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

[Theboredpanda]

…and is this helpful or detrimental to young people? I just saw a thread on here about parents talking about how “they’re” getting through A Levels at the moment. The “they’re” meaning them and their kids. I’d say I had good, supportive parents, but by A Levels and college they had no idea what I was doing day-to-day. They couldn’t tell you what exams I was sitting on what days unless I told them. Although I was still living at home, I was expected to be independent by that age and be doing my own thing with minimal support from my parents. This was in the early 2000s, was this other people’s experience of back then and do you think parents are too involved in their teenagers lives these days and is this stopping them from becoming independent?

People haven't changed, but our understanding of brain development has changed a lot. Think how few brain scanners existed in the 1980s.

We now know how much development continues post 16.

That’s a hugely prejudiced, bordering on racist, sweeping generalisation. And it’s obviously not even true because I’ve started a thread about how many White British parents are over-involved!! Being Indian doesn’t make you a better parent. Yes, there are a high proportion of young Indian doctors & pharmacists etc, but that doesn’t mean you’ve made a success of your child’s life. It gives you bragging rights and means you’re assuming you’ll be financially supported in your old age. Neither of these reasons have anything to do with the child, they’re all about you. We “White British parents” value our child’s wishes & desires, their happiness, their mental health, and their independence, as well as their academic achievement. It’s the combination of these things that make for a happy life. And we’re not talking about 16-year-olds as you suggested, we’re talking about 18-year-olds. There’s a big difference. The latter are legal adults who have plenty of experience of exams and revising already. If they happen to be a non-academic person who has no interest in the subjects they’re taking, you might be able to get them into a decent Uni by controlling their every move while they’re still at home, but if they move away to that uni to start their course they’ll be absolutely screwed without you. And will likely end up being kicked off the course.

I suppose we can judge if something is the right way by the results. If over involvement is resulting in 18/19 year olds struggling to be independent and cope at university then I'd say its not the right way.

Whaaaat?! I find this hard to believe tbh, especially the part about the “workshops where you go and do some of the lessons they are doing”. Are you serious?! Assuming this must be for GCSE age kids not A Level age though right? (Still OTT but slightly more understandable i suppose)

I think it’s important to account for parents of DC who have specific learning difficulties or mental health challenges. My involvement was low with my DC who were high ability with no SEN, mid with the one with high anxiety and very high wifh the one who has ADHD. I see this as supporting equity of opportunity for them. The youngest with SEND doesn’t need further disadvantaging by me letting him fail badly at the baseline of GCSEs because of his challenges with personal organisation and related. He is a little behind the others in development for his age, and there isn’t the realistic option of delaying the national exams until he catches up! IMHO support in that context is valuable, albeit not much fun for me…
I might have taken the same critical view of ‘overinvolved parents’ if I had only had my first and academically able child…and but I have learnt the bigger picture from having DC with very different needs. I think it’s easy to judge, particularly if you have DC who just get on with it and are well supported in school.

Also, regarding parents helping with the academic side of A Levels, why would most regular parents be helpful at all? Even if you have a degree and plenty of life-experience, why would you know more about the subject than the young person who’s been studying it for the past two years?! My parents wouldn’t have had a clue about the mathematical equations I was doing in A Level Maths, or about analysing Shakespeare. They might have done similar in their day but that was 25 years ago!

Because life dosent stop after you've done your A levels. They have 25 more years of using this knowledge than a student studying for 2 years. Are you an A level student?

DD had a boyfriend at school whose parents were so hands off that, although I think he was probably brighter and more intellectually curious than DD, he didn't do nearly as well at GCSE and A levels as she did.

He was sitting on an Oxbridge offer, but what his parents didn't know was that he was getting quietly drunk in his room every night instead of revising. He dropped grades in 2 subjects and was rejected from Oxbridge and his second choice and ended up going through clearing.

Meanwhile, DD worked hard with support from us, her teachers and friends and achieved the grades she wanted.

We didn't stop her social life and she continued with her volunteering throughout.

We recognised that there had to be a balance, and making your child study all the time with no breaks isn't healthy. We have always encouraged independence because it is an essential life skill, and even more important for DD as she is an only child with older parents.

