How lenient to be about behaviour of a teen revising for GCSEs

[Chocguzel]

How forgiving are you of behaviour when your teen is working hard and stressed by exams?

My 16 year old is studying hard - 6 hours every day of the holidays. Clearly they are stressed and not having a lot of fun although they are meeting friends about every third evening so it’s not like they are having no fun.

At home they are argumentative about everything which isn’t like them. They literally shout about everything and take contrary positions on even simple conversations like what to have for dinner or watch on tv. They constantly pick fights with their siblings which is slightly more like them but is driving me crazy. When asked to help with the tiniest task, like stacking the dishwasher after a meal, they say “I’m bloody revising” and stomp upstairs. Everyday they run up debt to us by buying snacks, meeting friends to study in coffee shops etc, and if we threaten to stop covering the costs they cry and shout that they are revising and we should be supportive.

Ops on how lenient to be about abrasive behaviour right now? If it wasn’t GCSEs I would be pretty furious about this behaviour.

@Newbutoldfather

It's not fine though if you want to do medicine or law at a prestigious university.

I am very in favour of social mobility (and contextual admissions), but it does no one any favours (least of all disadvantaged students) to pretend that GCSE results don't matter.

@SeaSwim5 ,

If you read my posts, you will see that is not what I said.

The pupils who get into the top universities aren’t the ones who slave over mark schemes to get 12 9s, they are the ones with a real interest in their chosen subjects. The ones who want to do law and medicine at a ‘prestigious’ university (weirdly, you have picked two subjects, especially medicine, where the uni matters least) will get their 9s in the subject they love and have been focused on for the whole course.

If you are going to be a future Cambridge mathematician, as long as you get 9s in maths and sciences (which you will if you are a real candidate), they couldn’t care less if you got a 7 or 9 in your Geography GCSE.

All they will care about is your TMUA, interview and subsequent A level grades, mainly the maths and further maths grades.

Genuine intellectual curiosity, which you need for higher study, is not best fostered by a love of mark schemes.

Incidentally, the pupils who got the 95% + marks in Physics GCSEs were rarely the brightest. The brightest pupils I taught generally got in the high 80s consistently. The reason they did worse than the ‘mark machines’ is that they approached the questions in a far deeper way than the GCSE syllabus allowed for and didn’t hit the marking points (GCSE’s aren’t generally marked by graduates in the subject).

I’m letting mine get away with not helping so much with household chores but they will be making up for it in their lovely long summer break when I’m working!

I kind of forced a study break this weekend as we went to visit family but she’s revised the rest of the holidays. I thought it would be good to have down time before exams start in a couple weeks.