Pride

My children are my greatest accomplishment.  I have always done my best for them.  I encourage, I help and even chastise when I feel it is necessary.

Being a mum for me is something I feel I am very comfortable with.  I like being their friend, their protector and their advisor.  Of course nowadays they may well be better advised than I am!

I had the best mentor, I had a shining example of love, trust and confidence in my own mum and whilst I would never equal her high standards I will always have them to aim for.

My son is a confident, handsome and very capable young man who at seventeen is continuing with his education.  We have had some testing times with him but we have always managed to get over them.  He has a natural ability in his academic life.  He has always had the ability to make learning look very easy.  On one or two occasions his laid back attitude has not always won him favour with his teachers and with me and he has been guilty of over confidence at times to his own detriment.  They have all been learning curves and he has always managed to find the right path.

My daughter on the other hand does not have the same effortless ability as that of her brother.  In 2003 my daughter was very ill, she was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism and her case was very extreme, she was always a very pale, quite, almost withdrawn child.  Although that was to the outside world, to me she was who she was and I didn’t see anything wrong at that point.  As time went on and growth was slow I became an over protective nuisance to our medical centre.  Visit after visit I demanded they plot growth charts, check her over.  Her skin was becoming rather course, her hair was thinning and I was at the end of my tether.  Eventually after six months worth of visits and the realisation that she had not grown at all she was referred to the local pediatric out patient ward.  We were so lucky to have been given the appointment with the doctor we saw as he specialised in her condition and he knew by looking at her what was wrong.  Tests were carried out and the diagnosis was made.  She now faces a lifetime of medication on Thyroxin (T4) but her outlook is rosy!

The medication was effective immediately, within a week we saw a difference.  Her energy levels were higher than ever, she was more engaged and engaging than she had ever been.  She opened up more, talked more freely, she wanted to experience all the things she had missed out on and of course there was a casualty.  Her school work suffered.  She had all of sudden been shown that she could be a part of things whereby before, without the energy and a constant feeling of lethargy she had only been able to be a spectator.  

As the transformation took place I worked with the local junior school closely trying to help her ‘catch up’ and to get back to the average education level of her peers.   Her teacher at time told me she would probably be put into remedial classes in the senior school and asked me to consider putting her on the *special needs register.  I declined and we continued to work together.  Flighty played a huge part in this with his Thursday evening entries.  Anything she was working on he would try and pull together helpful sites, he would put together something that resembled a lesson but with fun attached, including her, encouraging her and making her feel as though she was in fact learning, that she was not failing in her academic life. )  We continued in this vain, she never once gave up, she never once accepted that she couldn’t do anything.  Her determination was inspiring.

Today was parents’ day at the school.  My daughter has surpassed the current Key Stage levels she should be at at this point (of the school term) on every subject (except art and design).  She is in the top English group and the top Science group.  Although she is still in the bottom group for maths her effort award is the highest possible and she will continue to try and make the middle group by term end.

It just goes to prove that with the encouragement and support of everyone around her and a belief in her own abilities success is a very high reward indeed.

My reward? Pride, and to see her happy, to see her achieve and succeed.

* Special Needs Register – I do not wish to disregard this or to disrespect it as an available option.  It was an offer made to us in good faith and offered us help and support to enable my daughter to learn at her own pace.  I chose another path and with hindsight it was the right path for us.

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Tags: academic abilities, Achievement, daughter, hypothyroidism, pride

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