Your Teen Needs A Target To Aim For
Doing well at school and exams depends a lot on your reasons for doing well.
So what motivates your teen?
Why do they want to do well?
I went to uni with a girl who, despite getting good grades, missed out on getting into medicine at the end of her first year.
She wasn’t terribly disappointed to not be selected, but during her second year her grades dropped dramatically.
She literally went from getting A’s to C’s.
I don’t think that this happened because she suddenly hated her classes or because she stopped being able to study effectively.
It was because she lost her reason why
In her first year she had a reason – to get into the course she wanted. She knew she had to get good grades if she were to have a shot at med school, so she made it happen.
In her second year there was no motivation. She wasn’t distraught at missing out.
She had simply lost her target to aim at.
Your child could unknowingly fall into this trap
It’s certainly easy to do!
Especially when you’re only 16 or 17.
A lot of students don’t have a clue what profession they might want to do one day.
We certainly didn’t! [Our guidance counsellors never suggested we become professional studiers!]
However I did have a couple of reasons that motivated me.
I wanted to do the best I personally could. I wanted to make my parents proud. I wanted to be proud of myself!
Plus I understood that it was a good idea to do my best in order to keep my options open, even though I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do after school.
Do you think your child knows why they want to do well in their exams?
The reason could be as simple as ‘to get good marks’, but you may need to help them get some strong ‘reasons why’.
Image Credit: Gothick_Matt on Flickr
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