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

I'd guess a lot of those saying "they're" aren't doing much but want to be taking credit for their child's achievements, not seeing that by the time they are an individual rather than an extension of their parents. I wouldn't have even said "we" about my DS going through GCSE's, I reminded him to revise, had a look at what he was doing, was a listening ear and reassured him. That was just standard parenting, he did the hard work and his results are his achievements.

If true that is so awfully sad. He is being set up to fail.
If he cannot do on his own then he cannot. No shame in that. None. She should be helping him do something he can succeed at in his own right.

This is exactly the same as us. I didn't mention ADHD in origin post as she has no diagnosis but it would amaze me if that wasn't a factor (for her and her dad). She has learned independence and resilience in lots of ways as things are often not easy for her and she has confidence in many ways that I don't! I just don't see why I would step back and say that failing her gcses is another learning moment when I can help her avoid that.

Unfortunately, DD really struggles with concentration and organisation and although she has been left to try to learn from mistakes in the past, she doesn't seem to change after the mistakes!

Yet the "I don't need to support my child" parents don't seem to understand that not all children are driven like their DC are.

DD's exam independence increased with every year. I reminded her to revise at GCSE, I tested her at A level when she asked. I did nothing for her degree and for post grad exams I had to remind her to take a break!

There is a middle road. Being completely hands off or the opposite extreme of helicoptering are equally unhelpful.

Also, my DD is capable and independent and will launch. My DS who has finished uni is making lots of money and is absolutely fine despite ASD. He even has a girlfriend.
The right kind of support makes a huge difference to YPs. Gone are the times they can just coast for years. The CVs and experiences and work experience needs to tick all the boxes for them to even get a foot in the door now.

The paying thing… it starts young! Paying per goal for 7-year-olds on the football team. Made me inwardly seeth. My husband was the coach for my youngest’s team. Trying to get them to pass when they were after the £5 from their parents and the kudos of a goal. My son was goalie 🤣 was never getting a penny though I did discover the other goalie’s dad gave him a fiver every time he could get a goal kick over the halfway line!

I really disagree. I have tried that in many ways and she is a bit better but would you prefer me to just let her fail her gcses? Because that genuinely is what would happen if I didn't provide structure for her. I was a kid who just got in with things, she is not. I actually don't particularly want her to go on to do really academic things afterwards so I'm not going to be pushing uni etc but she really does need a pass in English and maths at the least for most things that she is likely to go on to next. There's so much in the news about numbers of NEET and how hard it is to find jobs. School have really pushed the idea on to them that companies use AI to screen everyone out if they don't have passes in those core subjects. Should I just let her fail them? Resit pass rates are terrible.

Honestly, I am not controlling every aspect of her life (she has friends who weren't allowed out to socialise over easter as the had to revise!) but I do expect her to work hard so that she passes the things she needs to pass. Or at least so she knows she has tried. I don't think I'm putting huge amounts of pressure on her - she certainly hasn't seemed overly stressed at all over the exam period. Children are different. It's not one size fits all and I know her dad, who is very similar, wished his parents had more interest when he was doing gcses.

This is very much like my own experience in school. I wonder whether the reason we see more involvement is that now we're more aware of ND in young people now, or even similar struggles with non-ND children, we are more involved in supporting them, whether it is just the right amount for them or, in some cases, too much.

I'm over 60, I think the level of involvement I had with DS when he did his A Levels and GCSEs is similar to what my parents supplied when I did mine. The points of interaction differ because the process is a bit different.

DS is driven and has never needed to be encouraged to do more revision or organise it properly. Schools and colleges gave guidance on this as well. I definitely didn't get much guidance on revision from the school in the 80s, I do remember my parents checking in and asking how it was going etc.

Equipment - the see through water bottle, the correct pens, paying for the tech to compress a video that was part of the EPQ, very similar but no tech or equipment needed for my extended coursework essays.

