If your child starts year 12 exams today, don’t do what I did

It’s October and the jacaranda trees in my street are in bud. This can only mean one thing – it’s 12 years since my firstborn child did her final school exams – and I temporarily lost my mind.

My daughter was studious and ambitious and wanted to do well. But somewhere along the way, she became anxious, which made me anxious, causing me to behave like an idiot, making everything much worse. This story has a happy ending, and contains one life-changing event, but if your child is doing the HSC, the VCE or the IB this year, please consider this as a tale of what not to do.

In those days, I was suffering under the delusion that this result mattered – that a random figure was somehow important. Now I can see that assigning an arbitrary figure to a teenager – they of the unformed frontal lobe – based on a series of three-hour exams on topics they will probably never look at again, is often meaningless. For someone who will have at least three or four careers in different sectors over the course of a lifetime, being defined by one number seems insane. And anyone who even thinks about their score and tells people about it – I’m looking at you, Senator Dave Sharma – clearly needs to get a life.

But I didn’t know that back in 2014. Every time my daughter looked stressed, I snapped to attention and added another service provider. By mid-year, we had a chiropractor (sore back), a psychologist (did I mention anxiety?) and an English tutor (her best subject, therefore unnecessary). I cut down on my work to “help out” (ha!) and spent my days making “nourishing” meals which no-one had asked for or even wanted. I drank a lot and ground my teeth like a meth addict. Even the cat, normally indifferent to any form of human suffering, looked stressed.

Then one day, a friend told me about this woman in Macquarie St. She’s a hypnotherapist, she told me, who is really good with anxiety.

I took the number and looked at it. Could I let a hypnotherapist rummage around inside the head of my poor anxious child (currently gnawing on her cuticles)? What could possibly go wrong? Finally, I rang and made an appointment, not for my daughter but for myself. Before I let this woman loose inside the psyche of my daughter, I thought I’d go and test her services on my own broken brain. After paying a deposit, I went to an office and rang the bell.

Disappointingly, the person who answered wasn’t wearing a black shawl or holding a ticking watch in front of my face. In fact, she looked just like a regular person, with the concerned manner of a member of the caring professions. When I told her I was a guinea pig for her services in advance of my child, I saw the words “Munchausen’s by proxy” cross her face, but she didn’t say it.

What did I need to work on, she asked – did I need to give up smoking? I didn’t smoke. Did I want to stop drinking – was she f—ing joking? Those glasses of ladypetrol (rosé) every night were the only thing keeping this car on the road.

Finally, in the manner of a cask-a-day boozer at an AA meeting, I confessed my greatest sin; I was a chocoholic. You know those people in Sunday Life’s Day on a Plate series who say they sometimes eat two squares of dark chocolate at 9pm? Amateurs. Like a true addict, I ate everything – Cadbury Dairy Milk, Flakes, year-old Easter eggs from the floor of the car – even white chocolate, which is actually disgusting. When it came to the brown drug, I was undiscriminating. Basically, I was a walking advertisement for pre-diabetes.

She looked pleased – finally, something to work with! We had three sessions, but I can’t describe what happened. My only memory is that this very kind lady dimmed the lights, sat me in a comfortable chair, told me to close my eyes and talked to me in a soothing tone. I was so tired that I can only assume I simply fell asleep, clenching my back molars. Afterwards, she emailed me some materials to read which would reinforce the “work we’d done together”.

A few days later, someone offered me a piece of Haigh’s dark chocolate ginger – my absolute favourite treat in the world. I automatically shot out a hand, grabbed the packet and then stopped. After looking at it for a moment, I said, “I’m good thanks” and gave it back. Over the next few weeks, I noticed that every time I was offered chocolate or anything sweet, I turned it down. In restaurants, I waved away dessert menus and shook my head at sticky wines. It wasn’t distaste or revulsion – I just didn’t feel like them. Twelve years later, I’m still someone who doesn’t have a “sweet tooth”.

In the end, my daughter finished the exams, did well and gained entry to her first choice of courses. She’s now on her second career and, no doubt, will eventually have a few more. Six years later, my son did the HSC, during lockdown, and we all survived. The kids are all right, despite waiting for their Baby Boomer parents to cark it so they can buy a house.

If this is your first rodeo, please don’t treat the year 12 exams as a life-changing event. Sit back and conserve your nervous energy for when you will really need it – schoolies.

Margot Saville is the Herald’s deputy opinion editor.

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.