Reflect
Hello, loyal WW readers. As the blazing heat that has engulfed my corner of the world finally eased this week, I found that I could breathe again and, more importantly, hear my own thoughts. The extreme temperatures experienced across Europe have brought with them a particular kind of cognitive exhaustion. Many of us have simply been trying our best to eat, sleep and function, whether at work, at home or online, under genuinely challenging circumstances. We often associate sunshine with rest and relaxation, but summer can bring its own unique pressures.
At this time of year, my neighbourhood tends to transform. The streets fill with enthusiastic teenagers carrying footballs and sports equipment on their way to the park. Newly qualified drivers zoom around every corner, rather faster than I would like. I find myself being served coffee by friends' children or spotting them doing work experience placements and experiencing that familiar moment of shock at just how much they have grown.
In my local hair salon, cheerful chatter revolves around prom hair and prom dresses. People exchange tips on teenage parties, summer jobs, new school starts and the ever-rising cost of holidays abroad.
There is a sense of transition at this time of year, of leaving one chapter behind while simultaneously anticipating the next. For working parents, summer can bring a fresh wave of anxiety about childcare, juggling work and family life, and the added pressure of creating the promised family "reconnection time" that everyone supposedly needs.
For those of us with teenagers, we definitely hope they enjoy their summer, while simultaneously dreading the inevitable battles over screen time, social media and how best to spend their seemingly endless free hours. As a parent of older teenagers, I can confirm that as soon as summer arrives, I enter what feels like the seventh circle of parental anxiety. They travel abroad, attend parties and festivals, and spend increasing amounts of time with friends, all perfectly normal activities that nevertheless inspire extraordinary levels of worry.
My eldest travelled to Bologna this week, where temperatures reached 38 degrees. He is almost 20, but I simply could not help myself. Before he left, I found myself delivering a lengthy list of reminders about drinking water, wearing a hat and avoiding alcohol in the heat. And as for all those principled arguments about not tracking your offspring? They go straight out of the window when a person who still feels like a part of your own body and soul is Vespa-ing around an unfamiliar city late at night. Did he wear a helmet? Has his phone been stolen? Or is there genuinely a jazz bar open at 2am?
Parental anxiety about our children's safety is, of course, par for the course. Still, I cannot help thinking that things felt easier in the old days, when you knew exactly where they were, what the timetable was, when you were picking them up and what was for tea.
These days, I am learning to live with a kind of parental activity blindness, placing my faith in their judgement, organisational skills and street-wise savvy. It is not always comfortable, but perhaps that, too, is part of the process of letting go.
Motivate
Typically, every year, at this time, our team at Tooled Up hears from parents worried about transition support. How can parents help a child moving into nursery for their first time? A child moving to prep, primary or off to senior school? How can they make sure they settle well, make friends and cope?
One question that a parent submitted this week reminded me of how our own parental anxiety might inadvertently shape children’s feelings. A mum wrote to us, concerned that her child’s junior school had sent home a letter saying they were “mixing up the classes”, news that triggered sense of irritation and worry in this parent, as her little girl felt perfectly happy and secure where she was, with her bestie right beside her.
I totally get it. I used to feel the same way! Why can’t teachers just leave things AS THEY ARE? Why change it? The thing is… teachers put an enormous amount of thinking into these decisions. They tend to make changes based on the needs of all pupils, to enable certain pedagogical approaches or to ensure children are placed in ways that reflect levels of learning. Every school is different, but we should, as far as possible trust in teachers’ professionalism and support edits to the norm.
Why should we? Because school is one of the few environments where children can practise important life skills and experiences; one of those is not always being allocated exactly where one wants to be and with whom. I promised this parent that resilience is cultivated through such experiences, and everything depends on how we potentially frame the issue with our children. A little tip we often give in Tooled Up centres on the concept of turning any worries into wonders. So if a child is worried they won’t be able to sit beside their bestie, perhaps we can ignite some wonder… “ I wonder if you could see Jessica at playtime? Or arrange a playdate after school? Or always sit together at lunch”. There is always a benefit hidden beneath change, but we do need to move through uncertainty to reach the shores of opportunity, as it were! Read the full answer I penned for this parent who asked the original question here.
I have delivered at least four recent webinars on transition for parents, but I wanted to summarise some of the main points that are universal to every stage and age here. The big tip is that we need to watch our language about how we talk about any change. We don’t want to frighten children with talk of “big” school or warn them about all the changes afoot and make them feel worried. By being positive about change and giving them space and time to process their feelings and emotions, we are optimally supporting them. Support and scaffolding with organisational tasks can prove very helpful no matter the stage and age of your child. That is why in Tooled Up the platform is littered with everything from packing lists for school, university, festivals, organisational and mindset planners, settling in journals and the occasional resource for parents who are mulling over their own feelings about change! Plenty of prep can be done emotionally and practically over the summer period (rather than the week before a new setting starts) and I hope some of the resources can prove helpful.
Separation anxiety often raises its head amongst younger children in September, but parents can get ahead by listening to this webinar with a clinical psychologist on the topic. Worries about friendships tend to flourish in September too, but again, let’s lean into some good advice now on how to talk to approach and think about early friendships. When friendship struggles arise (which they inevitably will) for tweens and teens, you can lean our lovely evidence-based tips, co-created with the brilliant Oxford academic, Dr Tanya Manchanda, that remind us we don’t need to have all the answers when things are socially challenging for our children, but can instead, usefully go into coaching mode to support their problem-solving.
