Exam Stress: The Secret to Parents Helping Teens and Tweens Thrive

Exams are stressful for everyone in both good and bad ways, but how do we help our kids without becoming the revision police? And how do we stop our own anxiety about exams affecting our teenagers and our relationship with them? You're listening to Teenagers Untangle, the audio hug for parents going through between and teen years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. And with us today to give us some incredible support over how to deal with exams and stress is Catherine Rodici, author of the Parent's Guide to Exam Stress, who's been teaching in secondary schools and working with families for over 20 years. Welcome to the podcast, Catherine. Thank you. It's so good to be here.

When secondary school reshapes parent‑teen relationships

Now I think one of the hardest things for us parents is that all of these exams kick in at the same time that our kids kind of start to shut down. You pinpoint that start of secondary school is a time when we set up that relationship. What can we be doing at that stage to really help develop the confidence

Why teens shut down about school (vulnerability & status)

that they will open up to us?

So I think the first thing is that as parents, we have to be quite mindful about the fact that conversation about school is really difficult. I open the book with the idea that as a teacher, I hear in pretty much every single parents' evening from parents the idea that kids tell their parents almost nothing about school. And it's really important to understand why. And one of the main reasons is that for a teenager going through secondary school, unless they happen to be top of the class in everything, every single teenager will know someone who looks like they're doing better than they are. And therefore, conversations about school often get very close to those vulnerabilities of insecurity, feeling like things aren't going well enough. And yet, unfortunately, as parents, when we ask about school, we often ask in a way that feels like we're checking up on whether things are going well enough. You know, how did your day go? Was the test results okay? You know, those sorts of framings. And therefore, because our questions often connect with that vulnerability, the easiest thing for a teenager to do is rather than engage with that really awkward question of is it going well enough? The natural thing to do is just say, I'm fine. It was fine. Leave me alone, you know. And they're tired. They're also tired when they come home.

The impact of parental reactions: templates for future responses

Yes. And uh as my conversation with Dr. David Yeager uh expanded on, when they become adolescents, they become hyper-focused on status and respect. And so that's absolutely hitting the core of why they would feel uncomfortable about that. And and nobiway admitted that she'd spent her daughter's entire secondary education asking, you know, how are the exams, how's the revision, how's the how's the homework, and uh looking back now saying, Oh, I wish I wish I'd known better? So we all do it, we uh we do make that mistake. Um, you say that children and their parents often have unrealistic expectations about how shiny, positive, and successful secondary school experience should be. How does our reaction to the sorts of issues that come up early on um set up a relationship with our child and their future feelings about success and failure? Yeah.

So so much of the teenager-parent interactions do set up these templates where we build expectations of how parents are gonna respond to a particular situation. So when a child comes home, you know, e.g. in year seven, and says that something fairly minor has happened, but maybe they're upset about it all the same, the way we respond to that sets up one of these templates which teaches a child: is it gonna be safe? Is it gonna be constructive? Is it gonna be calm to loop my parent in on this problem? And the risk we run as parents is that either we kind of belittle a problem and say, oh, it doesn't matter, stop crying, in which case the child learns maybe it's not worth telling the parents, or sometimes as parents, we kind of jump in a bit too big and a bit too quick, and you know, oh, it's terrible, your teacher was in the wrong, I'm gonna email the school, you know, all of that. And if as parents we jump in in a way that makes the problem suddenly bigger, even though we're trying to be really supportive, again there's a risk that we make it quite frightening for a teenager to tell us about the stuff that really is going wrong. Because if there's something tricky happening for a child at school, what they need from their parents is to feel that the situation has become more manageable. And one of the main reasons why teenagers often don't tell their parents about stuff is because they fear that once they tell their parents, there's gonna be this kind of head of steam of response that makes the situation out of their control. And so lots of kids stay very quiet because it's painful to speak up about it, but also it's frightening to think actually, when I tell my parent, how are they gonna react? Are they gonna make it bigger or are they gonna help me feel that it's calm and it's manageable and there is a root-through?

How to make teens feel calm and safe to share

And how do we make them feel calm? So the first thing to do is to listen calmly. You know, I learned very early on in teaching that when teenagers were opening up about really difficult things, including things like, you know, self-harm, eating disorders, you know, all of that, the first thing to do as an adult is just to listen calmly. Because actually getting the words out is really difficult. And if a child starts to speak and an adult immediately responds, it closes the conversation down. But if a child starts to speak and the adult just says, Okay, I'm here. Tell me whatever you want to in your own time, then you create that space for the child to kind of narrate it in the way that they need, and then as an adult, you can take stock and think about it. But big problems, you know, they need attention, but they very rarely need a kind of sprint response. What big problems need is that pause and that calm for everyone to wrap their heads around the situation first and then to think actually what's the next steps look like.