Lol yes I’ve spent the last 20 years regularly analysing the varying cloud forms and pondering whether they’re culumus or stratas clouds 🤣 This is the kind of question my Yr 8 DD gets in her geography homework. So it’s only going to get more in-depth and technical as the years go on. She’s the one studying all this day in day out. Why on earth would I know more about it than her?? Unless I happened to be a meteorologist or a Geography teacher. Even with less specific subjects like English, the last time I read Shakespeare I was at school, she’s reading it every day, how am I going to be helpful? I’m not used to analysing texts and identifying figurative language anymore. I haven’t spent the last 20 years doing that have I? I’ve spent it gaining life experience, learning about how the world works, how to be professional in a workplace etc. Life experience really isn’t that helpful for most exams, maybe a bit for understanding what the question wants from you, but all the technical and academic stuff..a parent is only going to be helpful if they have a career in that subject, and even if they do, that’s only one subject they can help with. And no I’m not an A Level student, why would you ask that?

Just because you carnt help dosent mean other parents carnt. We are not all you

@Tshirtking Many teachers and lecturers and professionals have dc who do their subjects at school. A maths teacher or MFL teacher can 100% give their dc a lot of help. Of course they do. Doctors advise dc how to be doctors and vets too. The latter take their dc to work! It’s not exactly hovering but it certainly confers a huge advantage to immerse your dc in a subject or career they want. It’s more difficult for those without any help that’s for sure.

Yes, it's no coincidence that children of doctors, vets, dentists and lawyers follow in their parents footsteps.

Unless your child is doing specifically the same A Levels as you did or ones relating very closely to a future career or education you've obtained, I think it's highly unlikely that parents can genuinely help at A Level. GCSE is much easier to support from a general knowledge base. And I would imagine the ones falling into that group that can genuinely help is a tiny minority of all parents.

I have a maths degree, PhD and have worked in a related field. I still struggled to help my child with his maths A Level as I'd forgotten a lot, there were things in his syllabus I'd never learned and I wasn't aware of the way he was being taught (and didn't want to confuse him by teaching in a different way). I had sufficient knowledge and understanding to be able to fill my own gaps using online materials, so that I could help him however.

When it came to History A Level, bearing in mind I gave up history at school at age 14, and, despite a general interest in some periods of history and skills and knowledge I've picked up through life, I have enough awareness to know that I'm not really the right person to help my child through the A Level. Finding practice exam questions online to save her a bit of time, yes. More detailed explanation of how to answer exam questions. Not a clue.

I’m using myself as an example of a typical early 40s parent of a teenager in 2026 in the UK. Because I am very typical middle-class parent with a degree and a career. So my example of myself is obviously going to apply to many other parents across the country too isn’t it. That is what ‘typical’ means. Do you have teens who you think you can help with the academic side of exams? Can you give some examples of how you helped/planned to help them with this, based on this “knowledge that you’ve built on” since your school days (obviously excluding a subject that you’ve gone on to have a career in)? I’d give helping them with English a swerve since you can’t spell ‘can’t’ 😬

Simplistic blaming of parents is a way of minimising the real pressures on young people.

Firstly, the group of kids going to uni is much bigger, so includes people who would not have opted to go previously - they would most likely have stayed nearer the family home.

Academic pressure is much higher - kids have it drummed into them that bad results will have big impacts.

Cost of living causes real issues - it's harder to be independent when ordinary jobs don't cover ordinary living costs. Students are working increasing hours.

Plus all the existential angst of climate change and war.

I sorted out my own college course, went to the interview etc before my mum knew.

Same with uni. Why did she need to be involved at all in me as an independent person?

I was brought up to be independent from an early age though.

You're making a classic error of assuming you are 'typical'.

There's a spectrum, you were parented in one way which has coloured your thinking.

If you want to be hands off with your kids, that's ok.

But other parents who had more supportive/involved parents themselves are likely to do it differently.

Good point. I remember my daughter asking me about cloning and dolly the sheep doing GCSE biology as id done A level.

However I did the A level in 89 and the cloned sheep didn't happen until 94 lok

When I went to university, though, there was no financial impact or expectation on the part of my parents. I received a grant and was financially independent. I think the fact that parents are now financially assessed and expected (whether they can actually afford it or not) to underwrite their children means they rightfully have a say. They want them to get good grades and go to the better unis/higher rated courses where there is more likelihood they will actually get employment afterwards

I left uni with a £500 overdraft that I’d cleared within a year of working - and jobs were available for grads - whereas these kids are making a commitment which will leave them tens of thousands of pounds in debt, mean they may be a financial burden parents during their time at uni and also afterwards when/if they cannot find a grad job and need to live at home. My parents were completely unimpacted by my going to university, so did not get a say in any aspect of it.