Sensory sensitivities can emerge as some children adjust to new uniforms. Plenty of interesting tips to be found on adaptive clothing and how we can reduce children’s anxiety in the Tooled Up platform. If social confidence is ever an issue, we have resources to enable, empower and support, no matter the age of your child (from toddlers to teens).
As we are nearing the end of the academic year, I thought WW readers might enjoy reading what other parents have asked us, most recently, regarding a range of parenting questions and how we responded in full. This A-Z of topics put together by the Tooled Up team is a nice reflection of the challenges that can pop up on a yearly basis within families and reassuringly reflects the fact that there always something we can do, or an action that we can take, that really can help.
Support
There is one other anxiety that seems to have crept into parental conversations this month and it is one that feels much harder to solve with a packing list, a planner or a pep talk. Increasingly, I find myself talking to parents who are worried about the future itself. They worry about artificial intelligence, about jobs disappearing, about career prospects changing beyond recognition and, ultimately, about what sort of world their children will inherit.
I understand this anxiety deeply because I feel flashes of it myself. I have found myself wondering whether the advice we gave young people five years ago about education and careers still holds true today. Parents ask us whether their children should study certain subjects, pursue particular professions or prepare for careers that may not even exist by the time they graduate. Young people, meanwhile, are absorbing a constant stream of headlines suggesting that technology is moving faster than anyone can keep up with.
We recently explored this topic in depth with the wonderful Laura Knight, a leading expert in digital learning and AI in education, whose webinar and accompanying Tooled Up guides for parents and teens challenged many of the assumptions parents hold about careers, qualifications and what it really means to prepare children for an AI-enabled future. What emerged most clearly was that, whilst the headlines often focus on fear and displacement, the evidence points us towards a more hopeful and empowering question: not "What job is safe?" but "What skills and attributes will travel well in a changing world?"
One of the most reassuring things I discovered whilst listening to Laura was that some of our assumptions about the future need refreshing. Yes, the entry-level jobs market has become tougher. Some of the traditional "first rung" jobs that helped previous generations build confidence and experience are increasingly being automated. But the data also suggests that this challenge is concentrated at the start of careers, rather than across an entire working life. In fact, professional-level employment overall continues to grow.
Equally striking was the finding that fear of AI is consistently highest amongst those with the least experience of using it. Among young people who regularly use AI tools, the more common experience is that AI saves time, improves their work and opens up new opportunities. Perhaps, then, one of the best things we can do as parents and educators is not to encourage children to fear these technologies, but to help them develop a practical, informed and confident relationship with them. After all, the young people growing up with AI as a native tool, rather than an unsettling intruder, may be better placed than many of us to shape what comes next.
I was also reassured to learn that employers are increasingly prioritising qualities that parents and educators have always cared about deeply. Recent evidence suggests that employers are placing less emphasis on educational pedigree and technical experience alone, and more emphasis on whether young people can think critically, communicate well, adapt to change, show resilience and continue learning throughout their lives. In fact, employers report that self-awareness and resilience are two of the qualities most often missing in young applicants.
Perhaps this offers us a useful reframe. Our job as parents has never really been to prepare our children for one specific profession or one predictable pathway. It has been to help them develop the confidence, flexibility, curiosity and judgement needed to navigate a world that will inevitably change.
That, of course, requires us to tolerate uncertainty too. Just as I have had to resist checking whether my son is wearing a helmet whilst hurtling around Bologna on a Vespa, perhaps all parenting ultimately involves learning to live with not knowing. We may not know what jobs our children will do, what technologies they will use or what the world will look like when they are adults. But we can trust that if we nurture their curiosity, resilience, kindness and capacity to keep learning, we are giving them something far more valuable than certainty: the ability to cope when certainty inevitably disappears.
Are you a Tooled Up member?
The term might be coming to an end, but if you are a Tooled Up teacher, do take the time to browse through the platform over the summer to explore how we can help make your job that little bit easier. You might like to check out some of the following:
As of today, we have 164 assemblies and lesson plans available for you to use, on numerous and varied topics including coping strategies, upstander behaviour, railway and water safety, gaming and scams, kindness, misogyny, anti-racism and street safety.
We also still have a couple of valuable staff CPD webinars to go before term ends. Book your place now:
Creating Behaviour Policies that Work with Mark Roberts - July 2nd, 12.30pm BST
Allergy Management: New 2026 Guidance for UK Schools with Professor Adam Fox - July 3rd, 2.30pm BST
Remember, if you miss out live, all of our webinars are added to the platform with full notes, for you to watch back.
Our live event programme for staff resumes in September:
Improving Attendance: A Blueprint for Schools with Victoria Franklin - September 9th, 12pm BST
Safeguarding Essentials Refresher with Sam Lurock - September 10th, 12.30pm BST
Preparing for the Ban: Talking to Young People About Social Media, Rights and Wellbeing with Dr Emily Setty - September 15th, 12.15pm BST
We also invite ALL school staff to join us for our online Inclusive Education Conference on October 9th. Among other topics, a fantastic line up of experts will discuss trauma informed teaching, universal screening, intersectionality in education, emotionally based schools avoidance and masking, inclusive RSHE, therapeutic classrooms and neuroinclusive education. We hope to see lots of you there. Book your place now!