Are parents too involved in teenagers' A levels and independence compared to how they used to be?

20 years ago my mother helped me five days a week with English and French. We'd sit down together and read through whatever play I was studying (King Lear, or similar). Her help and input was invaluable. I was well above the level of my peers in French because I practised every day with her.

However, she didn't do my school work or coursework. She just helped me understand my texts more deeply, and in turn that prepared me to do the work on my own. Thanks, Mum.

I don't think it has changed hugely in the last 30 years.

I worked at a University 30 years ago and helped out during clearing. I was amazed at the amount of parents ringing for their child, and we were pretty much told not to speak to parents, only the student themselves.

As a parent of a ND teen sitting A levels this year, I have found them incredibly self sufficient. They attend online school which requires a lot of self motivation. They did their own revision schedule, revision notes and I helped out on one subject where there was overlap with my degree (taking them to the theatre, reading the plays so we could chat about it on walks, directing them to critics I remember). As they sat exams as a private candidate we had to take them to the exam centre as it was a 40 minute drive - so on the actual exam days we probably felt more involved but really its up to them on the day.

I think as one PP said - there is good involvement and overbearing involvement.
At 18 I was very self sufficient - but I think I would have benefited from more parental support. I know my 18 year is very self sufficient academically but still needs support in other areas.

We are involved parents. We are Indian. There's something about us and that's a reason we get better grades in the UK than white British

Our local group is over 18s and I was thinking that you can't realistically expect a 15 year old to look for work experience themselves.

But then I remembered that I got a Saturday job at 15 and wrote letters myself with no involvement from my parents at all! But then I don't know if writing letters would even work these days.

However, I do think if a school wants the kids to do work experience it needs to help arrange the placements - not everyone has the contacts to help.

I'd love to hear from some parents who took a completely hands off approach, their kids failed their gcses, failed their resits, struggled to find a job and were struggling with their self esteem. I'm wondering if they would still be as happy with their completely hands off approach? Or maybe all the hands off parents think that it always results in kids excelling in everything they try as they have learnt so much confidence and resilience.

I think this is an issue to an extent.

But the schools encourage it by insisting on setting projects at primary school which quite obviously will be done by the parents (a 6 year old simply can't produce the artworks they've allegedly produced and the teachers must know that).

And then there's all the telling parents about minor misdemeanours in the classroom instead of simply disciplining the children and imposing consequences in school. If my son hits a child that's one thing. if he flips a rubber across the room, that should be dealt with in school.

If you want children to be independent, then stop involving parents so much and get the kids to get on with it. And stop setting projects in primary school that you know the parents will (have to) do.

If you mean her dad's embarrassment at having few qualifications then it's to do with his gcses not a degree. He has few gcses and nothing higher than that. He could have done if he'd had support or even mildly interested parents. Uni wouldn't have been for him and that's fine.

I also said (admittedly in a different post) that I don't want to push DD to uni as I don't think it would be a good fit. I agree that it would be crazy to have to give her this much support and expect her to get through uni on her own. I just want her to pass gcses. I realise now that the OP was about a levels but I just wanted to give the perspective of someone that does help her DD a fair bit to get through the current exams.

I do think it's easy to take a laid back approach when you know your children are just getting on with things and will do well. It feels like so much else in parenting - not understanding why others find breastfeeding hard (that was probably me), not understanding why other parents haven't got their babies into a good sleep routine (definitely not me!). People are different and need different levels of support. I absolutely wish I wasn't in the position where I am having to supervise revision but I am. I don't think I will be having to do the same for other DC. So have I just been a particularly poor parent to DD and a better parent to other DC? Or maybe kids are all different.

I’ve already pointed out there was a train strike
So very exceptional circumstances that has nothing to do with what this thread is all about!

My Mum couldn't have helped me despite going to a grammar school herself. She hated it, the uniform, the hat, the indoor shoes, the cooking classes and needlework by hand. She left school at 15 which was the leaving age back then. She hated every second of school and I am not sure she even left with one qualification. My Dad on the other hand went to a technical college and got HND qualifications but he worked abroad for weeks at a time so was hardly home. Everything was left to school to teach us and I had no help with homework or revision. I got by and went to uni but I wished I had had the same support Dh had when he was growing up (middle class, SAHM)

So I did support my children with their homework but more on the how to research and how to put an answer together not the actual doing. School also taught the parents this too, we were invited into school with our children and sat through an elaborate play put on by the theatre students, honestly it was amazing. This was a state school. It was all about which source you could trust and why you should corroborate your sources.

