It’s exam results season and all over the country parents are waiting with bated breath for their children’s results and trying to cope with a range of emotions – both their own and their child’s – which are swirling around. Parents and young adults are already dealing with the aftermath of A levels and GCSE results will soon be following.

Results day and its aftermath is undoubtedly an ordeal for your child, and it is painful to see them go through it, but there are ways in which you can make it more bearable for everyone concerned:

Ten Top Tips for Anxious Parents

1.  It’s not all about you
Many parents live vicariously through their children. They might feel that their children have a duty to live up to their parents’ achievements and see any failure to do so as a major disappointment. Alternatively, parents may be embittered or disillusioned by their own under-achievement, and eagerly seeking some form of redress through the triumphs of their children. Either way, they are making the fatal mistake of not seeing their children as autonomous individuals, whose motivation, aspirations, successes and failures are very much their own. Now is the time to focus on your children, not on yourself.

2.  Be alert to stress
Keep an eye on your teenagers and look out for telltale signs of stress, such as headaches, sleeplessness, lack of appetite, and above-average levels of inertia. While you must accept that a certain amount of stress is inevitable, it might be a good idea to deploy distraction techniques – arrange outings, organise movie nights, encourage your kids to see friends, play sports, go shopping etc. Just make sure you don’t go into fretful parent overdrive and try to control your own feelings of anxiety – your children will pick up on your stress and that will only make them feel worse.

3. Don’t underplay expectations
On results day it is tempting to calm down anxious teenagers with remarks like “don’t worry, we’re not expecting anything”. You may feel that you are letting your child off the hook, removing the weight of parental expectation. But of course, they have put in work and effort (or at least you hope they have) and this is very much their drama – underplaying it may make them feel untethered and rudderless. It’s much better to say something like “we’re here for you, no matter how you do”.

4. Don’t Over-React
Your child’s grades may be extremely disappointing (or astonishingly good), but it is best not to wallow in over-reaction: if they have done poorly, you will convey the message that they have let you down; or, if they have done surprisingly well, they may feel that you did not hold them in high enough esteem. Heartfelt satisfaction or stoic acceptance will lower the emotional temperature and give them space to come to terms with their grades.

5. Don’t play the self-fulfilling prophecy card
Reacting to poor results with fatalistic remarks like “Well, you were never any good at maths” or greeting stellar results with “I always knew you were going to ace it” is undermining. You are asserting that the results are entirely predictable, clearly reinforcing your own views of your child’s talents or deficiencies. This can be very provoking for the child if they have been working hard to prove you wrong, to surprise and delight you with their success.

6. Comparisons are odious
How other students have fared is an irrelevant question. Your child will already be all too used to the competitiveness of modern life, and the persistent comparisons that are a relentless and retrograde feature of social media. Whether they have done better or worse than their contemporaries, they will still have to learn to live with their own results. Trying to make them feel better by citing a worse-performing friend is just mean, and they’ll know it. They’ll rightly be suspicious if you show too much interest in their friends’ results; it betrays the fact that you’re anxious to know where your child stands in the pecking order, a sure sign of over-competitive parenting. 

7. Don’t say “It’s not the end of the world”
From your much longer perspective, you know that even truly disastrous exam results don’t spell certain doom; there are always options, such as re-sits or re-appraisals and maybe a setback will act as a springboard for greater effort, or a productive change of direction. But when you are a teenager, with limited life experience, bad news on results day really can feel like a calamity, a truly shattering experience. Picking up the pieces, finding the resolve to move on, recalibrate and reboot is an all-important life lesson, and it will not help if parents denigrate the debacle or attempt to obliterate it with heedless optimism. Give your child room to feel the real weight of their disappointment; standing by with supportive suggestions and reassuring remarks (“is there anything we can do to help?”) is the best you can do.

8. Don’t say “I said you should have worked harder”
Being wise after the event is such a bad look. Even if you were all too aware that your child wasn’t working hard enough and predicted results day disappointment, reminding them of your prescience and insight is not going to help on the day itself. It is to be hoped that, in time, they will learn an all-important lesson and appreciate that hard graft really does bear fruit. But for the time being, lay off – they really don’t need to be told.

9. Don’t barge in and help
Dealing with the fallout from exam results is a real challenge for young adults. Your child may want to handle the aftermath – speaking to the school or university, seeking guidance or talking to careers advisors – without your assistance. It is important to stand by and let them take the initiative; of course, some teenagers will feel completely disorientated and confused and may be in desperate need of help. So, make it clear that you’re available to do anything you can to help and then let them come to you, rather than imposing your own agenda on them.

10. Don’t Brag
Over-competitive parents are all too ready to proclaim their child’s triumph from the rooftops, and while quiet pride and affirmation is certainly the order of the day, trumpeting success is troubling. Not only will you cause resentment and discomfort amongst friends and fellow parents who are not so happy with their child’s results; your exuberant celebrations will heap pressure on your child, making them feel that your love is conditional on their achievements.