My wife and I nearly passed our PSLE trauma on to our kids. Here's how we realised something had to change

I've experienced a lot of firsts as a parent of three. This week gave me yet another: my first Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) results day. 

On Tuesday (Nov 25), we gathered in our eldest child's school hall along with hundreds of other concerned parents. From behind a plastic barricade, dads and mums craned their necks to catch a glimpse of kids in their clusters, eager to catch any and all reactions. 

My wife was already gripping my hand tight, gritting her teeth in anticipation. The tension in the air was so thick, you could have cut it with a knife – or do as our two younger children did and ignore it completely in favour of arguing over whose turn it was on the mobile phone. 

Looking around, I seemed to be in the minority for the simple fact that I was a grown adult mostly unperturbed by the tense atmosphere. Not that I didn't care, but I was confident that what we had done this past year was enough to have siphoned away any nervousness on my part.  

At 11am, the result slips were released class by class. A cacophony of emotions filled the hall as the first few results were unveiled. Tears, shock, joy – it was all barely being contained in that hall. 

My daughter, ever the nonchalant, unaffected tween, waltzed up to us like she had just finished recess. We all rushed in for a family group hug. No one bothered to check her score. My wife was already tearing from relief. 

I wasn't too surprised by my daughter's cool composure. My eldest child and I seemed to be of one mind – what's done is done and nothing, no crying or exclamations of joy, would change the results.

WHEN PSLE IS AT THE CORE OF PARENTING 

Forget the score, the cut-off points or the AL (Achievement Level) bands. 

For many parents like us, the real PSLE achievement is simply making it to the end of the year with our relationship with our 12-year-old still intact.

Our PSLE journey didn’t really begin this year. It started way back in Primary 3, when my firstborn took her first weighted assessment and scored the academic equivalent of a small panic attack.

The wife and I, who at this age basically park-strolled our way through tests – were shocked at how our daughter was struggling with examination papers. 

That single test brought up more than just marks in a nine-year-old's report book. For my wife and me, it unearthed old anxieties, different parenting styles, and the ghosts of our own childhood experiences, leading to heated discussions on how best to guide our daughter.

My wife's own early school years were intense. She grew up believing that any failure in school was a failure in life – and it wasn't just the "study hard or you'll sweep roads" advice. It was a heavily weighted message that pushed her to excel all the way to law school. 

This rigid Type A personality, however, came at a cost. It left indelible scars she began to recognise only when she became a mother herself. 

On the other hand, I was raised with the easygoing philosophy of "just be happy, lah".

No tiger parenting. No academic competition. My dad's review of my academic performance consisted of him handing me a S$9 plastic skateboard from Boon Lay Market and telling me to "go skate". 

Not because I did well in exams, but simply because I looked longingly at this cheap board every time we were there to buy groceries. 

So naturally, I chose happiness over homework. And boy, did that skateboard bring such joy.

WHAT IS "SUCCESS" AS A PARENT?

When my wife and I got married and started raising our three kids, we soon found out that trying to find a middle ground between our two belief systems was like trying to jam two completely different game cartridges into one Nintendo Game Boy.

That was when we realised our old definitions of "normal" needed to be dismantled and rebuilt.

What did success really mean – not just for each of us as individuals, but for us as a family? It took a long stretch of uncomfortable reflection to answer that.

My wife and I began a series of uncomfortable but important conversations in which we recounted our exact childhood experiences in great and grave detail, to fully appreciate the evolution of the adults who stood before each other. 

Only then were we able to be frightfully aware of how we were imposing the expectation of success on our children, just as our parents had imposed it on us. We could start to break that existing mental model of parenting and build a new one – more relevant to us now, in this time.

We owed it to our children to do the work. But here's the part no one tells you: Even after all that reflection and recalibration, we still found ourselves swept back into the PSLE hamster wheel.

Past-year paper sprints. Multiple tuition centres. And my nightly pep talks – a mishmash of YouTube parenting advice and corporate lingo like "circling back" and "per our last discussion".

THE EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TOLL OF PSLE 

We all know the toll the PSLE takes – both on the kids and on ourselves. Every year, the same conversations and stories (like this one) proliferate on mainstream media. 

Last year, CNA ran a survey of 1,000 parents:

• 99 per cent said good PSLE results were important
• 85 per cent said their kids were stressed
• 64 per cent of parents themselves were stressed.

The hard truth is that we've built an academic rite of passage so intense, so all-consuming, that many of us end up trading away an essential relational currency – trust – in the name of academic progress.

In our own PSLE experiences as kids, some of us have felt the clear frustration or disappointment from our parents when we did not score as well as hoped.

This feeling of failure often means many of us can end up harbouring some kind of emotional or psychological wounds – be they resentment towards our parents, sadness or anger towards ourselves for not being able to fulfil their expectations, or a lack of trust and confidence in ourselves or even in our parents. 

Whether or not we realise these wounds are being inflicted in the moment, they often resurface later in adulthood, perhaps during a heart-to-heart talk with friends, therapy, or while watching an episode of an uncannily accurate Korean drama scene about overzealous parents. 

And we repeat the cycle of stress and anxiety with our children unconsciously, despite knowing that we are at a delicate stage in the parent-child dynamic.

We still push them – sometimes too hard –  in the name of preparing them for a "successful life".

I say this with some guilt because that is exactly what we did this year. And if my firstborn ever reads this in the far future – maybe after a tearful binge of that same Korean drama, I hope she knows we meant well, even if we didn't always get it right.

COMING BACK TO THE HEART OF PARENTING

Our children trust us to give them physical and emotional stability and safety. Yet, under the guise of good intentions, we push them to limits no 12-year-old should face. 

All this stress in the pursuit of better academic results. All these sleepless nights worrying about future scenarios for a paper that has little impact on their future. All in the name of PSLE.

This, mind you, on a national scale, with generations of PSLE trauma built upon each and every family, with no real option but to play "the game". 

But is the prize worth sacrificing everything for – including not just our kids' welfare, but our own relationship with them?

So now, after finally receiving my child's long-awaited PSLE results, my only real nugget of pseudo-wisdom is this: Hug your child.

That's it. Hug them. 

Take them out for a treat – ice cream, bubble tea, whatever gets them going. Spend time with them and enjoy each other's company without the spectre of studies and grades hanging over you both.

Because the only grade that matters now is not the one printed on the results slip, but the one they'll give us years from now – when they look back and decide how much we loved them.

Imran Johri is a marketing and editorial professional and a father of three.