Listen calmly: opening space for hard conversations

Yes, and I loved what you were saying about the way that kids feel we respond, because my daughter, when she was younger, said, Mummy, the reason my friends don't tell their parents anything is because they just assume that the parents don't care or that they're going to overreact. So it's absolutely on the nose with what you've said. And they always say, Oh, don't tell anybody else, don't tell anybody else, because either your own friends or wading in to tell the teachers or other kids, and yeah, it's it's very stressful for them, isn't it? Your book is about stress and exam stress. What exactly is it about exams that causes all that stress?

Yeah. So so the book is centered around exam stress because exams are sort of like the pulsing heart of that secondary school experience. But the reasons why they are stressful are also indicative of what's going to be difficult in that secondary school experience in general. And one of the most stressful things about exams is that students have to put effort in, but they don't

Why exams are uniquely stressful (risk, visibility, timeline)

know if the outcome on that effort is going to be as they hope or they want. And therefore, lots of students end up feeling that there's quite a risky relationship with effort. And when behavioural patterns start to go wrong in the classroom, you know, if you have students who start to disengage, you've got students who start to hyper-engage because they are so worried about whether they're doing well enough, they start to adopt, you know, perfectionist tendencies. Those problematic behaviours are always because there is this kind of sense of risk around the effort. You know, is it safe to keep trying? Is it safe to stop? And so exams are stressful partly because you put the effort in and then you then have to wait a very long time until you get the results. So that kind of risk stretches, they're also stressful because loads of people are interested. You know, those results and outcomes are really public and they're stressful because they go on for a very, very long time. You know, they last, the run-up to exams lasts for months and years. Exams

Exams in the classroom: long lead times and repetition

are in view in the classroom, you know, really from the start of year 10 onwards, on a daily basis, because teachers have to talk about exam technique, which means people are thinking about that exam for ages before they actually get to sit it. So there's all sorts of factors that feed into it, but they're factors which are worth understanding as a parent, because if you understand them, you'll actually understand not just about the exam season, but what's going to make secondary school potentially difficult for your child from year seven right through until year 30.

And actually, for us parents, we come at conversations with our kids with all sorts of our own assumptions because, of course, we've all done tests and exams at some point in the past. So we're like, oh, I I know how this works. And in your book, you talk about Daniel Kahneman, who I brought up in the podcast before he wrote uh Thinking Fast and Slow, and how associative memory impacts the way that we parents understand what our children tell us about school. Can you explain this associative memory situation?

Yeah. So associative memory

Associative memory: parents’ assumptions vs teens’ reality

is huge, and it's particularly huge when we're parenting in the teenage years. Because what associative memory does is if someone mentions something using words and labels which we already understand, we understand those words through our past experience. So if someone comes home and says, you know, I've got a math test, that statement makes sense to a parent because every parent can remember what it was like to have a math test. It's like, right, yeah, I've got it, you know. But actually, the experience of doing a math test for your child might be really different from the experience that you had way back in the 1990s or whenever it was. And so the challenge with associative memory is that we as parents often think we understand because we've got a body of meaning in our heads, but we don't necessarily understand the thing that our child is experiencing. And one of the reasons I wanted to write this book was because it is so difficult sometimes to understand what school is like for your child, partly because the communication we were talking about before, but also because of the risk as parents that we assume we understand when we don't. And it's really hard to work out how to support your teenager if you don't understand what their experience is like for them as they're going through it.

Schools today: improvements and increased accountability

Yes, and if they hear that we think we understand and what we're saying to them doesn't connect with how they feel, that's a disconnect rather than what we're trying to achieve, which is really unfortunate. And you say that things have actually changed a lot in schools and that schools are much, much better. I hear so much complaining about schools. Why do you say schools are better?

Schools are so much better. It's very easy to bash the schools, right? You know, we have this kind of cultural response in the UK where it's kind of safe for everyone to criticize schools, but actually, schools are loads better. They're loads better partly because trying to understand teenagers and care for teenagers has become core business in schools. It's not just about teaching facts and figures, it's also about thinking, what do these young people need from us while they're in our care? But schools have also got better because they're much more accountable. So, you know, way back in the 1990s, you know, the systems of accountability were really very loose indeed. And when I first started teaching in whenever it was the early 2000s, nobody watched me teach. I just turned up, did my teaching, and unless someone complained, no one really took an interest in what I was doing. Schools are so much more accountable now, whether they're state sector or private sector, and that has absolutely raised standards. So it's important as parents to think whatever we might see that might be difficult or tricky, there's also stuff which is massively better, you know, and we don't hit children anymore in schools. You know, even back in I mean, it's a big thing, but it's worth saying. I mean, back in the 1970s, children got beaten at school. You know, schools are much more compassionate, they're much more professional, they're much more informed, and they're much kinder.

