time playing computer game, watching television, and gluing himself to his smartphone.

So it's no surprise with the results he got. He has dropped to the bottom 16 percentile now. Being the absolute last in his form is perfectly within the realm of possibility now given the trend of his decline.

So I took it upon myself to analyse his results and to go through the analysis with him. Taught him how to analyse, how to interpret, and how to strategise. Taught him about the weighting, showed him the trend of his form, how he compared to the average of his form and what does it mean, and which subjects he should put more effort in and which are less important because of the weighting.

That was yesterday, and the first thing he did today after he woke up was to play computer game, then had his lunch, and continued to play computer game after lunch without washing up his dishes. At the time of writing this sentence he is still playing, and wifey has reminded him several times that he has already exceeded his game time.

Yes, such is the angst of being the parents of a child with problematic attitude.

Other |sane side| category entries.