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

My parents would have died sooner than contact the school (80s). I wish they had been more hands on because I really could have done with a kick up the backside.

The pendulum does seem to have swung too far now in a lot of cases. I did give guidance to the dcs (well, one anyway because he was very backward in coming forward) but all this involvement seems suffocating.

The Oxbridge threads are eye-opening. One mother asking about the overnight accommodation she and her dd would have for interview. And parents having to be told that they cannot sit in the waiting area before interview, and certainly not go in with their offspring!

I agree many parents are. My parents were extremely strict and controlling so I make a real effort in this regard not to be the same. That said i do feel the stress of exams second hand because it impacts their mental health and the tension in the house is higher.

I see my role and supporting their mental health by asking what,if anything they need,making myself available to talk if needed,supporting as needed with exploring career paths and next steps and making sure they have access to healthy meals.

I do see some parents very heavily involved in managing revision, taxi ing back and forth, dictating routines etc and I do wonder how those kids are gonna cope at uni later in the year so yanbu

I did my A Levels in the late 1980s and my parents would've been quite invested and known what I was doing, on my back about revision etc. I mean they wouldn't have done my coursework for me, but I certainly wouldn't say I was 'independent' at that stage. I'd say the level of involvement is linked more to the individuals involved rather than the time period.

We know when the exams (A levels) are as they are on the calendar and we have taken them into school for the exams this week as they’d have got soaked in the rain otherwise and who wants to sit an exam in wet clothing?
We’ve been on hand over half term to make food/take out for lunches etc so they get a break and fresh air. No way are we paying them to revise, learning their exam source texts, writing any flash cards - that all forms part of their revision.
GCSEs where the DC are a lot younger probably do require a little more supervision and support from parents. ND might need more.

I think the point made by many though is that being so involved is not giving them the best start at all. Those who cannot manage without significant parental help will find university out of their depth. And bring all the stress and anxiety that goes with that.
Perhaps if they cannot achieve under their own steam then university is not for them ?
And the level of reliance undermines an independence of being they should be having.

I think there's also an element of life being a lot less forgiving these days. 'Failure to Launch' carries a lot more long term consequences than it did in the past.

I think this is true.
When I was at school you could resit any O level you had failed in the January resits. Now you can only resit maths and English in autumn. You can resit other subjects the following summer, but I don't know how easy it is.

Some universities don't allow A level resits for subjects like medicine or other very competitive courses.

I do find that a lot of young people I work with are a lot less resilient than I was and I have noticed a pattern that those who had an unhealthy amount of support from their parents expect us as their boss to do a lot more for them and they need a lot more handholding.

I was never overly academic and my mum knew that - she did ask how my exams were going and offer me support but she worked shifts so wasn’t around all the time. By the time I did my A levels I had a part time job and was getting myself around by myself so I relied on myself a lot more and I think having to be quite self sufficient did me the world of good to be honest!

I'm probably one of the parents you are talking about. I don't helicopter in other ways - DC have a lot more freedom than most of my friends' children and I have zero interest in getting involved in friendship issues (it annoys me when parents do interfere), but I am quite heavily involved in making sure DD revises etc.

I was brought up in a very hands off way but I was very driven so did well academically anyway. 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! She very much takes after her dad who had zero interest from parents and didn't do well at all in school because of the same issues. His parents still say 'it should all be down to the kids and it's all a learning experience' but their kids came away from school with very few qualifications and that's still a cause of embarrassment for them. I just want her to know she has tried her best, I know she won't get amazing grades and that's ok.

Having said all that, I will be very happy if she chooses a more vocational route after gcses and I have said if she does a levels then they need to be ones she can self study with as I can't carry on helping her revise everything. What she moves to next is down to her completely and I don't want to influence her choices etc.

I think there's also an element of life being a lot less forgiving these days. 'Failure to Launch' carries a lot more long term consequences than it did in the past. Workplace competition is a lot fiercer so just getting that first foot on the ladder is extremely competitive.