Oh, you're so right. Well, my my school in South Africa had a spiked tacky, which is uh like a plimp sole that they'd sp smack kids with, and that was the the threat. So, and and they'd whack your hands with a ruler if you didn't get your time tables right in the morning, all that stuff. Absolutely. So things have got better. What has been the flip side of that and you know how that has impacted on the way education has rolled out? So, for example, repetitiveness and and that energy that's expected to be sustained

The flip side: accountability’s effect on exam pressure

through different classes?

Yeah, for sure. So if you're going to hold schools accountable, there has to be a set of metrics for how you're going to measure how well schools are doing. And the difficulty for education is that at secondary level, the easiest set of metrics to use are the exam results. And therefore, the increased accountability measures and the increased kind of sharing of information about schools has also meant that there's much more attention given to the grades that schools actually get. And what all of that does is it puts more heat on the exam experience. Because, you know, every teacher wants their students to do well for their students' sake, for sure. But also every teacher knows that their professional capabilities are going to be scrutinized partly via those exit grades. And therefore, that kind of temperature of caring about exams has increased massively over the last 20 years. And then what happens is that the sorts of teaching techniques that raise outcomes in exams involve things like lots and lots of practice, lots and lots of repetition. You know, I teach the same content sometimes several times over, and what happens is you get better grades, but it also means for the teenagers that the exam is kind of in view in the classroom for a very long time. I sometimes people say to me, I mean, a really long time, years, right? So, you know, by the time someone sits their GCSEs, they will have been hearing about GCSEs on a daily basis for two years, which as a proportion of their 15, 16-year-old life is huge.

Do parents need an academic roadmap? (roles of parents vs teachers)

Yes, of course. And we forget that we forget the timeline for them is isn't very important, whereas for us it's just a blip, isn't it? And as a parent, to what extent do we need to have a roadmap for academic progress?

One of the interesting things if you're helping someone through school is that the role for teachers and the role for parents is actually quite different. And the temptation is that as a parent, you try and double up on what the schools are doing. So one of the reasons I wrote this book is that if as a parent you're looking for guidance on how to support your kids through, you know, you can get piles of books on EG Top Tips for Revision. But actually, your child has been receiving top tips for revision for six hours plus every day at school. So when they come home, you know, even if your personal top tips for revision are gold dust, your kids probably don't want to hear them from you as their parents. And one of the biggest sort of moments of realization I had as a parent to teenagers was, you know, I blithely assumed, you know, it sounds appalling when I say it now, but I blithely assumed that my teenagers would hit sort of 15, 16 and be like, oh mum, your advice is banging. Thank you. It's absolutely, you know, top-notch, right? And actually, they didn't want to hear it. Of course they didn't want to hear it, because by the time they came home, you know, they could hear the advice was sensible, but by the time they came home, they were full up with advice about curriculum plans. So I think as a parent, it's useful to be aware of things like curriculum maps. But what your kid definitely doesn't need is for you to be trying to double teach it alongside what the teachers are doing. What your child needs from you is the sort of unconditional love and support that helps them feel it's safe to keep trying because you're gonna love them whether or not those grades shake out exactly as the child wants.

How hard should parents push? Measuring the cost of pushing

Yes, I did a recent episode where I interviewed my daughter about this kind of concept of whether a kid's being lazy, and she said all kids want to do well. They all want to, they all want to achieve. It's just if they're not and they're not working hard, it's because something else is going wrong. And the parents' job is to look at that, not at trying to hit them with a stick, you know, come on, get keep going and make them sit in the room and work. How do we know how hard to push our kids? Because this is something I've written quite a few articles on, because it was a thing that I really battled with when I was um going through these teen years with my children. You know, how do you set high expectations without, you know, pushing them too hard? How do you hand over responsibility without overburdening them? And it's I don't think you can ever quite get it right. This balance is very difficult. You know, what are your thoughts about that?