Cost of living and existential angst are issues where I am, as well as the stress of trying to do well in school (perhaps even higher as you have to pass the year every year to progress so if you fail a subject you risk being kept behind, as is happening to an ex friend of DD's this year), though the share of young people going to uni isn't increasing I think. But young people here aren't going off struggling with independence, many will move away at 16 even to go to high school or vocational school somewhere else so the effect people are seeing isn't down to those factors, its down to differences in parenting and society.

This is true enough - there are things that are now on the GCSE Biology syllabus that were cutting edge stuff when I was at University.
But you don't have to know factual information to be able to be helpful. If you are an educated and intelligent person yourself you can often work though school work alongside your child and help them come to the answers even if you don't know the subject yourself. Even in adulthood I occasionally asked my Dad about challenges I was facing at work. He wasn't a doctor, had never worked in the NHS even, but he was a great manager and he understood people and often had really useful insights.
Yes, it's probably easier if you do know the subject better - my DS would ask his Dad about maths rather than me as DH is an engineer - but you're not necessarily useless if you don't. I certainly didn't micromanage my DC but if they asked for help I was always happy to sit down with them and say "Ok, what's the problem and how are you going to tackle it logically?" Often they needed a sounding board and guidance with process rather than someone to tell them the answer.

Smothering, 'Helicopter Parents' have done incalculable damage to children over the years. A lot of teenagers and twenty somethings are now so useless and gormless at everyday tasks like speaking on the phone, ordering in restaurants, speaking to older adults, or travelling on public transport that it's cringey and embarrassing to witness.

And what if you are not an educated intelligent person?

My Mum gave up her job while I was doing my A levels and i loved having her at home after years throughout school of coming home to an empty house. I think at that time she probably knew more about what was going on in my life than she ever had before and it was nice to feel like her priority for once. I wasn't very independent when I left for uni but i learnt and gained a lot while i was there. She has little interest in my life now, can go for weeks without speaking.

That was my experience back in the late 90s. It had its pros and cons - sure, there was a lot of fun to be had with so little supervision and we were likely more independent in certain areas, but I've one sibling who ended up in serious legal trouble and on an ankle monitor for a year, crashing his future career prospects and another who had to be transferred to what we'd now call alternative provisions because of how much she was drinking and how that impacted her at school. How little our parents were involved definitely played a significant role in that. I certainly felt I had to be independent because no adult was going to give a fuck - I'd literally go missing for days and no one cared. These sort of not that uncommon situations often get ignored in these rose-tinted look backs. Lots of young people fell through the cracks, and still do.

Really, it depends on the child, their needs, and the courses they're on.

My third child currently at college throughout her GCSEs and now has always been the child who excels academically and socially with little input. I still check in with her, and I'm glad when she asks for support. She did need support in finding accessible work experience (where she's at requires 150 hours in the first year and she needs a placement that can fit with her disability), and I'm supporting her again in keeping an eye out for accessible work experience options for her second year.

My second child had very turbulent time at secondary and throughout her Level 3 apprenticeship regularly needed to decompress by talking to me so I absolutely knew what her day to day looked like. She became more capable over time as she worked out how to handle being an autistic adult, that took support.

My oldest child is the kind of person who is great at making things look like they're going really well when they're not. I'd do as others have said of checking in if everything was sorted, and he made it appear as if it was all on track. He hit a wall during his college years, was struggling, but covered it up because he thought others had it harder so shouldn't complain. Part of me regrets not being more involved, not knowing his day to day better, not having been able to see past his carefully constructed mask. I might have been able to help him before he hit rock bottom in a way that's taken years to rebuild from.

I think people say independence to mean capable, and for people like my son, like I was at that age, the myth of independence as a virtue causes more harm than good. Few are truly independent, we all rely on each other and evolved to do so. I think embracing being capable while also accepting interdependence, does a lot more for our wellbeing. I think it's importance for parents to model that.

I’d rather my kids got average grades and were also happy, well-rounded people that knew how to socialise well and make friends, were streetwise and had a bit of life experience, rather than being straight A students who were miserable with no friends and no social life. My kids’ happiness is the most important thing to me, not their academic achievement. I find it baffling when parents can live with their child being miserable so long as they get good grades

Those aren't often exclusive. It's an odd cultural idea common in many areas that people need to prioritise one side or the other, when they're interlinked. Plenty of young people get great grades, are happy, well-rounded, and have a great social life. Some need more support than others to do that. Being miserable and lonely can lead to struggling academically, spending two years to get weak grades can also make our kids miserable and isolating for others to avoid discussing the issue, even when they're quite able to take part in short-term happiness.