TREADING on eggshells? Walking on cut glass more like, and I bet I’m not the only one with feet metaphorically cut to ribbons.

For the exam season is just about upon us, which means that, unless I want to end up hobbling around on crutches, the next few weeks will be spent with my gob well and truly shut.

This is the time, if life is to be worth living, when the parental guns fall silent.

In bedrooms up and down the country there’s currently a ceasefire in the “get-your-room-tidied-now!” hostilities.

Dishwashers of the nation are going un-emptied. Lawns remain uncut and it’s nothing to do with the weather but everything to do with the absence of teens practising their driving skills on the family lawnmower.

Kitchen bins are over-flowing because the teen isn’t there to put the rubbish out.

Remnants of energy-boosting or comfort-giving snacks (depending on how well things are going) are piled up on bedroom surfaces. Beds are even more unmade than normal, if that’s at all possible.

Faces are sullen, angst-ridden and yawn-laden, all at the same time. And like an over-wound clockwork toy, the only dialogue you get is the frequently wailed “Can’t you see I'm revising?”

Welcome to the pressures of today's public examination system. Every May and June is the only time of the year when anyone aged between 16 and 18 can get away with yelling at their parents. “They’re in the middle of exams”, becomes the weary mantra of mums and dads everywhere seeking to justify the surliness of their offspring whose only other contribution to conversation apart from the revising one is “Don’t even SPEAK to me!” If only, if only.

I can’t remember it being like this when I were a lass. Oh yes, there was the pressure of cramming the night before while keeping one ear cocked on Top Of The Pops. And it was a bit daunting spending three hours in an exam room trying to write knowingly about why Birnam Wood was coming to Dunsinane to finish off Macbeth, or waxing lyrical about the formation of corrie lakes.

But I don’t recall being stressed out in quite the same way as many kids today seem to be. And my folks certainly didn’t step around us on tiptoe – my dad still played his LPs of Reginald Dixon at the Blackpool Tower organ full belt on the family Dansette.

So much so, it was a blessing to go down to the public library and revise just to get away from the racket. Talk about a loud music role reversal.

Anyway, I digress. All the advice for parents during exam time appears to centre round making revision lists and timetables, marking calendars with big black markers, encouraging exercise “even if it’s just a walk to the shops”, and making sure the kids go to bed early and have sorted out their pens for the morning.

That’s all very well in an ideal family utopia of smiling mums and doting dads where the kids do as they’re told, begin revising before they even crack open the Easter eggs, happily discuss their study progress with the family over dinner, think exams are a doddle and above all, don’t answer back.

But for every teen like that there are probably 100 more who equate doing exams with being made to drink hemlock, find pushing teachers a real pain and their nagging parents even worse.

And what really hacks them off even more than those who incessantly nag their kids about getting on with their work are the parents who’ve read every support manual going and as a result try so hard to do the right thing they end up hovering like a bad smell in trap one.

Never mind, the exams will be over soon.

But by the time the last paper has finally been handed in, parents will be so giddy with relief they’ll be elbowing their kids out of the way to be the first in the queue to celebrate before normal hostilities resume.

And then just think – come August, kids and parents can join together in another collective nervous breakdown in readiness for the dreaded results….