To let her fail her GCSEs

[Newpuppymummy]

My 15 year old (y11) is doing basically no revision. She’s laying about doing whatever she wants despite all my best efforts to motivate and help her.

I have offered to sit with her, help make a written plan is, help test her r on things and she’s just not interested and resists everything.

Part of me feels like I want this more than her. I don’t know whether my best option is just to leave her to it and learn the lesson that you have to put work into things to get good results. This goes against my normal parenting strategies but I am at a loss with her.

You can try to encourage her, be there for her for academic health and emotional support. But ultimately she may fail the January exams. I would not see that as her failure though, it's a consequence of her adverse experiences this last year, and if you give her time and not too much pressure but lots of support then she will hopefully flourish when the situation improves. An extra year at college, or whatever, would be a much better response than a child who cracks under the pressure. I know people who have resit exams much later, and others who have never resat their exams and it's not harmed their lives. I've also seen people have nervous breakdowns and psychotic breaks because of the pressures of college, university etc. If she can get through this with failed GCSEs but self esteem and hope and joy then she will have succeeded not failed.

If she isn’t interested, there’s nothing you can do.

She’ll have to learn the hard way.

Chap I knew bombed all his GCSE’s and re took in his early 20,s

Maths, Chemistry, biology and Physics.. and got top marks and got into the course he wanted at a good university.

He said he wasn’t ready to study as a teenager.

I meant to say A levels he went straight to taking A levels rather than GCSE’s which is quite a leap.

If she’s capable of doing GCSEs, she won’t fail, she’ll most likely just not do as well as she could. She’ll be able to use everything she’s retained from lessons.
Not ideal at all but not the end of the world.

Reality has a habit of catching up soon enough, you can only do what you can do 👍

Her year group has been so badly affected by Covid. Must be so hard to get the focus and momentum back after such extended disruption.

I'd probably have one more gentle go at motivating her. Say how hard it is for her particular year group and how understandable it is that her motivation has gone. Then maybe say that it's not her fault but it could affect her future and you think she deserves better. Offer to help her do short revision sessions with breaks and then go over what she's studied with you. If she really won't, tell her it's up to her, but mocks may be what her final marks are based on, and let her know if she changes her mind and wants to focus that you will help if she needs support in any way.

I’d leave her alone you can’t force someone to study!
My parents were always very relaxed with me I didn’t do a huge amount of work/revision! I did fine, passed everything! Didn’t want to attend a big uni - I did a community college course, then managed to do a degree at the end of it - had my degree by 21 - was just a different route but it worked for me!

Then you have friend who was essentially locked in her house for months forced to study constantly and have no social life - she did get better grades than me - went to a big university - had dropped out before the end of the first year and never went back!

You can’t force it - she will take her own path and figure it out

My parents pushed me to revise so much for my GCSEs that I sat staring at walls alot of the time.

I did much better with my A levels where I was left to my own devices.

Past rates are rock bottom at the moment and going down this year, if they have them at all. Don't force her nose to the books.
She'll be fine.
Mental health is far more important and I bet she can read, write, spell and do ks2 maths. Youd be surprised how many yr 11 cant - that's your 1, 2s and 3s. 4 is a pass. Old grade C.
The persistence of the middle class to get all As is madness and unnecessary.

It really depends on the child, I didn't do any revision and got Cs and Bs so she may not fail per say

My parents essentially kept me in house to study for GCSE. I had to stay in spare room and study. TV was removed from upstairs and wasnt phones in those days. They were tough. But I got good gcses which I'm eternally grateful for. After gcse mum said enough was enough and let me control what I did. So I did my a levels and failed them in spectacular fashion. Taught me valuable life lesson. Resat and went to uni. GCSE are vital and I would push my DC through them then step back.

I'm forever grateful my parents forced my study through gcse as they are hardest to resist imo.

Do you have any family or friends with a year 12? She might not be receptive to the message from anyone but a near peer probably has the best chance.

Does she really need pushing? I did very little revision for GCSEs, passed them all no problem which shocked a lot of people as I had been so laid back. I upped my game at a level though because I knew I needed to but I did it all off my own back.

My mum absolutely dragged me through my GCSEs. She would read my revision guides and make flash cards and test me, drilled me on my notes, made timetables, emailed my teachers, watched videos with me, wrote essays with me, She definitely cared more than I did and put more in far more effort in than I did.

It worked - I had failed/scraped passes in the mock exams and passed all of the actual GCSEs, some pretty well.

I couldn’t revise alone - not enough motivation, too overwhelmed by all the stuff I didn’t know. Easily distracted by the stuff I liked and bored by the stuff I didn’t. Sometimes she made things fun with songs or silly memory things and sometimes she would absolutely refuse to let me not do anything. It was exhausting for everyone but I guess I was passive enough that I would sit there and let her drill me until I could do it.

When it was my brother’s turn to do GCSEs, he pretty much did everything alone and did extremely well.

I wouldn’t say it inspired me or changed me as a person - I can still be pretty unmotivated and hate doing things alone. I don’t think I was emotionally mature enough for GCSEs and so I had to be treated and trained like a child. Obviously I am incredibly lucky to have a mother that did that for me and it certainly wouldn’t work for everyone but if your daughter does care on some level and is just overwhelmed and anxious or a bit lazy and unmotivated you might be able to get her through them.