UCAS etc. - I didn't go to any open days. I had interviews, Dad drove me to one, older brother to the other one. DS went to some open days on his own, 2 were a long way, DH went with him to one of those I went to the other. As with me, it was more of a drop off mode as regards attendance of open day events themselves. Regarding the filling in of the UCAS form - considered something one should do oneself. DS read out personal statement, I think I suggested adding an achievement he'd missed out. I don't remember if there was a personal statement when I did mine. Essentially the same.

COVID generation - mental health issues and pressure/competitiveness in schools. Yes, there's more now. There was some then. Now we seem to need to very directly address our feelings. If you have DC that need help in this area you probably are managing and getting involved. That is different.

I have a friend who took a month's holiday to sit down and do daily revision with her son (who was doing A levels in subjects she knew - one of which was her profession) and has then written every single essay for his degree and wrote his dissertation.

I’m a lecturer and this is something colleagues and I discuss sometimes. I get on well with an older colleague, he’s about 20 years older and so has been in the job much longer and seen various different generations pass through. We both agreed younger Gen X/ older millennial parents are far more anxious than previous generations and just so on top with their kids, even when they come to uni so are technically adults.

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!

I think parents (particularly middle class ones) have projected their anxieties onto their children and in turn formulated the bedroom generation.

It's depressing how some parents seem to want to micromanage their teenagers.
They need support obviously, but not mum [usually] or dad organising their lives and being a personal assistant to them.
So many young people seem to be scared of their own shadow now, with anxiety and lack the basic skills for life because their parents are organising them so much. I feel sorry for this generation in so many ways that some aren't allowed to grow but are smothered in something being dressed up as love. It isn't, it comes across controlling much of the time. If kid is ND then that is different, they need more help.
I've read so many threads on MN over the recent years and think, will mum [usually] ever cut the apron strings? Their d/s is 25 ffs.🙄 No ND mentioned but they are STILL organising their lives because their adult kid can't cope with the basics.

I have one in Year 12 doing mocks at the moment. The school email us the timetable well in advance, with very clear instructions and what they need and do not. Yes, I make sure DD goes to bed early, has changed her batteries in her calculator, eats a proper breakfast beforehand etc

And in life, I focus on her understanding about budgeting, washing clothes, cleaning her room, planning her career and subject choices, understanding financial markets, insurance, how to cook, drive, what healthy human relationships are, how to build a CV from early on etc.
I do not get involved in the nitty gritty of academics or past papers etc but make sure she has all the resources she needs to succeed and practise the right exam boards. Her school is very much on the case, but if it were not, yes I would be involved.

Unfortunately, DD really struggles with concentration and organisation and although she has been left to try to learn from mistakes in the past, she doesn't seem to change after the mistakes!

Exactly the same with my DS. TBH he has textbook adhd traits to the extreme but there’s no other help or support so I feel like I have to step in and be heavily involved in terms of organising homework etc. or he will inevitably mess it up and leave school with little options. No idea how things will fare post school but that bridge will be crossed when it comes to it.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner the college provides accommodation - for the interviewee with other hopefuls. The parent is welcome to stay in a Travelodge (or grander).

100% agree.

My parents (1980s) didn’t get involved at all. I got on with it myself, while working at weekends, playing sport and socialising. Likewise, I was pretty hands off when my DC were doing all their exams, including GSCEs. I only knew what exams they had because I asked/they told me. I wasn’t across the timetable.

I was v supportive in other ways: bringing drinks and snacks while they were revising, breakfast in bed on exam days, checking they went to sleep at a decent time, making sure their clothes were ready, ironed etc.

And of course showed an interest: asking how the revision was going, offering to test them on stuff, talking through the odd thing they might be struggling with, asking what their plans were for weekends and if they were out a lot, asking when they were planning to fit their revision in.

But IMHO, it’s not a good idea to interfere in their revision, tell them what to do when, get yourself in a tizzy, have battles. It creates more stress. IMHO, from 14, kids should be encouraged to become young adults, rather than treated like children. They have to start to be responsible for themselves, which most want to do. Otherwise, they leave school unable to organise themselves.

