I know some of us have teenagers who work to capacity. But for the rest of us...

[BertrandRussell]

....when they come home and proudly tell you that they got a "top B"-or, indeed a "top" any grade- do you really never say "But with A bit more work that could have been an A"? Go on, be honest. I promise not to tell anyone

I tend to ask what they were aiming for, how they feel about their result and if they think it would be reasonable to do more or if that was the right balance between trying their best and keeping their sanity. By their teenage years they tend to know themselves fairly well.

In all honesty I can tell you that both my 17yo and my 14yo usually get about a grade lower than they could get if they worked flat out but I am fine with that, I don't want them to burn out.

Borders
DD's revision pages were stuck to the walls in every room.
I have no reason to believe DS is not revising but no evidence that he is

My parents put enormous amounts of pressure on me, and it led to me rebelling and intentionally doing fuck all coursework for my GCSEs.

DD is 10 and very bright, in the top 3 in her class of 30 for Maths, and top of the class in English. Her attendance this year has been a little low, due to various factors and when I was called in to see the head teacher, I made a point of mentioning that her attendance hasn't affected her attainment this year. The HT replied with 'yes but think just how much better she could be doing if she had 100% attendance. With children like her, we should always be looking at how much better they can do'

I mentioned that she got 53 out of 53 on her English assessment, so actually she couldn't do any better than that. 39 out of 40 on maths, and when we looked at the test paper it was genuine mistake on DDs part, it wasn't because she didn't understand what she was doing.

If they have done their best, that is all that matters. Sod all this pushy parenting lark, it just makes kids miserable.

This is all very interesting. The particular incident that made me post is going to sound like a real tiger mother but I'm not, really. Ds is very keen to get lots of As and As at GCSE mostly because he wants to beat his sister, and some of his subjects should be easy As for him. His teacher marked his Media Studies coursework as an A, when with a bit more care it would have been an A. And now he has to get practically full marks in the exam. I know it doesn't really matter, but it's him that wants the As not me and it's very frustrating!!!!

Ah, the beat the sister game.

Yup. Been there, done that with the GCSEs
DS did get more A* but DD got more subjects
they will still be bickering over that when they are 50

and she did 5 AS while he is doing 4
so come august the 18th I'll have it all over again if his grades are better than hers !

DH and I stay well clear

Full UMS isn't usually full marks though. There is redundancy at the top!

I consider myself a pushy mum but I'd never ask where they were in the class, or work out where the one lost mark on a paper was . I facilitate them working kick them out to the library, send them to bed early but always take the 'you need to fulfil your potential for you and your own self esteem' route. Back off parents- your relationship with your dcs and their mental health is more important than a clutch of A/A* results.

I don't say it to my dd, no. She's doing 12 gcses - she can't possibly work "just a little bit harder" in every subject, which is what her teachers are all urging her to do. Surely that is the sort of pressure we are talking about when we say our teens are under unprecedented pressure at school these days?

"Back off parents- your relationship with your dcs and their mental health is more important than a clutch of A/A* results."
It does depend on the child. Some need hands off-my dd was like that. Ds is a different kettle of fish!

I do wish schools would stop marking them do 12 GCSEs. If anything good comes out of the current marking stramash I hope it's that they won't do more than 10.

Me too Bertrand. Unfortunately dd had very little choice about what gcses to do and 2 of those are compulsory in her school. She wouldn't have chosen them as options and wouldn't have chosen to do a gcse in either of them.

12 does seem a lot. Mine did 10/9/10and it didn't stop them fulfilling their potential.

Dawned and bibbity - completely agree with you both.

12 GCSE's? Our school only lets them do 9 and I think that's plenty

I would be quite happy if my dd was doing 9 or 10. However, as I have already explained, 2 of hers were not gcses she would choose to do.

DD did 13
DS did 12
State schools always take more exams because they examine every subject in the timetable.
Private schools do not have to.

Both my state educated children did/are doing fewer....

Yes, I'm sure it varies from state school to state school.

Dds school insists she does a gcse in Citizenship and another in RE. Then they more or less insisted she did triple science because she is capable of doing that. Then she had to do the other subjects to conform to the IB (or whatever it is). So she literally only had two options for subjects of her choice after all that = 12 subjects.

Like hassled - I usually start by asking how other folk got on - I don't mean named folks, but if my dc say "I got 43 in my test" it means nothing without context. dd2 is in Yr 10 - they often get given assessments which include things they haven't even covered yet , so if they get a good 50-60% of the marks available on the whole paper, it might well be that is pretty impressive if they've not covered a lot of the spec yet. OTOH, if everyone else is getting '1s' or '2s' and she gets a '4' or '5' , then we need to give her a bit more support to find what she's missed / not understood.
We usually have a chat about understanding where the marks were missed - has the teacher gone through it? Have they had their papers back? Do they know what they missed / got wrong? Was it careless mistakes or was there a question they just didn't get? etc., so they know how to get those marks next time. I don't see that the same as constantly saying "You could do better" though.

If I think dd can do better then I say so. Eg she is very good at languages but sometimes just lets things slide so I do say you could have done better. On the other hand she has recently worked her arse off to get into top set maths (maths isn't her thing) so I am always very supportive of her maths marks. I do try not to be at her all the time about revising but I do find it hard to be quiet

I always remind myself that once I got 35% in an O Level Geography test
and came top in the class
all things are relative

Ours is a state school but one which has GCSE results on par with many private schools, non selective yet never lower than 85% A-C including English and maths and about 70% A* - B. Perhaps taking less subjects goes some way to better results ocerall. They do not allow the children to take more than 9 GCSE's and all are taken at the end of year 11. Triple science is offered only to those who they deem capable of achieving a good grade and it's in place of another option rather than crammed into the same number of lessons as double science.

No. I would never, ever risk their mental health by being unsupportive in that way.

Can you imagine, placing a meal down in front of your husband and he finishes happily, only to comment "With just a LITTLE MORE WORK, that could have been delicious"?

That's not really a valid analogy, becotide. And if I served shit food on a daily basis not because I didn't know how to cook but just because I couldn't be arsed to do any more than the bare minimum I could possibly get away with, despite the fact I would suffer in the longer term, then I should probably take a comment like that from DH on the chin. Except of course he could cook himself.

It's a really difficult balance to get right. Yes, of course you don't want to ruin their self-esteem or mental health. Equally it's bloody hard to say nothing when you know they're coasting, winging it, doing the bare minimum etc and you know a) they have the ability to do better and b) they'll be gutted when they do badly.

I think there are a fair number of DCs who are quite ambitious and motivated but not perfectionists. They usually have no desire to put in a lot of extra work that may be needless. I think the attitude is quite healthy long term but they do have to learn how to dose their effort to achieve what they want. The phrase 'work smarter not harder' comes to mind.