When a teen lacks confidence in studying for their exams, a "leadership nudge" from a supportive parent becomes essential, says parenting coach Joseph Driessen.
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Preparing for exams is quite different to absorbing knowledge at school on a day-to-day basis, he tells Kathryn Ryan.
The first question to ask a teen with exams on the way is how they feel about them, he says.
If you get a nondescript answer ask a "more interesting" question about their potential results: "What mark do you think you could actually get if you could get the best mark possible from working really hard?"
Going through the subjects individually and asking whether they reckon they could get Excellence, Merit or Achieved in each one is a good way to bring a young person's perceptions of their own abilities to the surface, Driessen says.
"The very fact that you're interested and sitting down talking, kind of saying 'tell us what do you think you could get?' gets that feeling out in the open.
"It's surprising how accurate children actually are in their assessment of where they're at because they've been sitting and working for three full years. They've realised that some of their neighbours find it easy to get really great marks, other neighbours are really struggling."
Get on the same page
The next question to ask is, Driessen says, how much study time the teen thinks it will take to achieve the academic result they're going for.
To do this, you can look at the texts and resources together to see what they really need to know from each – i.e. all 12 chapters of such-and-such a textbook or just five of them.
Then you need to work out when are they going to actually do the study, he says.
If they do half an hour of homework every night normally, ahead of exams you could suggest this goes up to an hour and a half, including an hour for revision. If that sounds like a lot, it could be split up into smaller bits – half an hour before dinner, half an hour after dinner and half an hour before bed or early in the morning.
"Just relax and talk it through and say, well, let's, let's see if we can make a plan on how to do that. Some kids are really great, they just write a little masterplan of when they're going to do it or when they're going to start."
There may well be obstacles to executing the study plan, Driessen says, so it's a good idea to ask if there's anything the young person is worried about and see if you can help solve that.
For example, they may not have all of the class notes for whatever reason: "Is it possible to buy a revision book? Or is it possible that your friends might have a good set of notes? If they have that can they send you that? Or can you copy it? Or can they photocopy it, you can pay for that?
"You can't revise unless you have your data in front of you. Unless you have a set of notes for a good textbook or a good revision book. And for some students, that is actually just fermenting inside their brains, that I don't know how to solve that."
Recall – repeatedly reading a piece of information and then recalling it – is the most important way to commit something to memory but also requires quite a lot of effort, Driessen says.
By sitting down regularly and assisting with this process, parents can be "massively helpful".
"You can't teach them but you are showing them the process. As you do, the child will become more and more confident that this is actually working. I can do this ... we're on the way."
Sealing the deal
Writing a study plan together provides the young person with a structure for their exam prep and further signals that you are on your side, Driessen says.
You can then make a commitment to help them with this via a written-up agreement or a handshake deal.
"The executive skills of persistence and not procrastinating and starting and persevering. Well, they might not be that well developed in your child, and they might be better developed in you."
"Parents should not underestimate the power of signaling to your child, that you are on their side, then you are going to help them. That is the whole fundamental thing of attachment – that emotional security of the child feeding the parent is there to help me.
"For some children, you could say 'keep your door open in your room and I'll come visit you say, every quarter of an hour to see how you're getting on when you are working'.
"You're not a supervisor, but a person who is there so the child feels that warmth and that support and the sense of accountability."
Nudging the home towards harmony
In the lead-up to exam time, a family household may need to "rearrange itself" for greater harmony, Driessen says.
This could be making sure your phones are in a box, ensuring the student's desk is an uncluttered, tidy and welcoming place.
If they're working at the dining table, this needs to be the same way and smaller kids may need to be "shepherded" off somewhere else.
"The household needs to support this, this is quite a lot of mental effort. And, and the whole harmony of the house is very important."
When the young person goes off-task or forget to do their study, parents do well to maintain a tone that's "mature, caring, kind, yet insistent", Driessen says.
"The leadership of the parents, the kindness and love of the parents, and yet the nudging and the accountability and the rational speaking with them to calm the child down and to say, well, let's this is manageable, and let's do together as a family to get you there. That's the key."