The balance is so hard. It's the question I get asked all the time. How hard should we push? And there is plenty of grounds to think that a parent being interested and pushing and believing in their child's capacity can be really enabling. So I would never say as a parent, you know, the advice is stand back all together, hands totally off, you know. Um, but what I would say is that if you are keen to push your child, if you think your child needs to work harder or needs to take something more seriously, before you push, what you do need to understand as a parent is what that push is gonna cost your child. Because if your child finds it difficult to work, every time they sit down and do an extra half an hour or an hour that they're doing because you as a parent are pushing them, there is a cost that your child feels in the short term. And maybe it's the cost of I just don't enjoy it, but I've got to do it anyway. Maybe it's the emotional cost of my parents are kind of steamrollering this in. You know, maybe it's the cost that they actually don't feel very good at the work, and therefore when they're doing it, they're kind of meeting their own shame. You know, there will be a short-term cost. And if you want that push to be effective and enabling as opposed to crushing, you do need to understand what that cost looks like so that you can help your child find the emotional reserves and energy to meet that cost and keep going. So, quite a lot of the work of the book is designed to help parents think about that balancing line. It's really difficult to know: should I back off, should I lean in? But the answer to that question always rests, first of all, in trying to understand how it feels for your child. Because then whatever you decide, you can do in a way that's informed as opposed to based on assumptions. And if you just assume you should do something, then there's a risk of misfires and damage that you don't realise you're causing because you haven't paused to explore them in advance.

Values clashes between parents and teenagers

Interesting. And you said in the book that some of the most painful areas of difference between a teenager's perspective and an a parent's viewpoint often centre around values. What do you mean by that?

So it's a kind of well-known principle in adolescent development that the big emotional work as a teenager is finding your own sense of self. You know, really young children don't really see themselves as other and different to the people around them. And then as you get older, you gradually kind of meet yourself and you learn, you know, this is who I am, and these people are different, and we're different for these reasons, you know. And it's one of the reasons why adolescence is so jagged and painful, right? Because in kind of meeting those differences, you also find separation from others, and that's why lots of teenagers feel quite isolated or lonely as teenagers. Um, but the values piece comes in because one of the places where teenagers find that difference is by caring about things that are different from what their parents care about. And some of that is experimental, some of it is just kind of testing out different sort of value systems, and some of it is quite entrenched and long-lasting. But it means as a parent, you know, if you have so clear a set of values that E.G. education is really important, which I would agree with, by the way, you know, 100% agree with. But if you have a set of values like E.G. School Matters, you know, your values will be so familiar and settled to you as a parent that you possibly haven't paused to question them. But your child's sense of what they should be doing and what matters to them and what's important to them is going to be in a state of flux. And therefore, it's very likely that there are going to be clashes over your sense as a parent about what really matters and your child's sense. And in those clashes, you know as a parent, either you sort of turn around and walk off and say, Well, there's no reasoning with you, or you sort of turn around face in and say, You must listen to me. Or you actually pause and have a really curious conversation and understand where your child is coming from. And if you do that, even if you and your child stay on different pages, you're going to remain much more connected in that difference than you would be if you hadn't paused to have that curious conversation first.

I love that. And I have talked quite often about the importance of understanding what our values are. And it is because then we can we can communicate and have conversations about them. Because often they feel like a gut punch when you feel like someone has done it thinks differently to you, particularly when it's someone you love, it can be quite painful. So, yes, being able to calm down and say, actually, I we just noticed something that's different here, let's have a conversation about it and understand each other. Um, and when it comes to kids who've just started in their that first year at secondary school and they seem to be cruising, what should we be doing? Should we put because I I've I saw a parent recently on uh threads saying, Oh, my my daughter is so much more capable at maths, you know, do I do I need to keep pushing her? Should I should I keep her going so that she can improve at this stage because she could be doing so much more? Or Is there a different way of looking at that?

Early secondary years: “cruising” — when to worry (or not)

Yeah, it's such an interesting question. Um I've met loads of parents who worry that if their child kind of takes their foot off the pedal, starts to cruise, they're going to go backwards. And I've also met a lot of parents who think that the faster you make progress, the better. So if there's space to get ahead in year seven, you know, kind of crack on and get ahead. But the challenge with secondary school education is that you can't really get ahead. Because wherever you are in year seven, eight, nine, and I've taught plenty of kids who are kind of like amazingly advanced in their knowledge of, you know, whatever, but wherever you get to in year seven, eight, nine, when you then go through that GCSE bottleneck, you have to sit in GCSE content. So, you know, students who are kind of done GCSE French by the time they're in year eight, they've still got to do GCSE French again when they're in year 10 and 11. So there is much less value in getting ahead than people think. And there's also potentially a cost because if your child does get ahead and push forward with syllabus content, when they then go through GCSC, they're going to be bored out of their mind. And then you kind of run the risk of disengagement at the point where you actually do need your child to lean in and take it seriously. So, you know, if you've got a kid in year seven or eight who's cruising through school and seems not to be breaking into a sweat, I would say fantastic. Count your blessings. You know, that is absolutely brilliant. And provided they are energized and enthusiastic about something, it doesn't really matter whether that something is on the syllabus or not. What matters is that they are finding reasons to kind of get up in the morning with a spring on their step. And if what they love is, you know, reading fiction or painting or drawing, it doesn't mean you should be repurposing that time at that age for the sake of more algebra. You really don't need to, because the algebra is going to take care of itself when they have to go through that G C C bottleneck when they're 15, 16 anyway.

