When you don’t practice what you preach

I am fairly open about being more hot headed with my children than I would like to be. Anyone that knows me will know that I do more bribing than I would advocate for and that my youngest has less boundaries than most children double her age.

But last night, I went to parents evening for my son and realised that I have been failing to practice what I preach in other areas, too. 

Lewis is 16 and on the verge of doing his GCSEs. People who have heard me speak will know that we have had a bumpy road and that certainly the first few years of his secondary education were shaped by some fairly extreme behaviours. Some of you might already know that I met Lewis when he was 10. He has no relationship with his birth mum after some fairly traumatic early childhood experiences.

I would say that he grew up without any adults who showed a real love for learning or the value of education. He idolises his dad, who has the same ‘so laid back they are horizontal’ vibe, unless you give him a ball and stick him on a football pitch. His dad is a handyman and really struggles with reading and writing. It is likely that Lewis will have never seen a man read a book outside of a classroom setting and I, without intention or thought, have limited my belief in him, because of that.

Lewis is a grade 3 across the board kind of kid - and it feels like it has been slog to get him there. He isn’t disruptive. He isn’t particularly social. He doesn’t have hobbies or passions that pull him away from study. He is just apathetic, disinterested and unmotivated, and I had put some of that down to struggling to access learning.

My husband and I argue regularly about expectations. About how we go about getting Lewis to do his best - to stick a rocket up his backside and get him moving. My husband will do an occasional short sharp burst of input and go back to laying, horizontally. I have written revision plans, bought all the guides, tried to help him with ‘how’ to revise and booked him in for some tutoring over the Easter holidays on how to pass English, which he was slipping behind on last term. 

So last night with parent’s evening my expectation was, ‘nice lad, some challenges with access to learning, he needs to start working hard so that he gets a 4 in a few subjects and should consider more vocational options after school’. We had really been pushing him hard on revising for his mocks and last night we were going to be given his results from those, discuss how they compared to the autumn run (where Lewis got 2/3/4s), and support him with an action plan for ‘what next’.

It was a strange experience. The first appointment was kind of as expected. ‘Lewis is lazy but more than capable of getting a 4. He needs to apply himself’. Second was much warmer; he had got 4 and 5 in English - a jump up from 3s in the previous sitting. The teacher was really proud and was pleased that he’d begun to apply himself. She directed us to some revision notes and encouraged Lewis to try some past papers and hand them in for marking. I asked about access. I asked about what he is missing, where he struggles, what I should encourage his tutor to focus on to help him. She said that he was really capable, that it is mindset rather than ability and that she’d seen work at a 6 standard when Lewis was motivated to learn.

That message was repeated, over and over. His history teacher, also head of sixth form, saw Lewis as someone that was more than capable of studying history at A Level. That university would be a strong pathway for Lewis - if he could knuckle down and get on.

It made me feel really emotional. How have I, as someone who actively promotes holding high standards and holding hope for young people who are unable to hold their own, failed to do that for my own? The unconscious bias that I work so hard to draw attention to in a professional context has slipped into my personal life and come close to me nudging my son into a pathway that isn’t the only route available to him.

I don’t mind what he does, I don’t mind who is, other than happy and healthy - but I would hate to think we closed doors that should have been open to him, and I am ashamed that I was trying to solve problems that didn’t exist whilst overlooking challenges that he needed support with.

Shaping possibility for Lewis, making him believe that he deserves success, that he can belong in any setting, that he is worthy of whatever success he aims for, is where he needed help. Managing the internal conflicts and emotions that contributed to some of the more complex behaviours a few years ago, drive some of the apathy, too. 

It’s not the stuff that I can outsource to an English tutor. Not stuff that he will find in the revision textbooks that I paid for. It’s the stuff that I talk about every single day and lost sight of - safety, belief, opportunity, hope. Over the last few years, I’ve learnt the power of adult vulnerability - that sometimes the strategy for this stuff is to be real, to show that it matters, to show the emotional minefield that sits between parents, their children and ‘life’. I need him to know that he matters. That his life is meaningful. That I want to help him be his best. That I want him to feel that indescribable sense of pride. That wherever his life takes him, I hope he lives it in full colour. 

So we sat at the kitchen table and had a little cry, and we’ve sent off the application for sixth form - and I continue to be reminded that ‘doing’ this stuff is harder than it seems. It hides in the nuances of life in ways that aren’t obvious, not attention seeking and not always measurable.