‘Isn’t Year 7 just about getting used to things? Real work begins in Year 11 and 12.’
You hear this all the time. It’s the idea that Year 7 is the ‘Adjustment Year’ and academic success only matters if your child is in already Years 11 or 12. The junior years prior just doesn’t count or matter ‘as much’.
If that’s the case, then why are there so many senior students still stuck in the ‘adjustment period’?
Having worked with thousands of students, I can tell you the root cause is probably this:
They don’t have a clear direction. They’re unsure of the specific steps to guide them so they can’t be confident that the effort the put in will pay off.
I can’t emphasise enough how important having a clear and concrete direction is for any child. Otherwise, they’re just going to put in work just for the sake of it, without the right motivation and burnout before completing terms.
And yet, having a clear direction is one of the most overlooked aspects in your child’s learning. It’s just labelled as a ‘nice to have’ when in fact, it’s one of the easiest and fastest things to get right.
Whether your child is just in Year 7 or is already on the cusp of Years 11 and 12, parents have a crucial role to when it comes to helping teenagers get ‘unstuck’ and motivated by clarifying their goals and how to achieve higher marks.
In this article, we show you three ways to help your stuck teen find their direction and create a plan to guide them as they go through high school.
How Ijay Found His Success and Future Path
Not long ago, we worked with Ijay, a 15-year-old boy with ADHD who didn’t have much of a direction or plan for his studies. He loved his phone and was constantly binging videos on YouTube.
Most of Ijay’s learning was done online. But instead of starting assignments on time, he pushed them back too late. He was also usually underprepared and stressed for his exams. During his Term 3 English paper, he had a mind-blank and failed three other exams in different subjects.
Steve and Cathy, Ijay’s parents, tried to help Ijay but that only led to Ijay being defensive and sneaking around with his phone. That’s when they reached out for further help and to build his confidence back before Years 11 and 12 started.
First, we worked with Ijay to identify his academic goals, what energised him to learn and improve his marks. Then, we helped Ijay create a digital plan for his technology use and introduced a strategic approach to proactively organise his assessments and revision. This helped Ijay maximise his knowledge retention, reduce overwhelm and improve his exam performance.
Ijay almost doubled his Term 3 Maths result to achieve 87%. By Term 4, he increased his results by 30% across most subjects. In Year 11, Ijay received steady assessment marks between 86-92% in his Term 1 exam block, including his highest Maths mark ever.
Ijay was able to find and reroute his path towards success that he wanted, all with the help of his parents. From being a stuck teen, distracted and directionless, he became organised, focused and now set on becoming an engineer.
3 Tips to Help Your Stuck Teen
There are a lot of stuck teens who still have no idea what they want to do and achieve in the future. Worse, they don’t know how to find that out.
Despite students knowing they have their parents and career counsellors to help them fill in the blanks, not having a clear direction holds them back from taking the necessary steps to their future. It’s the myriad of a thousand questions and thoughts that has them asking: ‘What am I even working towards now?’
A recent study by Cambridge University shows that having a clear sense of direction creates significant positively impacts upon individual academic success. When students have clarity and an energising goal, they are more likely to be productive and motivated to put in more effort.
Because of Steve and Cathy’s proactive efforts to seek further support for Ijay, they were able to nudge Ijay into finding his path and having a clear direction. Without that critical first step, Ijay would not have realised his goal of becoming an engineer after high school.
So, how can you provide the same kind of support for your stuck teen when they have no clue about what they want to do in the future or how to achieve their goals?
1. Let your child chart their path
Without the right guidance, it’s easy for your child to feel overwhelmed with discussions about the future. Students need a way to articulate what they want to achieve and plot their own course, so they can move at their own pace and be in control.
Open the conversation and help them navigate the intricate questions. What do they want to pursue? What type of career do they see themselves in?
Let them self-select the steps they will take to reach what success is for them. This will create infinitely stronger results than when they wade through other people’s expectations or follow someone else’s plan.
2. Build motivation as a lifelong skill.
For most teenagers, motivation is a feeling. However, this conception of motivation is problematic because it means that students are dependent on subjective ‘feeling good’ or ‘feeling like it’ to dictate whether they get things done.
When we work on motivation as a lifelong skill, we equip your teenager to sustain their motivation levels and find their confidence even in challenging times. Ask them, how do they add fuel when they start to feel a little drained? How do they find the drive when times get tough?
A clear direction helps them navigate the uncertainties of the future, bolstering their confidence and knowing they have all the steps they need to reach their goals. Without it, there’s nothing to drive your child and be motivated to succeed.
3. Implement and get optimised.
A plan without any action is nothing but a wish. Once you and your stuck teen have a plan, implement it in a way that’s optimised. Remember that your child has different strengths and unique blockers in learning. They need to be well-supported and strategic as they go along.
A tailored strategy anchored to your child’s strengths, needs and mental health is the best way to provide support and direction. Our education coaches at Kalibrate-Ed can help your child develop a structured study plan to set them in the right path.
If this is a crucial area of your child’s learning that you want to improve (regardless of the year they’re in) but you don’t know where to start, you can take the first step with us.
Schedule a complimentary 15-minute call with any of our education coaches. We can guide you in supporting and nudging your child back on track, so they get unstuck and achieve better academic results.