I read an article in The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago that said checking your kids’ grades online is the new parental obsession. Guilty as charged. I’ve always been grade obsessed, so whether I was checking them online or keeping track of them in my own little notebook doesn’t really matter. I confess, there have been days when I knew one of my kids was going to take a test and I kept the screen open, hitting refresh throughout the day, just waiting to see how it would turn out.

It’s probably not the healthiest behavior, but I think it beats the opposite extreme of not caring about them at all. I certainly don’t want to be the parent who is surprised when a report card comes home with a bad grade or waits until after the fact to get my kid the help they may need. At the same time, I also don’t want to be the parent who ruins the joy of a smiling face getting off the bus to surprise me that they aced a test that they’d worked their tails off to do well on.

As the kids have gotten older, I’ve also wanted them to take ownership and responsibility for their own actions, plan their own projects, and meet their deadlines. Some of their teachers are very proactive and list upcoming assignments online. Others don’t, adding grades only after the work is completed. It’s an interesting mix, and one that helps keep me a little bit more honest. I’ve also tested my own patience, as I’ve watched deadlines come and go, and I’ve seen points deducted for late work.

I’m not a saint, though, and I can’t make it through that without at least asking my kids if they’re aware they have a deadline coming up. It can physically hurt me sometimes to not ask them exactly what they’re doing about it, but I’m getting better letting them fail. And there has been a time or two when they haven’t realized an assignment was due at all, and I guess I’m glad I was there to remind them and offer some assistance if they needed it.

When it comes down to it, their education has to be a team effort. Ultimately, the goal is to help them become fully functioning adults. From a very young age, I learned that “oh, just let me do it” was not the response that my kids were looking for when they asked for help. Sometimes, it’s been hard for me to let go of certain things.

Science projects are tough. I am still way too intrigued by the scientific method to just wash my hands of their projects. Since it usually falls to me to purchase their supplies, I continually find myself adding new parameters or new ideas to their original projects. I’ve had to convince them over the years to remind me that it is their project, when I get too pushy. I’ve also had to convince myself not to be just a little mad that they don’t want to capitalize on my great ideas that would push their experiments into the stratosphere.

On the other hand, math isn’t tough. In fact, it’s better for everyone all around, if no one EVER asks me for help with their math homework. They’re much more likely to get helpful advice from Alexa or Siri, than they are from me. This is also where it’s handy to have a Wonderful Husband who has a background in engineering and is much more likely to be able to help with the subjects that I don’t like. (Future column idea: Why you should marry someone who is good at the subjects you were bad at in school.)

Is looking at my kids’ grades online helpful? I think back to one exam that E had that was particularly tough. She was really struggling with the concept, and no matter how much we worked at it, something was just slipping through her grasp of understanding. I did my best to pump her up the morning before the test, but both of us knew that it was going to be a rough road. When she got off the bus that day, she was hanging her head. She did not think she did well at all, but thanks to my online spying, I knew that she had done a lot better than she had expected to, and I even picked up a sweet little treat to help celebrate. That day, it certainly saved us from an evening of feeling lousy.

I guess at the end of the day, it’s like most of the technologically advanced tools that we have at our disposal: They can be a blessing or a curse, a double-edged sword that can be very effective when used correctly, or damning when they’re not.

Back to the original article, one of the parents referred to looking at the grades as a “horrible compulsion to know” and likened it to an old-school telephone ringing, and just having to pick it up to know who is calling. That terminology frightened me. I don’t want anything related to my kids to become a “horrible compulsion” for me. So, over the past few months, I’ve tried to back off my engagement. Instead of just pretending that I don’t know what their grades are already, I’ve tried to stop constantly snooping, and let them tell me. Certainly, I bring it up, and I will prompt them to tell me some of their last grades, but I’ve tried to turn the ownership of it over to them, rather than accosting them as to why they weren’t better prepared to get a grade that I’ve already scoped out.

It’s not a perfect system. There have been a few dips that I feel like maybe wouldn’t have happened if I’d been more proactive, but the reward has been seeing them rally themselves and work harder to bring up a grade that isn’t quite what it should be. Technology is changing education, I think for the better, most of the time. When I was cleaning out closets, I came across some of my old notebooks, and on the inside cover, I had all my grades listed, and averages calculated in the margins. Considering how bad I was at math, it’s probably a lot better that the computer is doing that for me these days. I’m never going to stop caring about my kids’ grades, but I think I’ve dialed it back from a “horrible compulsion” to a “bad habit.”

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.