Mothers worry about their children. Which is not to say that fathers don’t. In earnest anticipation of the ‘don’t-generalise-brigade’, let me make it clear that I’m very aware that some mothers don’t and that some fathers do (and very much).
Even so, in my experience, mothers have the edge in that department, just as they’re the ones driving to private lessons and juggling busy lives and careers. Mothers also tend to create worry where none, apparently, exists. I say apparently because mothers possess a sixth sense which men, as a rule, don’t have or don’t cultivate.
This piece, then, is ‘my ray of hope’ for worrying mothers who don’t have serious reason to worry. I promised myself, years ago, that I’d write it. The time is now ripe. But it’s not going to be an easy column, especially in Malta where everything you write can be (and often will be) used against you or your children.
Yes, children are just what this article is about. Or to be precise, one child – my son, whose permission I have sought – and significantly, the schooling and education he received up to the age of 16. Did they actually work for him? I was never quite sure. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need first to visit a time before that.
My son walked rather early (at 11 months), but was spectacularly lazy about practically everything else. He refused to talk, and of course, that was when this mother’s worrying began (taking her cue from friends and family members). Yet she instinctively knew, as only a mother can, that there was nothing fundamentally wrong and that he would eventually talk.
But I was still impatient and, I admit, just a little scared. For first-time mothers, you see, comparing their child’s progress with the milestones of others is always unsettling. I was therefore cajoled into doing what I hadn’t wanted to do: engage speech and other therapists. A couple of underwhelming sessions later, during which therapists tried to discover problems that weren’t there, I decided to trust my original instinct: I’d wait for my son to talk when he was good and ready. Which he did, though not until he was close to three.
He hasn’t stopped since. He now teaches me words, and has the unusual ability to pronounce tricky words correctly, first time round, with no instruction – words that make me pause.
Even so, there was always something to worry about. If his peers knew the colours and numbers at the start of Kinder 1, there’d be a six-month delay at my end. But again, I simply knew he’d get there. He was just not in any particular hurry.
Primary school brought its own particular worries, and guilt. In Year 2, I was taken aside by his very well-meaning (and observant) class teacher, who told me that my son didn’t hold his pencil correctly, like the other boys did. This was naturally cause for concern because it made his writing slower and less efficient, and would (and indeed did) stay with him throughout his school years.
Just as it’s OK to learn how to read a clock later rather than sooner, it’s also OK if your child can’t work the system
A meeting was called. I took my father with me, who dismissed the problem in a way that only a 67-year-old Edwardian would. He told the teacher that Igor Judge held his pencil ‘unusually’ and that he went on to become Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. I later told this story to Judge when I met him at a Mabel Strickland Memorial lecture he gave a couple of years ago.
My son’s school life was plagued with worry that, in retrospect, seems so pointless. Learning support assistants were inevitably hinted at, although when I eventually succumbed and had my son assessed, he was not (as I suspected) a candidate for one. His distractions were not considered serious enough either, being probably down to his simply being bored, lazy and disengaged.
I am not suggesting that schools are wrong to point out such things. Far from it. Early intervention is far better than cure, and I commend all those teachers, therapists and their efforts. But the final outcome – after all the assessments, meetings, interviews, letters and appeals – was nothing more than extra time in the school and MATSEC examinations, which admittedly was very useful.
There were other pointless worries. While mothers I’d meet complained about stress and homework, I was worried because my son never had any. Or if he had, I never saw him do it. Every so often, I felt the need to scream: how was it possible that he was the only boy in Malta not bogged down by homework?
I eventually decided to stop worrying, telling myself that, as before, he’d get there in the end. Should I be embarrassed to admit that the crucial Form 3 - 5 years were, for me, largely stress-free – apart from my own guilt-induced manufactured stress?
I never thought my son would pass his SECs first time round. OK, perhaps one or two subjects. This is in no way a mother’s lack of faith in her son’s intellectual capabilities, but rather in a system which, in its ‘one-size-fits-all’ cookie-cutter ways, did not fully reach my son or realise his potential. He just didn’t possess the school ‘gene’ – the ability, quite different from intellect – to sell and ‘package’ what he knew.
To my enormous pride, my son proved me wrong. With minimal effort – and that’s not a phrase I use flippantly – he got through and will be attending Sixth Form this coming September.
My story suggests the virtue of taking the longer view. Just as it’s OK to learn how to read a clock later rather than sooner, it’s also OK if your child can’t work the system. Your unique child, ever true to himself, will get there.
We can’t all hold our pencils the same way. The penny does drop. Armed with that comforting thought, it’s also OK not to worry.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com