I love that viewpoint. And when I spoke with Ned Johnson, who was the author of The Self-Driven Child, he made it very clear that hobbies are not ephemera, a pointless exercise. That actually, when you are engaging in anything that you're particularly interested in, the neuroplasticity of the brain is working to help you learn how to concentrate. And that is what you're going to need later on. So it's not waste of time at all. In fact, it's actually a wonderful creative way of getting that brain doing what it needs to be doing anyway. And what about if they're finding it really hard? If they actually got into that secondary school and they are now you're struggling, their results are coming in pretty low. What are your thoughts about that?

I

What to do if your child is struggling at school long term

think the first thing is that parents need to be realistic that lots of kids are going to find the start of secondary school quite hard. And that is difficult in the short term. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to stay hard in the long term. But if you are in a position where your child is very unhappy about going to school, you know, you go one of two ways. Either you try and make school much better. And if it is possible to make school much better, then obviously that's a sort of ideal outcome. But for some children, school is going to stay tough for quite a long time. Because actually, if you're a child who is in the bottom 10% of a year group, or if you're a child who really struggles with organization, or if you're a child who's got a kind of neurodiverse profile where you find school overwhelming and exhausting, school is going to stay tough, right? So the kind of second route as a parent is you think either we put all the focus on trying to get school better, or we make sure that there are other bits of our child's lives that are positive and straightforward and excellent. And what is absolutely the case is that a child is going to find it much easier to handle the tough bits of school if school is not the only thing in the mix for them. You know, if they've got a fantastic hobby that they love to the side and they know that when they go and play football or when they, you know, go and do their kind of ballet lessons or whatever, that they feel, you know, welcome and accepted and positive and praised, you know, in that bit, that's going to give them a kind of a resilience and a sense of self-worth. It's going to make it much easier to survive the school bit. So one of the main bits of advice I give to parents is that if your child is unhappy at school, it's not just about whether you make school better, it's also about making sure there's enough counterbalance in your child's life so that they can build a sense of positive, energy, strong sense of self into a reign which fits them better than maybe school does. Because the irony of school, even though I say that school is loads better than it used to be, which it is, the fact is we are still trying to kind of funnel kids through a particular process of a particular size and shape. And it is not easy for some children. Sitting still at a desk for hours on end while teachers talk at you, for some children, that is never going to be easy. And if your child is one of those, then you need to think about what else can there be in my child's life so that school is not all there is.

Yes. And and uh, you know, schools are kind of winner-loser at, you know, in terms of exam results and things. And I can I think what's wonderful is you've been explaining how when they're in that school system, they can feel so um stratified that giving them a way of building up status and respect in a different area can really, really take that pressure off and make them feel so much better. Um, gosh, it's really important, isn't it? It's so important. You mentioned in the book the burden of praise that that children feel. What do you mean about that?

The “burden of praise”: what and how to praise

Yeah, burden of praise. It's quite a useful concept. Um, and I chose those words very carefully because it's a concept which seems a bit strange at the outset. And praise is really good. You know, obviously it's good, you know, praise kind of helps a child feel valued and cherished and so on. But it's also worth being mindful as a parent about what you praise someone for. Because when you praise the value mechanics run in a way that means that your child thinks, oh, this thing I've done, it's valuable, it's important, therefore I need to keep doing it. And some of the things we praise for, it's very straightforward to keep doing. But some of the things we praise for, like e.g. 10 out of 10 in a spelling test, it's not at all straightforward to keep doing. Because as children go through secondary school, typically their marks go down. And that applies to kids at the top of the tree, you know, middle, wherever, you know, wherever you are in that attainment spectrum, as you get older, marks go down. And so children who've been praised for very shiny outcomes when they're very young can end up in this kind of burden situation where they think, I need to keep delivering it. And I have worked with so many teenagers who feel that they have to get, you know, 90 plus percent. Because when they were younger, that was the mark that was the threshold for praise. And I've taught so many people who find it very hard to feel that EG didn't, you know, 60% is in any way good enough because it doesn't necessarily fit the praise metrics that got embedded when they were much younger. And because that educational journey changes, as parents, we do need to be quite mindful about whether we're praising for things that are gonna be safe and secure as our children get older, or whether we're praising in a way that makes praise feel risky. So when I talk about the burden of praise, what I'm really talking about is is your value currency the thing that your child thinks is gonna please you? Does that value currency feel safe enough to keep investing the effort? Or does it feel risky because the child is worried they're not going to be able to access that type of praise as they get older?