I think you have to ask yourself if it is more important that you get her through them at whatever cost, bearing in mind that she won’t develop as much independence or work ethic or whether you think she would be better off getting on with it and realising that actions (or lack of!) have consequences.

Good luck.

Offer a reward in exchange for grades!

My dd is year 11. I picked a good time when she was amenable to advice and planned a timetable with her. The first thing we put in was school, meals, hobbies and family time (we put one hour aside three times a week for games). Dd then added in tv programs that she likes. The time that was left was allocated to homework and revision. We then added in the subjects so that all were covered.
This was all done in half hour slots where dd was to revise for 20 minutes then have a ten minute break before moving to another subject. We tried where possible to put one she didn't enjoy followed by one she did and meant she did every subject twice over the week.
We also broke down the topics into red, amber and green. Green being what she felt confident in and red the ones she didn't feel she understood. Every week she has amended the timetable topics so she is covering all of the red ones.
I've then left her to revise as she sees fit. Breaking it down has helped her to see that it's not as daunting as she first thought, if she wants to alter the timetable to fit her day better she can.
Over the holidays she had three days off over Christmas and has been working to a timetable she created for the time away from school.

Helping her to create the timetable made such a difference.

Its very easy for me to say ( through the other end of this) but I wonder if the work hard, pass your exams thing holds true anymore?

My ds is the same just not motivated he has online next week as school are providing online for all of then so hoping this motivates him a bit more. Also supposed to be doing mocks and has real btech , but then also he hasn't actually covered all subjects yet either with all missed time
He has done a little bit but not much , but I am not overly motivated with life either at moment so get where he is coming from in some ways

GCSEs aren't everything and sometimes mucking them up motivates some people to do better at A level

There’s loads of a levels you can’t do without maths and English
Some a levels need a set grade to even be considered to do that.

Things have changed

Op, you are not the only one .
My ds has all the material / equipment, space to study , but decided that he couldn’t be bothered to study for his GCSES .
If I left it to him, he would do absolutely nothing except to play on his PS5 all day.
During the holidays I helped him prepare a time table .He studied between the hours of 10 am and 5pm with breaks.
I know that some posters say that you should let them fail, but I think my ds just needed a kick up the backside

My four kids are in their 20’s now and I don’t understand how I could have forced them to do something they didn’t want to do for themselves at 15 plus without resorting to extreme guilt tripping and manipulation.

I always let them chose what path they took in life. At 15 they know that they need to revise, I don’t get what parental pearls of wisdom will add.

The way I passively encouraged my kids included,
-zero nagging but support and interest in their work including offers to help if wanted
-providing a good environment for studying
-providing a happy home ( if possible!)
-letting them slack off chores a bit if they were busy with school work
-helping them control screen time
-helping them have fun in their down time (I’d give lifts to friends rather than making them catch the busy etc so they had more time to study
-helping them to see the end goal, ie encouraging them to look at jobs or Uni or whatever.
-letting them know it’s up to them what they do and that I would support them regardless
-helping them explore all the different paths they could take in life -vocational courses as well as Uni. I’d be very positive about all paths including vocational courses. It’s wrong to think academic kids have to go to Uni.

It is their life and it’s not up to me or anyone else to tell them what to do.

I totally feel your passion. DD 17 has a psychology exam in 2 weeks which is 60% of her final and she is doing NOTHING. She has decided she has ADHD and having tried to revise with her it is quite possible. She concentrates for about 2 minutes at a time and After a few minutes I could murder her. She checks phone, discusses future holidays, lip fillers, anything not too do with psychology. Aargh... have given up.

Ugh this is my DS too. Is a bright boy but did no revision for mocks, despite offers of help, willingness to help him make flashcards etc. I thought I would let him find out the hard way. Unfortunately he has managed to tick off every grade between 3 and 9; the 3 - 5s are in subjects he thinks he doesn't care about so no incentive to get better, and the 6-9 are the ones he likes and can do without too much effort so why try any harder? I think he honestly thinks the GCSEs will be cancelled and he'll be quite happy to take what he got for mocks. He's declined to apply the high-performing local 6th form because he's heard of kids being very stressed there and pastoral support being poor (and I do see his point on this); has found somewhere he wants to go to that would take him with 4s and 5s so he thinks anything above this is a bonus. I do think he will flourish at 6th form when he's doing what motivates him and he's (please god) matured a bit, but it's so frustrating. I am going to start rationing the xbox time a bit more rigidly though as I think with lockdown he's got into a bad habit of spending hours online because there's not much else to do.

What would happen if you turned off the internet? My son was spending too much time on YouTube and watching Instagram videos, so I put restrictions on his phone, as I knew he had to revise for a Geography exam, he revised and got a top mark, he is a high achiever generally but can get distracted and I want him to carry on the same work ethic he’s always had. I don’t want him to replace technology/social media in place of his education. I’ve always made it clear these years are so vital and if he wants to do well and succeed in his ambitions, then he needs to remain focused.

If it’s just mocks leave her be..she’ll either be ok or realise she needs to buck her ideas up.
I missed all my mocks due to a bout of flu..didn’t hurt me and I had good grades