As we head into the halfway point of the summer holidays, our weekly anxiety tracker suggests most of you are surviving well and 38% have been on holiday in the past 7 days (slightly up on the week before). There’s more on the Summer ☀️ Survey below, but first we look at 3 ‘e’s: exams, exasperation and empathy.
Exams
It’s exams results week: here are the headlines on your own exam thoughts!
1 in 5 dads think exams are easier for children now than when they were at school (but only 1 in 11 mums).
28% of you still have dreams about sitting your exams or getting the results
Around half of you think you could have tried harder when you sat exams in school, particularly dads.
Exasperation
Last weekend we checked on some of the most exasperating things kids do and found that most of them are pretty common!
Over half had drawn on themselves or the walls / furniture / floor. Only 13% of children were angelic enough not have done any of the the items in our list.
We also checked on what you had done when you were young. The biggest issue you remember is getting separated or lost from a parent. These days, fewer of you report that your kids have done this. Sadly we can’t tell is if this is because you are more careful with your kids, or because the event is only memorable if you’re a child… if only we had a Grandparent Ping to check!
Empathy
Our blunt question about whether you’re more like to tell your child to buck up if they are sick, or indulge them, raised a few eyebrows last week. However, it was an almost 50/50 split between the 2 ends of the empathy spectrum. But who is most likely to get a nice blanket and a hot water bottle? It turns out your chances of a bit of indulgence are considerably higher if you are an only child than if you have more than 2 siblings (probably no surprise to those raised in a bigger family!)
Summer ☀️ Survey
Two snippets from our Summer 
Survey to report this week…
1. Camping
Do you like to go camping? Dads say they like it a lot more than mums! Nearly three-quarters of dads said it’s something they like to do compared to around half of mums. We hope this doesn’t cause too many family arguments!
2. Olympics
Has this year’s Olympics sparked much sporting motivation? 27% of families have been inspired to do a sporting activity as a result of watching the Olympics this month. Better still most of these activities included both you and your children joining in! The west of England was considerably more enthusiastic than the east though… we wonder if this will correlate to Olympic success in a few years time!
Coming up next week
Next week we’ve got questions on toys and on Covid. Plus, the Summer ☀️ Survey continues! Download the app and set your notifications to PING every day!