The COVID-19 pandemic caused dramatic changes to students' daily lives and modes of schooling. When the first pandemic lockdown forced students to spend more time at home with their families, how did parenting practices predict adolescents' adjustment? This longitudinal study sampled 943 students before the pandemic (T1), 263 of whom also responded to a questionnaire during the first pandemic lockdown in Spring 2020 (T2). We investigated how changes in parenting predicted academic motivation, internalising mental health symptoms, and life satisfaction during the first lockdown among public and private school students in their final year of secondary school. Invariance testing and path models showed that students maintained stable life satisfaction, that their academic motivation tended to improve, and that their internalising symptoms decreased during the crisis. Results of latent change score models showed that decreases in parental pressure during the pandemic lockdown were positively associated with students' educational and emotional adjustment.