So, last week we had parents’ evening. It was fab. Every teacher had good things to say about effort, behaviour and grades. There were a few comments about spelling and presentation (which is to be expected with dyslexia), but EVERY teacher had good, positive things to say about him, and he is doing really well, even in art (not a subject he has particularly enjoyed before). Therefore everything must be going really well.

Er, no. Everything is going really well for most of the time, but good grades do not necessarily equal good mental health. Good grades equal a smart kid who works hard, sets high standards for himself and works to achieve those standards.

Just 5 days after the praise of parents’ evening, we had the first morning meltdown for weeks. As I walked upstairs with breakfast (no comments about out morning routine and breakfast in bed, please. It works for us and that’s all that matters) I could see his light was on and he was sitting up in bed. I greeted him with my usual ‘Good morning, how are  you?’. His reply was to blink his tear filled eyes at me and shrug his shoulders. Not a great start to a new week. I asked what was wrong, and, again, he shrugged his shoulders. And then he told me he couldn’t go in; couldn’t face another day; he needed a day off. We have had a busy weekend, but we have alternated busy episodes with longer spells of vegging out watching TV (back to back episodes of The Flash as he discovered the series last week, so he has 3 series to catch up on). It’s not as though he’s had no down time since school finished on Friday.

We chatted, he leaned on me, he sighed a lot (A LOT) and then he slowly got dressed and went to school. There have been no ‘rescue me’ texts, nor ‘hey, it’s not been that bad’ texts either. After school rugby club means I won’t know how he’s got on or how his mood is until he gets home at 5.40, so we wait and we hope that this morning was just a blip. We’re nearly at the Easter hols, and sometimes that last push is the hardest. We’re also back at CAMHS on Friday, so that may be playing on his mind too.

So, to come full circle and back to where I started this strange ramble, OK does not mean OK. OK with grades and success with school work does not mean that life is good. And also, bad school grades does not mean everything is going wrong. We need to look at everything in our children’s lives, regardless of whether they are square pegs or not. There will always be highs and lows, and we need to give them the tools to deal with these, but to assess whether they really are OK, we need to look beneath the grades and see what’s underneath.