A lot of parents recognise this as a motivational aspect to try to keep their child on track and focused. Back in my day if you flunked your A levels you could always do something else. There isn't necessarily that safety net anymore.

It's all to do with supply and demand. If their DC only apply to the top 5 universities they must realise that not everyone will get a place.

They think it is beyond the pale to apply for a university outside the top 10. Given that many more companies recruit university blind these days I don't understand this view.

I don’t think so. Things have changed dramatically since many of us were that age. As difficult as it can be for parents to decide how much influence , today's reality is very different from what it was decades ago.

Many parents are paying eye-watering university fees, while vocational education and alternative career pathways are just not there as much as they should . At the same time, the job market has become VERY competitive. It's no longer like the old days, when someone could leave one job, find another the next day, and then switch again six months later without much difficulty. Because of this, I think many parents become more involved in helping guide their children. I don’t think that their intention is to control them, but to give them the best possible start in life and help them navigate an increasingly challenging and uncertain future.

My memories are of my mother being so uninvolved that she accused me of using hiding away in my room to use revision as an excuse to get out of housework, because she thought my A levels were at least two weeks away - when in fact the first one was the next day. Needless to say, she had been told the start date, it was just too unimportant for her to remember.

So I tend to think a bit of involvement is not at all a bad thing, so long as it's not suffocating.

Why are you paying £25k a year? I haven't budgeted for this !

My DC is doing GCSEs and has ADHD, they asked me to make sure they are awake so they don't miss any exams, and provide bountiful revision snacks as support.

I always ask how exams went (because I'm interested and it is a little fun), I know what exams are that day. I check there isn't anything practical they need - like equipment or a lift to an exam in torrential rain, and general welfare check they're not burning out. I'm fairly sure this is what my parents did too. No lifts or equipment has actually been wanted, but I feel like it's supportive to offer.

Fingers crossed I feel like the exam period has gone quite smoothly so far, neither of us has felt particularly stressed. I feel like I know what's going on and have been supportive in a general sense, but not involved in any actual revision.

A subject teacher contacted me earlier in the year about some specific coursework issues that I helped my DC resolve by discussing, and my DC asked for a tutor in one subject which I duly booked, paid for, and transported to.

Maybe I am overly involved? I vaguely feel as neither of us feel stressed - out it's been a kind of OK level of support. I definitely feel like they're going to 'own' the success (hopefully not lack of) themselves, all the actual work has been them and not me.

I do know some much much more involved parents, but I doubt my DC would want me doing that.

I think there's a happy medium? I know (generally) which exams DC sit on which days, but they're organising their own 6th form stuff/revsion/practice papers etc.

My parents were very hands off/disinterested but the first to have something to say with my poor results.

I can imagine though that many kids are over patented and don't cope well at uni.

The parent uni groups are full off, we got 4 A*s we got an Oxbridge offer etc, utter madness. Then the extreme of they got a rejection and have the predicted required grades I’m going to complain so they get an offer.

Yes. My parents in the late 80s / 90s had just the right amount of involvement, and then it was very much a case of leaving us to it, exam-wise.

Parents never "came up the school" or got involved in school issues unless it was something really bad.

But that said, 80s and 90s parents trusted and respected teaching staff, and would never, ever question them or argue with them. Even if some of the stuff the teachers did was unfair, our parents told us to get on with it!

There is nothing wrong with ‘good’ involvement, it is when it veers into helicopter parenting that there is a problem.

Good involvement: maintaining a calm environment with food/drink. Asking how it is going and how it went. Being generally supportive.

Bad involvement: nagging, getting overly anxious, making them revise to your timetable, not going out yourself, losing sleep over it.

Having uninvolved parents doesn't mean a child will have learnt independence/resilience.

I agree. I think some parents are over involved. Tracking phones? Really?

I also think some parents on this thread feel that they are better parents because they are completely hands off. These parents don't seem to understand that all 17 and 18 year olds are different - some are independent and motivated and some need an extra nudge. Why would anyone deliberately set their children up to fail?

