Swimming with the Sharks
Miss 17 received her exam results this morning. The good news? She’s on the design course next year that she failed to quality for this year. The bad news? She will have to repeat another year of English and Maths to improve her exam grades. Again.
I’m caught between being happy, frustrated, and sad. I’m happy she’s on the course she wanted to be on, but frustrated about how she ended up in the position she has. If not for a manipulative, toxic, abusive relationship she walked straight into with her eyes wide open earlier this year, her results would have been markedly different. Maybe she has learned something. Let’s hope so.
Nobody warns you quite how difficult parenting becomes when your children become teenagers and push away from you – and while you might want to be there, to help, support and guide them, it’s really better that you are not. It’s terrifying though – watching your largely innocent children swim straight out into the deep water, surrounded by sharks.
At least she has survived her first brush with a shark. I just wonder how the sharks of this world come to exist though. How do some teenagers learn such duplicitous behaviour? If it has been by example, I cannot imagine the lives they must have led.
Anyway. She’s on the design course. That’s all that matters. Another year, and another chance at the deep water.