Yes I knew what books they were studying for GCSE because again school invited us in, talked us through revision techniques, pointed out the important things of what sort of answers get the best marks. They made us do some of the work too that our children were doing. They provided all the revision books for free and used them in class alongside their work. The school was outstanding and had an incredible Progress 8 score. I also put scaffolding in place to enable them to succeed, if they forgot something I would ask how do you think you would remember it next time? Teaching them to solve their own problems never jumping in and telling them.

All this helicoptering just meant that Dh and I were a sounding board for things like A level choices and uni choices because we were the ones driving them to open days, looking over their spreadsheet of uni choices, grades. Both my children went to uni, both have excelled, Ds landed a graduate job all by himself, no input from us at all. It doesn't all mean your child is incapable of doing things by themselves. We are just here to talk to as both Dh and I went to uni.

Plus a lot of parents will have put their child through the 11+ probably with tutoring and then that school experience is probably very different from your average state school. Mine had mixed sets for language GCSE and it was a fucking disaster. Even though the school was incredible, this was hard for mine.

I turned to a specific teacher on MN for help and she was incredible. Some children are not mature enough to see the big picture, the playing field isn't level, there are parents paying huge amounts of money to ensure their child has a better and more rounded education than mine.

Also, all my friends who are doctors or dentists are involved when their kids go down that path, ditto lawyers, bankers etc. Tells you more.

I have a lot of friends who are teachers (in state and private schools) and plenty who are academics at university. They are all quite heavily involved in their kids educational achievements. Tells you all you need to know really.

Absolutely, they are having to navigate a school/exams system that isn’t set up for them at all. I’m not going to sit back and let my DS fail everything to teach him some sort of ‘lesson’ (and basically just make life onwards even harder with less options), he does have the brains and potential there with support. I don’t believe other parents would do it either, people don’t understand unless they have similar children. Hopefully beyond exams he can find something that suits him and how he’s wired.

Not only is this cheating, thss is ine of the reasons why there are so many incompetent professionals. They get in via cheating but don't have all the knowledge so make negligent mistakes. Especially in the healthcare professions, this can have devastating consequences for the patients. I've come across so many 'highly educated' people who can't do their jobs properly.

Not to do with exams but it is where the problem starts. I was sat in a small playpark with my 4 year old Granddaughter, she was playing and i was sat on bench watching her. She was under a climbing frame "selling" ice cream and chatting away to her "customers". Two of her friends turned up with their mums. Instead of sitting down to chat and allow the children to play together they followed the the children constantly, the children didn't get a chance to talk to each other, use their imagination or even make a choice on what to play on as the mums were at them constantly, Lucy come and climb on here, Katie lets see if you can come down the slide. On and on and on. The poor children must have been thinking Just shut up and leave me alone.
Too many mums feel they have to be on their children 24/7. Children need peace and space to do their own thing. Overbearing mums are the cause of so many young adults struggling to catch a bus.

Absolutely this.

OP, I agree with you that a minority might be over involved. But I’ve voted YABU because I object to your generalisation.

my own parents didn’t give a stuff about my education. I was disadvantaged as a result. Fortunately, it was in the 80s where there were many opportunities available to me and I did OK.

for this generation, there are few apprenticeships.
Uni comes with heaps of debt so there is more pressure to get on the ‘right’ course with the highest prospects.
NEET statistics are all around us, adding stress.
There’s little to no prospect of job security, affordable housing, a happy and stable future similar to the current generation of early to mid adulthood.

these A levels matter. The days of getting a degree in beckham studies then finding a great job at 21 have gone.

yes, some parents might be over-invested to the detriment of their DC.

But it’s bloody hard to see what limited prospects there are ahead of them and watching them make choices that you can see they’ll regret. Eg little revision, not having a healthy breakfast before exams etc.

The thi g is with this, presumably kids like this will still have the same failings once they get to university.

So you have just pushed problems down the line. Where they are more expensive.

The ability to organize and focus are in fact part of what makes someone a suitable candidate for university. Not everyone has that to the same degree.

It's too bad people feel embarrassed at not having gone to university. They shouldn't.

