GCSEs Results Day from a parents POV
Sixteen years ago in a hospital in Northamptonshire I gave birth to a beautiful squidgy baby girl.

She was the cutest independent little Miss. As her mother I loved her, did everything I could to make life good for her, which included he hard decision to break up her family unit when she was just 18months old. I did the best I could to fuel her, teach her and love her. I dreamed of her life and who she would grow up to be. I panicked about, bullies, drugs, smoking and the wrong crowd. As she grew I worried a little less about some of those things and replaced it with worrying about her internal struggle with self worth, which was hard to take having been so positive with her throughout her childhood and trying my best to make her see the good.
As a mother all I want to do is protect my little Miss from the world and the hurt in it. As her mother I want her to see her beauty and potential just like I do. As her mother I want to see her passionate about her life and what she is doing with it. As her mother I want to see her happy.
However, no matter what I say it can’t change her internal dialogue and that’s hard to deal with. I try to reason and guide her but I’m often faced with huffs and sighs and eye rolls. Like I can’t possibly understand what she is going through. She forgets I was once where she is now.
My little independent Miss is now a very grown up little Miss and I am so incredibly proud of the young woman my daughter has become.

The day of her prom when she was stood in her prom dress I was so immensely proud of daughter I had dedicated the last 16 years to and so proud of both of us for getting this far together despite butting heads A LOT because we are so similar .
Yesterday was GCSEs result day for my girl and I think I was more nervous going with her than I was on my own results day. Determined she had failed a majority of her exams, convinced she’d have to resit English and Maths thanks to the new marking system and having never really had a strong sense of direction with her academics her concerns worried me. What if she had failed what would I do?
As we drove up the drive way, we watched cars leaving results already collected. We saw happy faces, we saw tears and my anxiety grew. A sick knot in my stomach as I worried how she would react if her worst fears were about to be realised. What would we do? How would she cope?
Stood in a queue under her surname initial. Moving slowly forward to the moment of truth. I had told her it didn’t matter, that plenty of people fail and go on to do some amazing things, the results would affect what she did next but would not dictate her future. But standing there waiting seeing other girls with tears streaming down their faces running into their mums arms shaking their heads broke my heart.
It is so unfair the pressure that is put on children to pass these exams. That future success is so heavily linked to doing well. The pressure these kids put on themselves is incredibly and I don’t know what can be done to change that. They need to know these exams are not the be all and end all. You can do whatever you put your mind too. Be open to the future and your path. There is more than one way to crack an egg. It may take you longer to get where you want to be if you don’t get the grades you want but you can still get there.
So, we picked up her results and took them to a quite area in the room to view. Opening that sheet of paper was one of the scariest moments in my life as a parent. It takes a moment to see what you are looking at and digest, after about a minute all three of us knew she had made it! She didn’t pass with flying colours but she had done enough. She got her English and Maths and enough passes to get into her chosen 6th form and the right passes for the subjects she’s chosen. It was a huge relief to see.
She was thrilled and so happy to have passed. I was pleased she got what she needed, and relieved because if she hadn’t I really didn’t know how I’d react. My besties daughter didn’t get what she needed she came out to get a hug from her mummy Donna and once she’d gone back in I burst into tears. There in the middle of the car park, I don’t cry in front of people that’s not me. But I was so upset for her. I can only imagine if that had been Terri I’d have felt even worse. So relieved is definitely my word for the day.
Last night we went out to celebrate just me and my girl, my partner was off with his sister at her birthday celebration trip to The Script. We were lucky enough to be invited to the paperback launch of Louise Jensen’s psychological thriller The Sister. Louise’s story from office worker to best selling author is an inspiring one. I was so happy to go and support her and my daughter and I had a great time.