Oh, I love that. And and that I think that's something we often don't think about because praise sounds like, well, you know, and I praised effort. But again, what I think is really interesting about praise that I've experienced from a relation of mine is that it also comes across as judgment. You know, there's an there's an element of I'm gonna praise you for that because that's what I value, rather than that necessarily is something that you think is important, and I think we often forget that, don't we? Um you talk about the way that we can support our kids at home, and we've talked about listening, which is such an important thing, and under trying to understand their perspective. Uh, you also talk about work habits, and I love your suggestion that our job is to establish effective work habits at home. Can you explain a bit more about what you would envisage those things to

Establishing effective work habits and scaffolding responsibility

be?

Yeah. So a lot of the advice in the book is focused on process, not outcome. Because the process, what your child does day by day, that's the bit that's within their control. The outcome always feels a little bit uncertain, a little bit risky. So the advice about study habits is all centered around how can you help your child find a process that is constructive and which works for them. And on a very simple level, it's things like actually agreeing what the starting and stopping points are, when are they gonna work, when are they gonna stop, so that it's clear for everybody what counts as enough. On a deeper level, it's things like the choices they're gonna make about how they study, where they study, you know, which resources. And as a parent, you don't need to know the right answer to these questions. What you need to do is create the space so your child can talk their decisions through with you in an interested way. Because as a child goes through, you know, when they make decisions about how they work, and e.g., when they stop or when they start, they have to live with the responsibility of those decisions. So I hear time and time again from teenagers, you know, the worry between exams and results day is that coulda, woulda, shoulda, looking back, am I going to regret the choices? You know, my friend was working that way. Should I do that? Should I not? You know, and so one of the things that's sort of fraught for lots of teenagers, whether it looks like they care or they don't, one of the things that's fraught is carrying the responsibility for the decisions they make along the way. And a teenager who can chat through with their parents, look, I think I'm gonna do it this way, and have a parent say, okay, you've got good reasons. I support you, I'm with you. If you can kind of help carry that responsibility for the decision making, then you make it loads easier for your teenager to carry that feeling of risk of are my efforts, are my decisions gonna be okay? And a teenager who can carry that risk will find it so much easier to stay engaged and to keep working. And one of the most useful things any teenager can hear from their parent is that sounds sensible. And it's curious how rare, how rarely we say that to our teenagers, right? But if you want teenagers to grow up in a way that is considered and responsible and, you know, all of that, then we as adults have got to take their thoughts seriously, and we've got to show our teenagers that their thoughts are worth investing in. And on the whole, the most sensible teenagers are the ones who believe themselves to be sensible, and the reckless ones are the ones who've been told, you know, from the get-go, you never make decisions, you're always taking risks seriously, etc., etc. Because kids kind of grow into their labels. And so if you can treat that thought process with respect, what will happen is your child will probably engage more and more seriously with how they make their decisions, and over time those decisions will get so much better.

Yes, and you're really supporting them, becoming much more independent by scaffolding that and actually pointing out when they do things that are good, and catching them doing good work rather than why hasn't this finished or why haven't you whatever? No, I really like that. How do we find out what is going to help with our kids?

Trial, review and adapt: finding what helps your teen study

Right. So here's the really interesting thing: education is an iterative process. It's about, you know, try something, see how it goes, review it, and adapt it. And given that education is this iterative process that stretched out for years, it doesn't massively matter whether the outcome in E.G. Year, you know, 7, 8, 9, 10 is as you want. What matters is the degree to which a teenager is willing to engage with the review and adapt phase afterwards.

Yes. Yes.

If your child says, you know, I'm going to revise, you know, off TikTok, you know, you as a parent, you're, you know, you might feel this icy chill of dread down your spine. But if you say, okay, you're going to revise off TikTok, talk me through why that works for you, and your child explains, and you say, Okay, that sounds great. Off you go, you've got my support. Once your child has done it, you can then say, How did it go? Did it work in the way that you hoped? And if you have responded with respect, what happens is that second bit of the conversation, the review and adapt phase, is going to be really comfortable. And that's how you deepen your child's thinking and they get better at making these decisions. If instead, when your child says, I'm going to revise from TikTok, you say that's a terrible idea. What you need is a highlighter and a flashcard, you know, all that happens is that your child is not going to want to discuss the decisions with you. And if they do revise off TikTok and it doesn't go well, they are certainly not going to want to say to you they're going to hide it. Actually, they're going to hide it because that whole conversation is going to be infused with the shame of I told you so. So the treating the initial decision with respect is not because it's guaranteed right. It's because if you want that iterative process of decide, get an outcome, review and adapt. If you want that iterative process to run, you have to shape it in a way where the review and adapt phase can flourish. And the kids who do that bit, the kids who are comfortable in reviewing and adapting their methodology, they're the ones who are going to fly right through life.

