Students face a constant amount of pressure from society, expecting teenagers to live their high school career like they are in a ‘Coming of Age’ movie. 

Though it’s common knowledge for students that once they enter high school, their entire life will not magically turn into “High School Musical” — instead teens are faced with the exhausting stress of having homework done on time, maintaining friendships, spending time with family and then making sure they eat and sleep enough. 

While most parents make the effort to support their children, understanding they have a lot to manage — other parents choose to negatively influence their child’s mental health by constantly hovering over or demanding them to have all A’s in their classes. 

These parents are unaffectionately called helicopter parents and can be seen when a caregiver becomes extremely overprotective and rarely allows their children the independence and freedom they need to learn responsibility. 

This is not to claim that teens don’t want support from their parents, but the constant checking of grades, managing their kid’s schedule and being grounded for getting a low ‘B’ is not helpful and will only make teenagers feel forever insecure about their academic performance. 

What students truly desire is emotional support and the need to rant to their caregiver about their stress, and not be lectured or given advice on how to fix the problem. More often than not, students only want someone to listen to them and the problems they are facing — not to be reprimanded about how to fix an issue they are currently trying to solve. 

The high school experience is meant to challenge students and teach them how to problem solve and manage their time accordingly — this can’t be done if their parents are breathing down their necks. 

Students need to make mistakes and learn from them. The only way they can grow is to let them have some space and establish the motivation to do well in school by themselves.