You tell yourself you’ll just take one quick look. Ten minutes later, you’re looking again, and again before dinner. All the while, you’re rehearsing in your mind what you’ll say if that math grade dropped. It’s not enough to check it once. Once the urge hits, you can’t resist checking.
To be clear, nothing about the checking itself is unhealthy. Depending on your child’s age, grades can be really important. Checking once a week because your child’s teacher recommends it is just staying informed. It’s not the checking itself, it’s the frequency, the why behind it, and what it’s doing to your mental health.
If you’re struggling to control your ability to check, here are some questions to ask before you do it again.
- Why am I checking right now?
- Has something actually changed, or is this the “urge” talking?
- Am I doing this because the other parents seem to be?
- Is this making me feel less anxious long term or less anxious for the next 10 minutes?
That last one is the one that matters, because checking might quiet the worry for a moment, but it’ll come back, usually stronger. You’ve taught your brain that not knowing is intolerable. It’s the same trap as any other checking habit. It doesn’t resolve the worry; it feeds it.
If your child is in middle school, the stakes are lower, and there’s more room to let them stumble. If they’re in high school with college on the horizon, however, it can feel like there’s less margin. The real question isn’t whether the situation warrants some concern. It’s whether the checking is making your worry better or worse over time, not just in the next five minutes. For most compulsive checkers, it’s worse.
You’re probably aware that checking takes away your own peace of mind — but there’s more. Every time you catch a dropped grade before your child does, or text them about an assignment before they’ve had the chance to notice it themselves, you’re doing the noticing and worrying for them. That might feel like help, but it’s actually taking away their lesson. They lost the moment where they’d learn to spot a problem and fix it. If you’re always the first to know, they never get to be.
You’re also sending messages, whether you mean to or not. You’re showing you don’t trust them to handle their own work and/or that their grades matter more to you than they do to your child. Children pick up on that faster than we’d like to admit.
None of this means you stop caring or stop paying attention. It means you build a tolerance for not looking. Try going a day without opening the portal. Then two. Notice the urge — and the discomfort under it — and let it pass without acting on it.
It’s not about doing nothing about your child’s education, but rather doing nothing with the discomfort that shows up when you don’t check.
It’s a skill, not a personality trait, and every time you resist looking, you’re building it. This is good for both you and your child.
Joanna Hardis, LISW, is a cognitive behavioral therapist in Shaker Heights. A mother of three herself, Joanna combines years of everyday parenting experience with professional training in the areas of anxiety; changing family dynamics, such as divorce; and obsessive-compulsive and eating disorders all in an effort to support, coach and empower parents of behaviorally challenging kids. Joanna earned her undergraduate degree at Cornell University in New York and a master’s degree from Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University.
