  The moment I arrived, he greeted me at the front dooe with a test paper in his hands. "Sorry" he said sheepishly. "Why are you apologising? ", "because Dad called and told me you cried last night. " Yes I did cry last night. They were tears of disappointment and sadness.
The child I gave birth to 12 years ago has not met my expectation. He is not top of his class. He is not unusally talented in any way, and now, it has finally downed on me, he may not get into the top school that I had planned for him, or even to the school that he planned himself. Too high expectation? perhaps. Afterall, I always argued, his dad was top of his school every year.
And even though I was an average student, I believe I could have done much better if I had a mother who devoted all her free time to her children. I had no help, Andreas did. My greatest disappointment, though, is that even though he did poorly for his prelims, that did not spur him on to study harder for his PSLE. Instead, he abandoned all the homework I gave him to read "Eragon". Normally I would have been pleased that his is reading, but yesterday I was just sad that his is abandoning the race. A child will only do well if he wants to, many parents tell me.
Doesn't Andreas want to fulfill his dream of joining his cousin in the top school? Obviously not enough. Am i too hard a parent? I tried to think of al the moment of pride he gave me and all i remember are the disappoinments. He couldn't make it to Gifted, he grades sliding again after improving the last term, the many times he tried to defy my orders and played with his gameboy, the computer, or even using calculator to do his maths. Yes, very talented in thoes areas.
Disapppointed and sad that he would rather make me unhappy and risk punishment for that one moment of weakness. For that shows his weakness, doesn't it? 
