Certificate of Achievement in...

I was having a conversation with my 15 year old nephew at a family function recently. Asked about how Teen1 was doing and what subjects he was taking next year, I told him that apparently, Teen1 has not gained his Certificate of Achievement for Year 10 that will allow him to go on to Year 11.

“Do you have to have that?”, he asked.

Well, that said a lot really. The fact my nephew didn’t know that it was possible not to get it, indicates he’s doing what we’d hope of most Year 10 kids. That they are achieving.

Tomorrow is my son’s end of year presentation assembly. I have no idea what he will get. Or if he will even show up.

In the last month, he’s left the house. Not literally. He still comes home. Eats baked beans and ignores the left over roast chicken, scoffs the Tropical Escape Muffins and takes whatever lunch snacks for the week are in the cupboard. He went through a few weeks of returning suspiciously stoned some nights (“I get it for free from my mates, but I’ve decided now not to smoke during the week”). He wagged school two or three days a week for a few weeks, a couple of times on days I dropped him off on my way to work. He went out every night the week before school exams returning often around 10.30 – 11pm ‘exhausted’, he said. (He was exhausted?). He canned (no, not ‘caned’ but ‘canned’) his exams, tagging two of his exam papers (“I didn’t know anything else to write, and I was bored so I had to do something”) and on being referred for his graffitical error he just walked out of the DP’s office. ("He was talking to someone and I got bored"). He refused to get out of bed to go to the last of his exams. (refer para below on the medical certificate).

What happened? A consequence was meted out, of course.

The school advised me that he was not allowed to go on the Year 10 Camp, to tramp one of our national sub alpine South Island tracks.

To be honest. I was gutted. Upon hearing the DP’s directive, I fleetingly became a 4^th former who was being told this as if it were happening to me and I experienced horror, embarrassment, humiliation, sadness, desperation, desire for atonement…. And then I snapped back into being a mother - and I experienced all those states all over again (except atonement maybe).

The school said that they could not let him go on the basis that they could not trust that he would be a good representative of the school.

I cogitated on this for a bit. And then I got frustrated. And mad. Representing the school in the middle of the alps with a pack on your back and a 15k walk to the next hut and the next meal ahead of you? Hard to stuff up the only available choice open to you.

Boys. 14 to 15. Need physical activity. Challenge. Fear. Comradeship. Experience. Battling and submitting to the raw power of nature.

Given there isn’t a boot camp or war to send him off to (a male friend told me that boys this age are hard wired for war), well then, I would go in to the school with an aim to reverse their decision or at least, air my concerns.

I prepared my arguments. Sorted my references from reputable psychologists, physical trainers, and community programmes. I asked Teen1 if he’d be prepared to go to camp if I went in to bat on his behalf and he said – surprise, surprise – he would.

Then he got even sicker. Really really sick. A doctor’s visit three days before camp departure date elicited a medical certificate basically saying that there was no way a boy with a chest infection, high temperature, aching body and headaches which had been going on for two weeks (over the exam period…..) would be fit enough to climb a mountain with a pack on his back.

Consequences. Certified medically unfit. Exams not finished. No attainment cerificate for Year 10. No camp with mates.

Instead he spent a week almost coughing up his insides while clearing grounds at local cemeteries doing the Community Service Camp Option.

I’m not really sure what Teen1 could be certified as achieving this year. Maybe aging his mother by ten years at least? Or, possibly, he’s helped me become a better parent for having to let him go.

I hope all parents enjoy seeing their child cross the stage at their presentation assembly. No matter what is written on the certificate any of them receive, we know we give them our all round certified love.