As parents, we want what’s best for our children. Supporting them through the stressful, often sleepless and anxiety-driven final year at school can be fraught with expectations, frustrations and fear.
Perhaps the most stressful day of all is the day that the ATAR results are released.
Tensions are high, internet speed is low – it’s a scary ordeal for everyone involved.
So, what do we do when our children don’t get the grade they need to get into the course they want to do?
Or perhaps they get the grade to do the course you want them to do and they want to run away and join the circus. In Latvia. Forever.
This is a challenging avenue to pursue as we are trying to support our kids. But at the same time, our kids are becoming adults and they are now making their own decisions. Whether we like it or not.
I remember when I had finished my final year 12 exam and Dad picked me up from school. He’d bought me the new Savage Garden CD as a “congratulations, that’s over” and we played some basketball together outside. It sounds a little idyllic, really. In many ways it was.
However, I didn’t feel the relief I expected to feel at then end of a very long journey.
I felt anxiety about what was to come. What would my mark be? Did I do well? Did I do well enough?
Now I have to be honest, the year was 1999 and dial-up internet sucked.
There’s no other word to describe it. That annoying little line that would slowly creep across the screen took AGES to reach its destination and the connection invariably dropped out.
Now, imagine the thousands of students all trying to access the same site at the same time. The whole situation was a headache.
The worst part was that they released the subject marks before the ATAR equivalent (back then it was called UAI or University Admissions Index).
So we received these marks out of 100 and we would try and guess what that meant for our final grade.
And to say stress abounded is an understatement. It took most of the day but I finally got my grade. The relief of finally getting through almost outweighed the relief of getting the mark I needed to get into my first round preference.
As I’ve said many times before, I won the lottery with my parents. When I told them I wanted to do an arts degree and major in history and archaeology, they didn’t bat an eye. They didn’t try and change my mind.
Even when I decided to do my honours year in medieval and early modern history with a thesis on witchcraft, they never mentioned potential jobs or tried to push me into a post-grad course with a tangible career option. There isn’t much in the way of current jobs for a person with a specialisation in early modern witchcraft law and prosecution. But they trusted me.
They trusted that they had brought me up right. They trusted that I would find my way regardless of what that pathway looked like. They trusted that I had a plan. They trusted that the skills I learned in my undergraduate degree would be highly transferable into many different industries.
They trusted that they had brought me up right. They trusted that I would find my way regardless of what that pathway looked like. They trusted that I had a plan. They trusted that the skills I learned in my undergraduate degree would be highly transferable.
My parents have always said that at some point, you have to let them go and trust that the child you raised was raised well and would come out on top.
It’s not easy being a parent. There are a lot of things that weren’t in the brochure that we have to deal with.
Watching them grow up is a privilege denied to many a parent.
Watching them grow into the man or woman they are becoming is an honour.
It’s our job, as parents, to shape and encourage our children to be the best that they can be. To follow their hearts and step forth unafraid. To be their safety net and back stop if it all falls apart. For nothing is permanent in this life.
The very best thing that we can do as a parent is trust our children, to let them march to the beat of their own drum, to let them make their own mistakes and come out the other side.
Zoë Wundenberg is a careers writer and coach at impressability.com.au