MODERN FAMILY
SIX weeks after giving birth to my first child it was a major achievement if I made it to the corner shop at the end of the street for a pint of milk before lunchtime.
The local shopkeeper would applaud my entrance if I got out in one piece, dressed and complete with baby, pram and change of clothes (always better to be prepared!).
Despite taking multiple exams, getting a degree and starting a career, being able to get out of the house with a tiny baby proved almost impossible in those early days of motherhood.
There are plenty of manuals and advice abounds, but nothing can quite prepare you for the reality of motherhood and the different steps along the way.
Our latest steep learning curve has been helping to get the firstborn through his first major set of exams.
It feels like no time since I was sitting at the kitchen table myself with my highschool chemistry teaching mum firmly by my side for many tortuous hours (for both of us) as she desperately tried to help me through my maths and science exams.
As the daughter of a science teacher, everyone expected those subjects to come easily to me, but the opposite was true and there were lots of tears (from both of us), sitting at the table after the dinner dishes had been cleared, trying to make me understand those tricky equations and the Periodical Table.
I still break out in a cold sweat when a round on chemical elements comes up on Pointless!
Looking back, though, those hours were not “pointless” as I managed to pass Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Chemistry with Bs.
Fast-forward 30 years and I am the one sitting in my mum’s place (without anything like the same qualifications!) as, after a year of disrupution, son senior has been sitting his GCSE assessments.
The exams might have been “cancelled” earlier this year because of coronavirus, but for teachers to be able to grade pupils they are sitting a series of “assessments”.
There are some concerns about the system, but a positive is it is a good way of teaching the pupils how to actually revise, something they would have missed out on if it was just purely predicted grades.
Hopefully, it will also mean that the step up to A-levels, which is a big one at the best of times, will be made that bit easier. Which is why many hours have been spent sitting around our own kitchen table in recent weeks.
Thankfully, we have worked out you don’t need a game show winning knowledge of every subject to be able to help.
It doesn’t matter if you were an A* student or someone who goes and hides behind the sofa when someone asks you to come up with the answer for a simple mental arithmetic question – a lot of time just being there to offer your support is enough.
A very valuable lesson that motherhood has taught me.