After a three-year Covid hiatus, the school exam season will dominate the next six weeks in many homes. Advice lines and parenting articles are recommending everything from early nights and milky drinks to meditation. Some over-anxious parents will make things worse, some neglectful ones fail in the most basic duties of support. Some friendship groups will be encouraging, others tormenting (”That was a trick question about isotopes — get it?”). Soap operas offer harrowing anxiety plots: Coronation Street has a diabetic girl character with a gay vicar dad, a tantalising Oxford provisional offer and an eating disorder.
