Helping Parents Help Their Teens
Generally speaking, the single biggest cause of teens’ underachieving at high school is their inability to think long term. And by long term, we mean life after high school. The brain’s frontal lobe is an important region – it controls decision making, problem solving, purposeful behaviours, and emotions. Yet it doesn’t fully developed until we reach our early to mid twenties. … [Read more...]
You are your own worst enemy. This couldn’t be truer when it comes to studying. A study published in Psychological Science showed that a student’s self-belief is just as important, if not more, than IQ. So many students sabotage their own chances of exam success before they even start. Why? Because - as corny as it sounds - they don’t believe in themselves. A great … [Read more...]
Most students are really good liars. Actually, so are we! And so are you. Humans are all so good at lying in fact, that we’re capable of convincing even ourselves of our lies to the extent that we outright believe them! The most common lies include: I don’t need to exercise more; Having that piece of cake won’t matter tomorrow; I don’t need to talk to my husband/wife about how … [Read more...]
Hopefully your teen is thoroughly enjoying their summer break right now. Exams are behind them, and the new school year isn’t even on the radar yet. But we hope that they haven’t switched their brain off completely. Three months is a really long time for your teen to not be focused at all on learning. This article is all about the things that you can do for your teen that will make their … [Read more...]
You may be familiar with Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule”. In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell claims that the common denominator of those who are ‘successful’ is that they’ve spent at least 10,000 hours developing/practicing/polishing their skill. 10,000 hours equates to approximately five years full time work at 40 hours a week. That’s a lot of hours. But … [Read more...]
Last week we asked you what your teen struggles with most when it comes to school and studying. We want to say a big thank you to everyone who wrote in. We were thrilled by the number of you who got in touch and shared your story with us. Perhaps not so surprisingly, the vast majority of questions had something to do with motivation. Well... really lack thereof... Other common questions … [Read more...]
Today we’re going to talk about something a bit different to our normal study skills-based articles. We want to take a look at the bigger picture. Perspective is important. In a way it’s not ‘news’ to us, but we’ve come across a really interesting article on the findings of Christy Lleras, a professor of human and community development at the University of Illinois. Her … [Read more...]
For many teens, exams are just a big annoying disruption to their social life. Instead of planning their study time carefully, they find it extremely difficult to knuckle down - even when their exams are only days away. Procrastination. It gets us all. But it seems to be a particularly rampant disease amongst teenagers faced with upcoming exams. We want to share something with you … [Read more...]
Better question: Is anyone destined to fail high school for that matter? Some students will fail high school this year. Unfortunately that is certain. Others will simply scrape through, and some will get marks their teachers are envious of. Back to the question at hand – is anyone destined to fail? Ah... no. They’re not. Whilst it may seem painfully obvious who the students that … [Read more...]
Sitting exams isn’t fun. And preparing for them can be even worse. Sometimes a little bit of pressure can spur your child on to study, but once this pressure starts turning into stress bad things happen. Here are 5 of the most common stress-causing complaints from students leading up to exams, and our solution to each one. 1. I’m not going to fit everything in Many students feel … [Read more...]
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