As a counselling psychologist, parent and former teacher, I am all too aware of the mental health epidemic among young people. I have known countless children and young people who have come to see me because they are stressed, anxious and unhappy, with as many as 33 per cent now suffering from a serious mental health problem. As a parent, I have witnessed how the pressure to get good grades has caused deep distress and anxiety in my own daughter, Bianca, now 33 and expecting a child of her own.
When she was just six years old, she had a teacher who destroyed her confidence. To this day, I don’t think she ever fully recovered. Not only did the teacher pile an impossible amount of homework on the children, but when I saw how she had marked Bianca’s work, I was horrified.
She had been asked to write down groups of words with equivalent meanings and had come up with some sophisticated vocabulary. The teacher, however, hadn’t given any praise at all. Instead, she scribbled “spelling!” all over it in angry red pen. My daughter used to cry at night.
The pressure put on children to achieve starts at nursery and sometimes even earlier. It’s worth considering that in the UK, we expect children to be reading and writing at an age at which they wouldn’t even have started school in the rest of Europe. We test them relentlessly from entry to nursery, and onwards, to measure how they are achieving. We pile homework on them when they should be learning from play and developing social and communication skills.
I have seen firsthand how exam stress is being experienced by children at earlier and earlier ages, with as many as 80 per cent of primary school children claiming to lose sleep over tests.
NHS England (November 2023) found that one in five children under the age of 16 had tried to access mental health support. In 2024, The Children’s Society found that children reported having lower happiness with school than with any other area of their life. These statistics don’t, of course, include the many more who suffer in silence, too embarrassed to admit that they are struggling or maybe just not knowing who to ask for help.
As they progress through secondary school, huge pressure is put on our young people to perform and do well in their exams. In sixth form, Bianca chose some difficult subjects for A-level (chemistry and physics) and really struggled, although she worked hard.
One night, I heard her crying in bed. I asked her what was wrong. “I’m not brilliant at anything, Mum!” she sobbed. “Darling, whatever makes you think you need to be?” I asked. I was shocked at her reply. The teacher had said that if the class didn’t get good grades, they would spend their lives stacking shelves, which is hugely offensive to people who work in retail jobs.
Infuriated beyond belief and fighting to suppress a string of expletives, I tried to console her. I explained that very few people are brilliant at anything. Most of us work hard to be average, but it really doesn’t matter. We find our own way. I went on to quote the many, many examples of hugely successful individuals (Alan Sugar, Richard Branson, Mary Berry, Delia Smith, to name but a few) who left school with no qualifications at all.
It seems this particular teacher had left a lasting impression. “She told us all how well she’d done because she did well at school, and that she drives a top-of-the-range Audi,” continued my daughter. No disrespect to teachers (I was one myself for many years), but I was tempted to say: “Well, she’s only a f**king teacher! She’s not that great.”
I know why teachers do this. The problems begin at a governmental level, thanks to pressure from Ofsted and school league tables. This makes headteachers anxious and stressed about their school’s position and reputation. This is then passed on to their staff, who are constantly told that they need “to step up a gear” to improve the school’s rating.
We know how many teachers leave the profession due to workload and stress. No surprise, then, that the teachers pass that pressure on to their pupils to strive for better and better grades. However, very few of us are actually cut out for academia, and for many young people, it’s just not their thing.
Most parents will tell you that they only want the best for their children. Sadly, they often become part of the problem. Some kids are very motivated and only need the gentlest encouragement in order to do their best; others need more of a firm hand. The trick is to know how much pressure is enough, and how much is too much. Here are the things you can do to help your child through the pressure of school.
Praise for effort, rather than attainment
What is really important is to praise your children for effort, rather than achievement. A grade C might be the best they can do and, if so, no amount of telling them they need to do better will make any difference; it will only cause anxiety.
One very bright teenage girl I counselled divulged that although she got 10 A* grades at GCSE, her parents were angry with her for getting one A. They expected her to get A* for every subject. “Whatever I do, it’s never good enough for them,” she bemoaned. Pushing an already high achiever to do even better can lead to an unhealthy perfectionist attitude. This level of perfectionism is linked with depression and burnout.
Ask yourself, what is your definition of success?
Social media and reality TV shows, of course, continue to feed unrealistic expectations of wealth, beauty and success to our children. Ask any teenager what they want to be when they’re older, and the chances are that they’ll say that they want to be a footballer, rock star, or social media influencer.
So, to help fight this narrative, it’s worth reflecting as a parent on what your own definition of success is. Which is more important – to have an emotionally stable person who’s doing OK, or a wildly “successful” one that is neurotically anxious?
In Bianca’s case, I went on to explain that she doesn’t need to be a genius, that there’s nothing wrong with being competent, and that she was, and always would be, good enough. In fact, for most of us, just being competent is enough to negotiate a perfectly good life.
Normalise failure
Understandably, many parents wish to be a role model to their children by telling them how hard they have worked to get where they are, or alternatively, how they wish they had worked harder at school. However, it’s really helpful to know that we all fail sometimes, some of us many times, how that affected us and how we dealt with it and moved on.
I was at one school’s GCSE meeting for parents and children where the headteacher suddenly said, “Now for the F word: FAIL. Teachers, please put your hand up if you’ve ever failed an exam.” More than half the teachers, as well as I, put our hands up. The young people’s faces lit up.
So what does help children with long-term achievement? It’s probably not what you think. Research shows that the single most effective thing parents can do to maximise their children’s potential is to read them a bedtime story from birth onwards, right through their childhood years. So trust that your child, given enough support, love and encouragement, will find their own way in life.
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