I voted YABU because it’s possible to strike a healthy balance. Yes, there are parents who are too involved definitely need to back off. On the other hand, your parents sound like they couldn’t give less of a shit and that is just as damaging. I can’t imagine not bothering to ask my kids how their exam went, or if they were managing to revise.

The problem nowadays is parents, more likely mothers), often SAHM, who live their lives through the lives of their kids. Their lives are boring so they want to experience excitement and success through their kids.
Their success becomes their own.

I’ve found the opposite. The SAHMs tend, on the whole, to be more laid back. The ones getting more involved and planning every minute of their children’s lives tend be those who work. There are far more mothers who work now than in previous generations and yet parental involvement in the minutiae of their children’s lives is greater than ever.

I think there’s a middle ground of being involved enough and being involved to the point of being overbearing or controlling.

It’s good to support your children and to be interested in their lives. They need to know someone cares about them. Doing thinks like discussing exam and university options is perfectly normal. However, some of threads on here recently show how some parents are far too involved in my opinion. Examples include

writing revision cards for them

making revision timetables for them

comments like “we” have chosen GCSE options. “We” are going to collect “our” grades.

parents complaining to schools of their child isn’t chosen for a sports team

complaining that a child’s school hasn’t taught them enough of the set English lit texts at this point in the school year.

going through coursework and monitoring every single piece of work and the speed it’s completed

getting involved in sorting work experience placements

sorting out DofE for the child and telling them what skills/volunteering etc they should do

Getting too involved (unless there are special educational needs) does not help a child build resilience or the capability of dealing with things when they don’t quite go to plan. It’s no wonder teen mental health problems are such an issue. The pressure they are under from school, made worse by parents getting over involved and giving the impression that getting less than perfect results is a total disaster, is awful for them. Look at the uproar about this week’s difficult maths A Level, from parents as well. The results aren’t even out, they know everyone found it hard, and yet there are students saying it’s the most traumatic thing they’ve ever dealt with and that their university choice and life chances have been taken away. It’s one exam!

But you didn't get duff grades so how would you know?

I didn't have a teacher for one year of my A levels because he had a break down. My parents trusted the school to deal with it. They didn't. We all got duff grades in that subject.

One of the teachers got accused of historical child sex abuse and had to go to court. The school wrote a strongly worded letter to the parents fully supporting him and the parents all felt relieved that they were clearly false accusations. All the pupils knew he was guilty because he was totally dodgy with us. We didn't want to worry the adults with it though as they wouldn't like it.

We weren't very resilient either. Drugs, alcohol, self harm, anorexia, sexual assault, SEND, skiving school were all incredibly common but most people turned a blind eye to a lot of it.

My generation are the ones who had to live with very hands off parenting and it wasn't all that great. We are also the generation who have teenage children now.

Why? I’m not involved. I’m just giving money I can afford.

seems like this a race to the bottom with people competing on how much debt they leave their children in.

My son isn’t aware of the money I’ve left him. He thinks he’s paying. He’ll get the first years money after my funeral. (around Christmas probably ) DH will sort this at my request. He’s had a very tough year with my terminal diagnosis and I want to help him as much as I can. If people want to criticise me that’s their problem.

They learn to concentrate at school. Schools talk them through revision timetables, revision techniques, practising past papers. They’re more expert at that than parents.

I guess there are different ways of modelling/teaching kids. My DSs have always been pretty able to organise themselves, even when younger when they had to get to football training on time with all their kit etc. But it’s been expected of them, rather than done for them. Sure, I’d say, “have you got everything, have you got your travel pass?” etc. But I never did it for them.

They haven’t failed, so it worked for them. They’ve had jobs while at uni and have good jobs now.

But to each their own

“Open days are awful, I love meeting the prospective students and this is not all parents at all but some of them are insufferable. They actually visibly mortify their children with the extent of their questions, you can sometimes see the student shuffling on the spot going bright red. They probe us like it’s fucking Mastermind- want to know every intricate detail of every module on offer, exactly how their child will be assessed, will provisions be in place to ensure they settle in, what extra academic and personal support we offer… Just so much. The student just wants to look around the campus and get a feel for it!”

@Sartre - but why do you not just park all this information on a website in a Frequently Asked Questions section? I mean it is a big financial decision and people want value for money for their YPs and probably just detailed information so they can compare different universities. It is a market and people are purchasing education now. Anything you purchase for 30k plus you would be asking detailed questions. And unis need to be prepared to compete on different courses and what exactly is on offer.