Many did well in their O levels yesterday. Some scored distinctions; some didn’t. Some shed tears; not all left their schools with jubilation though.
My son took his O levels result too. He had As and Bs and he qualified for some of the JCs.
No doubt he wished he had done better, we nevertheless celebrated last night because as a family, we are proud of him. It is a milestone for us as parents and I believe life will be bridged by many of these milestones if we don’t give up the good fight.
Fatherhood is a journey. I never expected it to be smooth sailing. I recall I once wrote my son a letter of apology after he got his CA results at Primary 6, five years ago.
At that time, I expressed my stern disapproval in ways that had left him in tears. And this was how I started my letter of apology: -
”Son, your dad is a jerk. He expects you to grow up faster than you can enjoy growing up. He expects you to wear his big Italian shoes and walk like a grown up when you are just a boy. He is dreaming of an adult "you" in a child’s body. He doesn’t know what he is talking about. He is living in cloud cuckoo land.
I think he needs to be in your shoes and walk your walk and talk your talk. He needs to understand that life is not just about grades. There is more to it.
Of course, who doesn’t want their children to do well, academically that is. In this society, many will judge you by your grades. We all know that. There is unfortunately a disquieting form of unspoken discrimination. But the truth is, life does not punish you for mistakes. In fact, life rewards you for it, and it is called learning.
Your dad should have taken some time to reflect about that. Your dad should know that at your age, you are trying your best. And you are most sincere about it. If he thinks that that is not good enough, well then the problem lies with him and not you.
If he compares you with others, then he may as well compare himself with Einstein or Stephen Hawking (maybe that's thinking too highly of him?). How’s that for a comparison because as unrealistic as that is, the boot is now on the other foot? And spare not the kicking on your account right?
Anyway, if the roles were reversed, I am sure your dad would earnestly yearn for his own dad to understand him as you now earnestly yearn for him to understand you.
And if your dad thinks long and hard about it, he will realize that his bond with you does not start and end with the grades you receive at such a tender age. And it would be so unfair to be judged or measured by what you do now when what you do later in life is equally important, if not more so. At the very least, it would definitely be more enduring.
In any event, here’s some food for thought for that old geezer. Why should he measure you by the things you have done in past at the expense of your potentials in the future? Doesn’t he know that your life stretches out from cradle to grave and not from cradle to primary school exams or PSLE or GCE levels?”
Alas, I reread that this morning and ticked off one of the many boxes of fatherhood I label as - “Mike, you can be so wrong sometimes”.
The issue with us parents is not that we do not have faith in our child, in their potential. The issue is, we want them to bloom at our time, not theirs.
Mind you, a meritocratic society like ours is about extracting every merit in our kid early in life so as to give them a good kick-start in life. That’s the manu-script the pied piper of society plays to.
Yes, there are those academically inclined and they bloom way before one can say “ready, get set...” and she’s off.
But as faithful as random genetic selection is, there is the child born specifically to us, and they come to us as they are, whether we like it or not. Some evidently need more time to bloom, and I learn this the hard way as a father. That letter of apology proves this well.
That letter brings out the trials of fatherhood when we see it as a strict performance, expecting them to jump one hoop after another. But it turns into confident joy when we reprioritise and focus (with a long lens view) on the relationship first.
I believe the “grades” we as parents need most to score with our child is not so much the academic ones, but our relationship with them.
I know this is a given, and it goes without saying. But we often unknowingly leverage the relationship as a means to get better grades rather than building it up regardless of the grades.
In our face-saving society, we want to make trophy display out of our child’s grades because it reflects well on us, our parenting skills. We can then boast about what we did right, sometimes mistaking correlation for causation.
It’s like merchandise positioning, where we display the products we want others to take notice of at the most prominent spot, and for those product of less value to us, or may embarrass us, we place them at the back of the store.
Going back to my apology letter, I felt that it confirms one thing: our child yearns for our approval - just as we ourselves yearned for our parent’s.
And when we - whether consciously or unconsciously - make it conditional, or turn it into one that is merit-based, we repeat the sins of our parents and pass down an inheritance of conditional, performance-based love, instead of an unconditional, overcoming one.
Let me end with the end of my apology letter . It still guides me today, and checks me at times.
“I love you son. You are my son for a reason. And the primary reason is not because of what you can do or achieve or give or contribute or will become. It is because you are you. You are special just being you. And that's a privilege of a lifetime. For me, I will always remind myself of how blessed I am to be a part of this journey of growth and discovery with you for as long as I shall live.”
Ps: you have done well son, and should there be an apology here, it would be that I should have told you this much earlier in your life.
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