Yes, I that's such a great point. And I think when I it was Sean Sean Gatherty that I talked to about coaching ADHD teens, and he said the same thing. And he said the problem we have is that a lot of things aren't going to work, uh or they're not going to work straight away, and you're going to have to do trial and error. Same thing you're saying. So I think it it doesn't matter what the child is like. That's a brilliant process to go through.

Rewards: what to reward — effort/process vs grades/outcomes

We have a conversation where I'm interested in what they're doing and why, and roll that over a couple of weeks. They just get much better at deciding, not because I'm steering them, but because I'm helping them engage in that reflective process.

This is what we need to be doing. I I try to model it sometimes talking to my daughters on this um on this podcast, because I think I've learned much more about how to do it as I've gone through the process. But I wish I'd known a lot of the things I do now when they were just starting senior school, because that would have made my life so much easier. What are your thoughts about offering rewards to get kids to, you know, get over the line?

I think rewards are great. You know, rewards are really motivating, right? Particularly if you have a child who finds it hard to engage or who finds that effort really costly. But the big question with rewards is not whether or not you offer a reward, it's what you're going to reward. So it's very tempting as a parent to say, you know, we're going to pay out for grades, right? Loads of parents pay out for grades. And in fact, when I was a teenager and my parents didn't pay out for grades, I remember being really cross. I was like, Mum, my friends are racking up big money here, you know, why are you not kind of hand in the pocket? Um, but the thing is, if you pay out for grades, what you say to your child is that effort is only valuable if you get a certain outcome. But if instead you pay out for effort, you know, you've told me you're going to put your phone in a drawer between, you know, 2 and 5 pm, and you've done that every day for a week. So now I'm going to give you the reward. If you pay out for effort and for process, then you actually make that effort feel really secure because its value is obvious. So it's a huge thing, you know. Gee, do you celebrate when grades are in? Or do you celebrate the actual bit of it that was it that was within your child's control, i.e. the way they work? Plus, if your kid's got revised for weeks, my younger son is doing GCSEs right now and they go on forever, you know, he has to keep himself going for weeks and weeks and weeks. It's loads more motivating to get a reward on a weekly basis than it is to have to wait for, you know, August, which when you're 16, two months feels like forever and a day away. You know, it's far too normal weight. So, you know, crack on with the rewards, but do you think whether you're rewarding the thing that actually is going to help your child stay better engaged, or are you actually inadvertently putting more pressure on because you're saying your effort is less

Managing parental anxiety and emotional involvement

valuable if it turns out you get a B than an A?

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And and finally, I think one of the biggest problems uh we always address on this podcast is it's actually us parents who struggle a lot with our own emotions and our own fears, and keeping that out of the conversation can be a real struggle. How would you recommend pe parents deal with their fears about whether their child is working hard enough and going to achieve what they could achieve or making the right decisions?

Yeah. Excellent question. You know, it's it is so hard being a parent of a teenager. You know, I say right at the start of the book that ironically it's quite a lot easier to write a book about parenting than it is to actually do the parenting. Yeah. You know, because you when you write about a book about parenting, it sits there, you know, neat on the page and no one slams the door. But you know, when you're actually doing the parenting, it's much more jagged and rough. And, you know, one of the most jagged bits of it is exactly as you say, the feelings you have as a parent about am I doing it right? Should I be doing things differently? You know, my friend's doing it that way, you know, all of that uncertainty about whether your approach is going to generate the outcome that you hope. And I think in that, as a parent, there's two things you can do. You know, first you can recognize that those feelings come from a really good place. And I would say, you know, the parents who feel troubled about how they parent are the parents who are reflective and who are keen to get it right. So, you know, actually that kind of discomfort is a sign that you are doing something right because you're ready to self-review. But the second thing is, you know, if you are very unsure about how to play a particular situation, the great thing about parenting teenagers is you can ask them. And I have said to my teenagers, look, sometimes I don't know which way to go here. What are your thoughts? And the great thing about asking your teenager is you don't have to agree with their thoughts, right? Understanding doesn't mean you have to agree with everything your child says. But if you've got a difficult decision to make, you know, do they go to this party or not? You know, do you take the phone away? Do you not? If you ask your teenager first about what they think you should do, you're gonna make your decision in a way that's much better informed than if you don't. And I'll tell you now for free that the best advice I get about parenting teenagers comes from teenagers.

Consult your teen: leaders gather ideas before deciding

Same. It's so true, isn't it? It's so true. It's amazing how sensible they will, they will, they understand, and actually, when we take teenagers seriously, what you get back from them is seriously useful material. 100%. Ask your kids, be honest

LUFU — listen until they feel understood

about the difficulty, and then step back, and because you're the parent, then make the decision, but have that conversation first.

