Title: The Moment I Stopped Pretending I Could Do It All – And Got My Teenager Some Help

There is a particular kind of parenting guilt that kicks in around Year 11. Your child is older, technically more capable, and you have spent years telling yourself – and them – that hard work and showing up is enough. And then the ATAR looms.

For those outside Australia, the ATAR is the national university entry score that Year 12 students receive at the end of their final year of school. It determines which courses they can apply for, which universities will consider them, and in the minds of most teenagers (and their parents), it feels like it determines everything. The pressure is real. The stakes feel enormous. And somewhere in the middle of all that, parents needs to be honest about what they can actually offer their children. I spoke to Mum Susie about her experience with her daughter and what she felt she could offer her. Her answers are below. 

“The answer, it turned out, was I didn’t feel I could offer my daughter that much – at least not in chemistry” she said. 

“I am good at many things. Secondary school chemistry is not one of them. I tried to help. I sat at the kitchen table with her more times than I can count, reading through her notes with what I hoped looked like confidence. She saw straight through it. We both did.

What changed things was stepping back from the idea that getting outside support meant I had somehow failed as a parent. I think a lot of us carry that feeling longer than we should. The decision to find proper ATAR preparation support for our daughter was not an admission of defeat. It was the most useful thing I did for her that year”. 

She continued, “what I noticed almost immediately was the shift in our evenings. The tension that had been building around homework time started to ease. She was getting clear explanations from someone who knew the content inside out. I was getting my daughter back – not a stressed, frustrated version of her, but the one who could sit at dinner and actually talk about something other than assessment deadlines.

I also noticed something I had not expected. Her confidence in her own ability started to grow. Not because someone was doing the work for her, but because she finally understood what she was doing. There is a real difference between a student who has memorised something and a student who genuinely gets it. Watching that shift happen was one of the more quietly satisfying things about that whole difficult year”.

If you are in the thick of it right now – a parent of a senior school student who is watching your teenager carry more pressure than you remember carrying at that age – I would say this. Getting help is not giving up. Sometimes the most supportive thing we can all collectively do is recognise what falls outside our expertise and find someone who can fill that gap properly.

We spend so much energy trying to be everything to our children. Knowing when to hand something over is a skill too. It just took Susie longer than she would like to admit to learn it.