Those tracking apps… thank goodness they weren’t around in my day 😁

Asking a (grown) dc to check in is one thing, but following their every move is weird. I wouldn’t want my family tracking me like a stag, even if all I’m doing is trotting round Waitrose.

@MaryWalrus Most 17 year olds going for an Oxbridge interview will stay overnight with a parent the night before if they are coming from a distance! It’s perfectly normal! I don’t know why you think someone being interviewed whilst they are in y13 would stay overnight alone? Obviously you drop dc off though! My DDs boarded - no parental helicoptering here.

But that’s not teaching her concentration and organisation skills is it? It’s setting her up to fail. If she’s not developing those skills at GCSE level then further study after that is going to be a significant shock, as will any job role that requires concentration and organisation (so every job role).

I didn't do A-Levels, but had similar back seat parents when I did my GCSE's and to be quite honest with you, I think they failed me. My parents were so wrapped up in their own shitty marriage that I was left to just get on with it. They knew I was attending school and the exams and my memory is that they had no idea what sort of revision I was doing, how much, etc.

The reality for me was that I was failing miserably. A likely undiagnosed ADHD with literally no idea what revising actually meant in practical terms and I failed most of my exams or just scraped through. I consider myself relatively intelligent and really feel if I'd been given more support in those exams I could have achieved a lot more, or even just a bit more confidence to feel like I could achieve more.

I listen to friends now discussing their kids exams and wish so much I'd had that support. It's not like they can sit in the exam hall and do them for them, so it's all on the kids really but some solid encouragement from home is a great thing as far as I can tell.

Tony Blair politicised education. He made it so no parent wanted to admit their child could not get into university. Everyone was brilliant. Year on year they worked harder than the year before and were more able than the year before.
He left the pragmatic skills, just as valuable, just as financially valuable later in life to rot. No engagement with organisations that could boost apprenticeships.
Academic children may not be able to do the things those more inclined to organisational or pragmatic skills could do.
He tried to fit every person into a square peg. And left the round pegs out.
And to make it worse, let universities charge a small fortune for going.

I do think schools are heavily to blame as well though. Even when I did my a levels in 2010 the pressure to go to university was overwhelming. I remember I missed an English theatre trip for A Level as I couldn’t swap my work shift that night and my teacher told me I’d never get far in life if I didn’t prioritise my education. I think schools put far too much pressure on kids around exams and then some parents pile on even more.

exams, grades and university are not the be all and end all and if they are impacting a teenager or young adults mental health you have to ask if the pressure is worth it.

taxiing back and forth

Important when you live somewhere with poor public transport and unreliable school buses that break down frequently or get cancelled with no notice.

Why would you add to your DC's exam stress by making them wait for a bus that might not turn up or break down on the way to school?

Yeah, it's crazy. I find things like Life 360 utterly horrifying, where parents basically stalk and spy on their DC even after they become adults and text and call them if they can't see them on these wretched apps.

My kids are teens. I don't check their phones, I'm not on Snapchat, we don't spy on our kids at all. One is now an adult and we treat him as such. I don't want to infantilise him and atrophy his development and I find it creepy and actually really damaging that so many parents do this to their kids. Do they want them to fail to move on with their lives and build lives as adults? I don't understand it. Parent properly, raise your kids to be independent and then let them get on with their lives! The one thing guaranteed to make them fail as adults is having you hanging onto them and making them think they can't do things for themselves and that they NEED you to manage their lives for them.

I do think many parents of teens are OTT about certain things, such as paying their child for attending school, paying them to revise etc, and some are 'helping' where they should be letting them take responsibility. However, the flip side of this is my experience, doing GCSE's and college in the 90s, where my parents didn't get involved at all and I had no idea how to organise my life, discipline myself to study, or even know how to study. I know there were others who could, but for me, I could have benefitted from a bit more from my parents in terms of support and interest in my life, as I ultimately went off the rails for a few years and they didn't even realise. Now I have a teen DD, I'm trying to strike a balance between encouraging independence and privacy, and taking an interest in her life, and, where necessary, offering advice.