I took the middle road. Train strikes and a poor bus service meant that I did ferry DD around when absolutely required. The school buses were so unreliable that I couldn't risk DD being late for school for a morning exam.

For GCSE I downloaded some past papers for maths and the sciences for her to practice on.

For A level she was pretty much on her own other than proof reading her geography NEA and testing her on her biology flashcards because she asked me to.

For her degree, no involvement other than showing her how to use Excel and proof reading her dissertation - because she asked me to.

I think it is fine to offer moral support and lifts if required (posters being sniffy about this clearly live somewhere with reliable public transport).

Thats control not help.

You only have to look on threads on here OP - parents involving themselves in their children’s petty school squabbles from primary age onwards, deciding who their children can and can’t be friends with, what subjects they should study, what career they should aim for, who they should date. It’s so creepy.

And then you see the ultimate outcome of that level of parental involvement: thread after thread from women who seem to be utterly incapable of handling the most mundane conflicts, who share every aspect of their lives with their parents, or women who are struggling to assert boundaries with in laws who are involved in every aspect of their lives, from where they live to how they dress their children.

The issue is that parental over-involvement is getting worse and worse, so it will unfortunately lead to entire generations of people who can’t do much as pick an outfit or deal with a difficulty without running it past mummy and daddy.

I think it depends what the poster means by "involved". We told DD that we couldn't afford to give her the "extra" money required to support London prices and we strongly suggested she did not pick a very far off university (thinking Scotland, when we are SE England) as she is disabled and we didn't know when she started how much support we might need to provide. We also were able to visit Open Days and provide different perspectives (for example, Open Days tend to be very focussed around first year accommodation, we made sure she thought about subsequent years). So I would say we were involved, but ultimately DD made her own decisions.

On the other hand we went to one Open Day where the mother of the person sat behind us was openly telling her child that they were not allowed to do x subject as she didn't deem it of any value. (and in this case the subject that was "allowed" was English Lit, and the subject that was "not allowed" was English Lit with Creative Writing so it seemed a bonkers argument anyway).

Well, that really depends on the young person doesn't it? There isn't a one size fits all, and you would have to have a very narrow world view to think there was. My parents were so hands off, that when asked to collect DB after an accident at school, they had to ask for directions to the school because they didn't know where it was. My upbringing caused me to be robustly independent. For my own DC however, they have significant learning difficulties. If you have a processing speed below the 1st centile and you are trying to do A-levels, then you need some support - and I would expect that to be obvious to most people. I encourage independence on a daily basis, but I will be there to provide the support needed, for as long as its needed.

My son is doing the leaving cert, the Irish equivalent of a levels. I wouldn't say I'm involved but I'm interested. I know that he is on his way to Maths paper 1 right now, that he is dreading it as he feels that it's his worst paper and that he has geography this afternoon.

I like it when my family show an interest in things that are important to be so I show an interest in things that are important to my family. You are never too old to want people to take an interest in you, it shows that they care. This is the most important thing that my ds has done to date and will decide how the next few years of his life go so of course I will show an interest and if there is anything that I can do to make this time a bit easier for him then I'm there to do it.

I was at boarding school when do did my A levels first time and they had no involvement at all. Not even in my A level choices. If they had been more involved I would probably had done better, instead of failing them all. I'm sure they weren't uninterested, but they didn't let me see any interest. It didn't help that they were living in Australia temporarily while I was at school in the UK, so our only contact was by letter (way before email or smart phones). I could have done with more involvement.

When I took them again as a mature adult I didn't need their involvement and I did very well, as I did with my HND and Degree studies. They did encourage me to go back to college, and they were interested if I told them how I was doing, at that stage.

By A level you should be learning independently or you won't cope at uni.
It's brilliant that parents care and are interested but a 'how's it going?' should be enough involvement, unless they need specific subject explanation from you.
Although my DD did chemistry A level so I'd have been as much help as a chocolate teapot.