To think my Grammar School DD 2 with an IQ of 119 should be aiming for at least Grade 7's in all her GCSE subjects.

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My DD'2 is currently in the process of choosing her GCSE options for next year year 10 and at a Girls Grammar School in Essex. However, I am seriously upset with her attitude at the moment regarding what she thinks grades she should be achieving at the end of year 11. The, schools expectations are grade 7 and above for all subjects . The, other problem is because DD is in year 9 she obviously did not do her SATS at 11 so I have no predicted pathway to convince her. DD'2 has convinced herself, she will only be capable of at best 'all' grade 5's at end of year 11 despite having a decent IQ of 119. For, the record DD 1 IQ is 122 and she is expected to get between 6- 8 GCSE's at 9 and the others at 7/8.
Am I reasonable to think she is just being lazy, or is she suffering from a little bit of confidence, due to 'impostor' syndrome and her sisters likely results. I have looked at various sources online, which suggest that with a good study ethos her grades should not be hugely dissimilar to DD 1's. There, are also a couple of 'rebels' who are friends of hers playing up at school currently, for which the school believe is year 9 blues..

Nope. Never sat them.

Did ok-ish in primary with dedicated 1-2-1, but couldn't cope in secondary. I removed him in Y8 and he did a 14-16 course at a local college for Y10 and Y11. He has a couple of random Level 1 qualifications and I think a Functional Skills grade 2 in maths.

Hope he's doing okay now

So why did you have them both tested?

I smell weirdness. Stop being weird. Just be happy she’s surviving school at all. Not a given these days. IQ is a weird stat to be throwing around re your child.

My suggestion would be that you stop comparing your children with each other and treat them as individuals with their own unique strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and different aptitudes.

You will destroy your DD2's self-esteem if you keep comparing her unfavourably with her sister.

Praise her for what she does achieve, and never let her feel that you are disappointed in her.

@Surgeons13

Yes thank you.

Finally diagnosed with Autism when he was 20 and still on an ADHD waiting list and has some mental health issues.

Has been working for about 2 years for the same employer. Has had a couple of small promotions and there is talk of him becoming a team leader. He is very good at what he is good at. He is useless at what he isn't.

Academia was not what he was good at. Sometimes you just know you are flogging a dead horse, as the saying goes. So you find another way through and regain everyone's sanity.

Learning is lifelong and qualifications can be accomplished at a later date if required, it doesn't all stop at 16.

Grammar school parent here. Also Y9.

While we’re not talking about GCSE grades 2 years before she sits them, I’m expecting that she’ll do much better than 7s in the majority of subjects. (Based on that she’s bright in her year group and generally the school has something like 90% GCSEs an 8-9)

I think it's because you were being so hard on your daughter (to the extent that you could damage her confidence) while not being perfect yourself.

1 hour and 20 min a night?
Is it exam season?
Gosh
How burdensome is that
30 min every night throughout the year is more than enough
Also give her weekends off
Gosh
My daughter is an average student and is still on her way to getting 6s and 7s and she might do an hour one day, nothing the next

Talking about IQ levels is meaningless.
I wouldn't mention it at all, it sounds pretentious.
Anyway get a tutor if you're worried.
I don't understand why more people don't use tutors? In my local area, you can even get a free class each week.
It's all about exam techniques and essay writing skills anyway.

Don't let posters wind you up op.

You did the right thing for your son, and there is nothing wrong with knowing your dd's IQ. Many senior schools will ask for stats along these lines.

There can be weird attitudes to IQ, especially on MN, when in fact it is like eye colour: you get what you get, and I didn't think you were boasting - although your DD would be in about the top ten percent. It is broadly - but only very broadly - relevant to expectations up to a point, especially when you are "introducing" her to strangers online.

I think she is perfectly capable of getting you suggest without knowing anything else. But I do suspect it is in the "anything else" that the issues are popping up. And I think that is what people are trying to say - rather than boasting about their own IQ: motivation or personality type, family tensions around grades etc can have just as much impact on the outcomes. So when you say why aren't all these geniuses busy saving the world (or whatever it was), I think you have missed the point a bit. IQ is one part of the picture only.

I would focus on building up her motivation and not talk too much about the grades or the IQ for now. She might be feeling not as clever as her siblings; she might be feeling pressured by having a decent IQ. It's hard to know. But trying hard and rewarding that is less fraught with all those feelings.

Is your daughter trying to get some 8s and a few 9s? Or is it happy with 6s and 7s?

Yep she's happy 😊
So is the OPs daughter it seems

There's nothing wrong with knowing the IQ. It's using it to set expectations and acting like the child will be a disappointment if they don't meet them that's the problem.

"She's smart, because this number so if she doesn't get that number there's something wrong".

"I have to stay on top of her to make sure she's doing the required number of hours work to live up to her potential based on a number she tested as".

OP seems to be looking at just the numbers and not the person behind those numbers. And she's applying pressure whether she intends to or not.

You CAN do this so you SHOULD do this is a bad thing to instill in a child. Much better to support what they want and build in some back ups than push them to where you think they should be.

Well I think that is sort of what I am saying too.

But some people were making digs about the fact she even knows the IQ - that they assume it is only nightmare parents who do etc.

