- I'm Lucy Clark. I'm a journalist. I've been a journalist since I was 17 and I'm 50 now and I'm a Senior Editor with the Guardian, Australia and I'm the mother of three children. 
It's this kind of weird paradox where we, you know, think that school should be like a training ground for adulthood and they've gotta get used to rules and working hard and all the stuff and being competitive and they're supposed to get used to all these adult-like concepts. 
And yet we don't actually treat them like adults at all. They're still talked down to and you know, obviously I'm talking in generalisations, there are a lot of schools that are doing really amazing work in this area. 
But generally speaking, education is something that is done to them. You think to yourself, it's not that hard, is it? It's not that hard just to turn up, but actually for a lot of kids it is hard. 
And people my age think school was pretty easy because it actually was for us and our generation. It's really changed and I think this is a big obstacle to parents shifting their perspective as well because they still think that school's easy and it's not that hard to turn up. 
There is so much pressure. I think if you can embrace the idea that it is nowhere as easy as it was for you and to understand that it is much more difficult then that is the beginning of understanding. 
I think about my daughter and if she had been somehow tested in social responsibility, for example. She would have got flying colours and she would have aced that test. But that's not something that we teach kids. 
Accepting that your child is not following that small prescription that we've been handed about what success is and, you know, following a different track or has the success in another area that's not valued or measured at school. 
And understanding that school is not the be all and end all and ATAR at the end is not the only key to a successful life. 
Before I wrote the article about my daughter, I reconnected with an old friend who I hadn't been in contact with in about 20 years and we had this sort of rushed catch up and she was saying she's got three kids and everything's going so well and they're gonna be lawyers. 
They're doing fantastically and one's in this team and one's in that team and I was sort of thinking, I'm just gonna tell the truth and say I'm having issues with my older daughter but I didn't go into too many details and you know, told them about my other kids. 
And then I wrote this article about my daughter and it got picked up by the Guardian and it went around the world and got so much feedback and this friend got back in touch with me and said, I saw your article and I just wanted to connect again and say that actually things are pretty bad in my life too. 
Two out of my three kids are suffering really terrible anxiety and a lot of it is from school and university pressure and I just wanted, there's this sense that you've got to keep this facade going and it's almost like giving people permission to say, you know, things are pretty shit.