Yes, and I think often we don't want to have the conversation because we're scared that by having that conversation and asking them what they think reduces our power to continue being the parent who's the person who at the end of the day makes the decision. But it doesn't have to we don't have to do that. So simply asking your child what they think is getting another person in the consultation. It does not invalidate your final decision. And in fact, you still are the parent. Absolutely. And I think that's something we had to cling on to, right?

Totally. Yeah, and the best leaders consult before they decide, right? Because they want to understand the terrain. So I would say, as a parent, you know, asking the question, you know, you're not saying I'm handing over all responsibility to you, my child, to parent yourself. You're just doing the groundwork of I need to understand how this looks and feels to you. And then because I am the parent and I am the adult, I'm going to make a decision. But the chances are as well that if you listen to your child in advance, they'll probably take your decision much more seriously. And, you know, I said a moment ago, the best advice I get about parenting comes from teenagers, the absolute best piece of advice I've ever had from a teenager is this when teenagers don't want to listen, it's usually because they don't feel heard. And I found whether it be with my own children or whether it be in kind of difficult Discipline, pastoral situations in schools. Whenever I have heard the teenager first and they know that I understand where they're coming from, even if I do something which they then disagree with, they accept it and they understand it so much more straightforwardly than if I tried to weigh in all sort of authoritarian and say from the get-go, you listen to me. You know, it's got to be this way. So yeah, if they don't want to listen, it's normally because they don't feel heard.

That's absolutely brilliant. I it's the acronym I use is LUFU, which is listen until they feel understood. And I'll have that in my head if I'm actually having some kind of conversation with my kids. And I mention exactly what you're talking about in an article I wrote about creating rules and consequences, and it came from a judge who had explained why the difficult people who had come before her actually listened to her and did what she said. And she said, It's because I'm prepared to listen to them first and understand the difficulties they are having. And then the people who are being sentenced say, Judge, I'll listen to you. You know, this is the thing. All these people feel like they've never been listened to, and then they don't understand why living within a system of rules has any benefit to them. So I love your point. I think it's brilliant. That's uh I'm gonna take that away as my big quote of the day. Catherine, is there anything else before we finish that you think it's important for parents

Final: helping teens learn resilience through stressful experiences

to understand?

I think I probably say this, that as parents, sometimes we are so caught up, so understandably caught up, in wanting to help things go well for our children, that we lose sight sometimes of the importance of thinking, how can we help them be ready for things to go badly? Because no matter how brilliant a child is, and no matter how wonderful a job you do as a parent, life is full of curveballs. We all know this. You know, there are always going to be moments where your child encounters a jagged edge or a lump and a bump, and sometimes they'll be big and sometimes they'll be small, but they'll be there at some point all the same. And, you know, I talk a lot about exam stress and you know the difficulties of school and so on. I don't actually think that exam stress is a bad thing, and I don't think that the difficulties at school are a bad thing either, even if they're painful in the short term, you know, up to a point. But what they offer is an opportunity to help teenagers learn how to be strong and resilient. So the kind of final thing I'd say to parents is, you know, when your kids are going through exams, you know, yes, it's a chance to try and get some great outcomes, but it's also a chance to learn the dance of what stress feels like, what uncertainty feels like, what judgment feels like. And if as a parent you think about how to help them learn that dance and how to be strong, even when situations are tricky, they get something which is much more valuable than just those grades. So I quite often talk about both sides of the coin, you know, help to do well, but also think about how you support through those jagged edges. And if you can do both bits as a parent, then I think your kids are very, very lucky to have you in their lives for kind of responding in that way.

Yeah, yeah. Do you want to be my mum, Catherine?

Only if you're mine, only if you're mine, and then you'll listen to me.

I'm gonna take your loofah. Right, Catherine, that was uh such a wonderful, enlightening, um, uplifting conversation. Thank you so much. If people want to find you, what's the best way they can do that?

Via my website, um, Google my name, uh, I've got a website, you can get in touch via there, and uh the book is available through all the usual channels.

Fantastic. I'll put a link in the podcast notes. If you found this useful, right now, just send it to anyone, anyone, like at least one person who you think will benefit from it. Because let's face it, you know, the the people who are all starting school next year, the those who are going to be going through their GCSE, those going through their A levels, the ones who are even moving on into their higher education, all of this is very, very helpful. It's never too late. That's always my mantra. If you want to get hold of me, it's teenagersuntangled at gmail.com. My website is www.teenagersuntangled.com and my my substack is teenagersuntangled.substack.com. That's it for me for this week. Thank you so much, Catherine. Bye bye, big hug.