And it was clear from the op's post I responded to she was feeling she needed to defend that, and she doesn't.

Knowing it is fine, useful even. But like eye colour is only one part of a picture of how someone looks, IQ is only one part of academic performance.

So, you're focusing on her having to be 'better' than her brother, then? As though the worst thing could be that she 'only' gets the same as an adopted sibling with SEND and an EHCP who will hopefully be repeating a year at private school?

She's got it from all sides, hasn't she? Potentially being made to feel not good enough compared to her sister, not good enough compared to her brother even if she gets higher grades in more subjects than he does. Accused of bullying him when trying to get you to back off with the pressure.

Did you experience a similar dynamic with your siblings? Or could you have been treated as the low achieving one or harangued to achieve the same as them? It's noticeable that you referenced a (intrinsically) high achieving head teacher sister to support your argument, whilst mentioning you were good at some point in the past in a political sphere whilst having SEND of your own - and the vast majority of the words you have written have all been about your achievements on behalf of your son, despite this at least theoretically being a thread about your middle/less academically inclined/less 'clever' child.

Perhaps she's witnessed all of the effort you've put in where he's concerned and doesn't want you -or her - to go through all of that to try and force her to be more like her sister and less like her brother?

Your focus on numbers and your struggles is obscuring the fact that you are talking about children who have emotions, feelings and insecurities about more than academic attainment - they're learning their place in the world, who they are and who they want to be. And your daughter is rejecting a role as the next project for improvement, quite possibly because she knows she's never going to be good enough, whatever she does; it's a game where the only way to win is not to play.

I think you have had a hard time here op.

I can see you want the best for them and have tried hard for them all.

I just think you need to take an understanding approach to why your DD might be not achieving what you see as her potential.

But actually, it is your job as a parent to do that, and I don't think that you need to feel guilty about that, just tweak how you have approached it. We all need to tweak our approach as parents sometimes.

It's just a case of dialling down the pressure and dialling up the understanding.

Yes I was the lower achieving one, Sister went to Cambridge and I scrapped in to Grammar where I limped along the bottom, despite that the grammar got me in to University. However, I do understand where you are coming from in regards to feeling inferior or insufficient to siblings. This, especially being true when your sister becomes Deputy Head Girl and regularly lauded in assembly for her academic achievements. The differences were always compounded by teachers commenting I was not like my sister but I was better at Sport !

However, I think children that have been brought up in a economically very comfortable stable backgrounds with Prep schools from 4 -11 have a unsigned written contract. This, to at least achieve academically in similarity to their peer group they have been placed with. This especially being true if no issues such as physical or mental disabilities have presented themselves. I appreciate mental issues can start to manifest themselves around DD'2 age. However, I do not believe I am wrong to suggest that DD'2 should be aiming for higher grades than what are the optimum for DS. This, considering the different academic and emotional journeys they are on. DS's academic needs are only just getting recognized now because the system does not understand how someone can be so 'intelligent' yet unable to complete simple writing tasks. It is not inconceivable that in the end DS ends up with the higher academic qualifications of all of them. However, dealing with his outbursts due to his Autism and frustrations makes him a handful. I personally think DD'2 is taking the 'Michael' as does DD'1 who currently does not fancy four more years in her current academic placement.

The end being in twenty years when DS might have a Masters/PHD .?

Sorry DD 2 does not fancy four more years in her academic placement.

However, I think children that have been brought up in a economically very comfortable stable backgrounds with Prep schools from 4 -11 have a unsigned written contract. This, to at least achieve academically in similarity to their peer group they have been placed with. This especially being true if no issues such as physical or mental disabilities have presented themselves.

This is awful to read. It’s not like saying ‘you begged for that ice cream so make sure you eat it all!’. You are telling your daughter that your financial investment in her schooling is more important than her mental health and happiness. If she isn’t the sort of person with a talent for exam taking, she might not do as well as you think her expensive education should mean. Very damaging and unrealistic, horribly transactional, too. It’s not setting you up well for a good relationship as she grows up.

If she had been state educated, she’d still have the same IQ and be the same person, but by what you’ve said here, you’d expect less of her? What sort of logic is that? Millions of state educated people are happily and healthily educated to a high level in this country, and are successful by their own and by any objective standards. Buying perceived advantage for your child and then treating her poorly when she doesn’t live up to your arbitrary standards doesn’t count as good parenting, surely?

All my kids got mostly 9s with an occasional 8 and a singular 7. I pushed them to achieve the best and to not be happy with mediocrity.

Currently all three children are at state school . if you have two children that have the same ability but different backgrounds, I would expect the one with the more stable background to achieve higher grades. Notice: I did not say better because that is subjective

And even just a glance at the statistics tells you not everyone gets all 9's.

The thing is, apart from blasts of truth like this from brave posters, it's the ones who did well whose parents are noisier about it on these threads.

Just as having a dc with an IQ of 100 (average) probably makes a lot of people feel they don't have much to offer in terms of a discussion about high or low IQ.

Be extremely careful. I know a family who put pressure on their intelligent DCs to get very good grades, sent them to expensive private schools. So far two have pretty much crashed out and I can’t help feeling that the high expectations really didn’t help.