Goodness me, our T is 19 today.

We are so proud of what he’s achieved and how he’s coped with the disruption of the last couple of years.

His A levels were disrupted by Covid, as were so many pupils. He wanted the chance to sit the exams, craved it even.

To try and prove that teacher wrong who’d told him and phoned me on the FIRST day of sixth form to say that she didn’t think he would do well on the course.

To be told that on the first day dented his confidence, who wouldn’t have been affected by that and it set the scene for the teacher-pupil relationship that followed, she didn’t understand what made T “tick” and that positive reinforcement worked best for him. Not negativity. Therefore being graded as a teacher assessment wasn’t going to work, on for either party.

In his two other A level subjects, he did really well and the differing way in which he was taught and that they treated him as the young adult he is, reaped great results in his grades.

But those first day comments meant that he didn’t want to open the email containing the results last year. Feeling deprived of that chance to sit the formal exams, disappointed at the missed opportunity.

It took a couple of weeks before he opened that email, we had to bear with him, gently reminding him that whatever the results, we were super proud of him and we were…3 strong passes.

After the disruption that the pandemic caused, we were amazed when T decided that he wanted to study for 3 further A levels, studying at home and at his own pace. It’s working well, he’s setting his own schedule, studying almost nocturnal hours and with the opportunity of sitting those (craved) formal exams in the appropriate setting.

Of course, T is still very into his sport, he doesn’t play local football anymore, he got frustrated at the lack of opportunities, Covid again and hopefully once his studies are over, he’ll want to take it up again. The all-consuming chap that is T means that he’ll focus and focus on one topic and then the other.

It’s no surprise now that T arrived bang on his due date and didn’t cry, just looked around as if to say “I’m here, bring it on”.

As a toddler, his passion was football and could name the Premier League badges by name, despite his stilted speech at the time. He would carry around with him a laminated sheet of all the badges and I’d also laminate Top Trumps football cards for him … we’ve been decluttering recently and the cards have been re-surfacing, they’ve made us and him smile.

The football passion has carried on and nice to hear Hubbie and T having a bit of banter around football scores.

He was at our wedding too, you can’t see him in this picture but he was there….it made the day even more special.

We wouldn’t change him for anything.

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