Sometimes teaching my child feels like taking a donkey to the water.
I’m the mum who makes all her study notes to help her—hoping it will make things easier. I sit next to her through the study session, breaking the work into tiny chunks, timing the breaks, laying out snacks and sensory toys, getting everything ready. I do the coloured pens, the highlights, the little games to make it stick.
And still, she moans. She’ll nag and complain for an hour, I kid you not.
“Why must I do this? I’m tired. I don’t want to learn. Can I take a break?” — when we haven’t even done five minutes.
“I hate stupid school,” she goes on and on and on.
I get it. I really do. Concentrating for long stretches is hard. So I try everything I can. But even that is too much sometimes. Eventually I find myself crying in the bathroom — out of pure frustration. What more can I do? I’m trying so hard. Can’t she see the effort I put in? She knows all I want is her best. If she tries, it doesn’t matter what the mark says. As long as she tried, that’s enough.
But honestly — it leaves me wiped out. Mentally. Emotionally. I feel like I can’t go on. I hate exams just as much as she does. So sometimes I walk away and let her be until she calms down and is ready. Usually it ends in a meltdown from both of us; I teach, test, revise, and the next day it’s like she’s seeing it for the first time again.
We do so much for our kids expecting the outcome we want. We forget we’re dealing with another human, not a computer we can program. I had her assessed by an educational psychologist. The results: attention deficit disorder, trouble retaining information, and slower development in the logic/problem-solving part of her brain. That’s why maths wrecks her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to learn — she struggles to learn, to sit still, to retain, to problem solve.
Knowing that changed how I approach it. I still make the notes. I still break things down. I still give timed breaks and sensory supports. I still pray some of it sinks in for the exam. That’s all I can do: my best and her best.
At the end of the day, we keep going because we love them. We do the small, messy, repetitive things because they matter more than a single test. And even on the days I cry in the bathroom, I remind myself: we tried. She tried. That’s what counts.