Conflict with Y5 child over 11+ prep

[CherishL]

Has anyone had quarrels or arguments with their children during 11+ preparation?

My Year 5 son is academically bright and also very talented in music. We have been saving so that he can attend an independent school, as there are no grammar schools where we live, although there are some very good independent ones nearby.

However, I often feel that he is not as proactive as he should be, and I am becoming quite tired of constantly reminding him what to do. We even created a weekly schedule together showing when and what he should study, but he does not follow it. I also tried letting him plan his own study times, but he struggles to stick to that as well.

Today it reached the point where I ended up yelling at him and telling him not to do it anymore if he does not want to. It made me wonder whether perhaps he is not suited to a very competitive school environment, where many children seem highly driven and self-motivated.

Have any other parents experienced something similar? How did you manage it? Any advice or strategies that worked for you? And did your child still end up getting a place at the school they were hoping for?

That is much too much for a 9/10 year old.
Why can't he just be a child and play?
Its not surprising that there are so many anxious children and teen-agers, they burn out

I have never heard of kids doing as much as you’re expecting your child to for 11+

Its really normal to start tutoring/prep in yr 4 for the London grammars and many start earlier.

I do think that allowing him to spend 4-5 hours on a writing task is not helping. The tests will be time limited so he needs to do his best in that timeframe and be realistic about it. What is the point of him continuing French at the moment if you do cannot support it at home. Whatever school he goes to the year 7-GCSE French curriculum will be painfully slow.

But would you expect the child to be self directed and just get on with it? Seems pretty unrealistic to me

My DC went to a very academic prep school where the parents were all targeting top London days schools or boarding schools. None of the boys were “self-motivated”. The process for almost everyone involved lots
of tutoring, quite a bit of yelling, lots of bribery, and in a few cases suspected behaviour by one or two parents that would have been regarded as borderline abusive if it happened in a different socio-economic group.

This is a ten year old you are talking about. He won’t just get on with hours of study the way a GCSE student can. You need to be sitting with him while he studies if you can, or at least staying in the same room and checking the work regularly and engaging with him about it.

No of course not

The schools are not competitive once you are in them. There is quite a bit of homework in some and the days are longer than state schools but that is compensated by the longer holidays.

The hardest part is the tests and interviews to get in. If he manages that then he’ll have no problem once he’s there.

I'm not so sure about that. If you want to do well in these schools then you are in competition with the tiger mums who don't ease up after getting in. They're doing a level maths and 7 languages at the weekends with their DC.

But who cares? The school doesn’t, the kids don’t. Both my kids go to top London day schools. I have no involvement with other mums. It’s secondary school, the kids get themselves there and home.

If a tiger mum is hothousing their child, I simply wouldn’t know or care.

You need to guide him more for the day to day tasks, to free up time for him to play (play, not study). He’ll then be better inclined to cooperate with studying.

id keep the French schooling going - languages need strong maintenance.

but the rest you need to streamline. Its too heavy a workload for that age.

And that’s when the MH problems kick in. ….

What worked for me is sitting with my DC for short bursts doing actual work myself. So I am drafting contracts and they are doing the work, sitting at a table together. It was always limited to the amount of time young children can actually focus fully, that is 15 minutes max. Perhaps for some it will be 20.
Even at GCSE and A level mine were all told to work in short intensive bursts. It’s quality not quantity that matters.

I think it's important not to damage his enjoyment of academic stuff and especially not reading - if he's so into a book he's read for 90 minutes that's a good thing / possibly downtime in itself.

There's practising for timed tests and there's taking the time to enjoy writing over some hours. Learning something because you're interested in it and are free to explore it is important and gets lost when there's too much teaching to the next test.

If his French is good enough can he start working towards taking it as a GCSE with the tutoring company in a couple of years with a plan to take a different language at secondary school?

At what point does he get to just play, to be the child that he is?

I'm just wondering, does your child have any friends? Friends he sees after school or in the week-end? Is he invited to birthday parties at friends'homes? Does your child is in any sportsclub outside of school hours? If not so, do you take your child to the local swimming pool or basketball square to play some one-on-one? Do you ever let your child - outside of school hours - decide what they want to do, even if it's sitting on the porch and watching traffic go by? Because you know, all of that wouldn't diminish his intelligence, but it might increase his level of happiness.

Yes, completely unreasonable! As someone who has had a child sit their 11 + at no point was he particularly enthusiastic about the process. As his mum though I guided him and encouraged him and sat with him through all the revision and prompted him to work and when he struggled we took time away and came back to it later. It’s a lot of work and effort and you need to make allowances for his age and level of maturity, essentially he is still a child. We did however have little competitions so when he did a mock paper or test I did it too and we compared scores ( he always beat me) and we had incentives to keep him engaged so things like cinema trips or a special treat. Make it fun for him or he will resent the process and it will be harder for you both. My son is now 16 and doing his GCSE’s and I still sit and help him when needed him on track. Some children benefit from more support and if you’re able, be there for him.

Absolutely agree as a teacher too. Gosh it's far too much. He should be having lots of down time. He's probably exhausted.

What do you think will happen if you continue to push this ? I'd sit him down and ask what he thought.

Your child sounds like a normal 9-10 year old child. You are expecting him to do a lot of study outside school. Unless he is desperate to go to the grammar school, it is not surprising that he isn't motivated to do it.

I'm so glad I was allowed to just be a child and didn't have to go through all this.

Hi OP. I don’t think it’s a lot you are asking. I had a child that was kind of reluctant but he had a lot of potential. We just finished our 11+ and had our offers last month.
I don’t think you need 2 hours French. Also do you need to do piano lessons during 11+ prep? If he really enjoys then keep it.

My dc is in a prep school so they did a lot of prep, we also had atom learning, Cgp, and lots of past papers. We also did some familiarisation tests.
From Spring term we cut down on a lot of extra curricular activities so we can concentrate on 11+.

We also found an in-person tutor for English and Maths. Trust me it makes a massive difference.

our week would look like this
mon - fri 2 hours prep on atom and past papers.
twice a week maths tutor do an hour each time
once a week English tutor for an hour each time

He would get the work done but was never given homework from his tutor sessions.

The moaning was present but I think all kids that age need a push and some motivation.

We also offered treats on his games and going out with friends.

If anyone thinks this is a lot, trust me it wasn’t. He had lots of spare time. He still got to watch tv etc.

Main thing is we always had open conversations about how he felt and if he wanted to go ahead with the prep. He accepted that I would push him as he knew he needed it.

I think if we started prepping earlier we could’ve got into one of the hardest grammar schools, but never mind.
We applied to 5 very competitive schools and got got offers from 3.
We didn’t get the grammar school and one school that we applied for 13+ without much prep.

But the main massive difference was his CAT4 scores that jumped up significantly.
He feel very confident to start secondary school now as he feel prepared.

not sure if I’ve helped but I don’t think you have give him enough and you need to rethink the French and piano for now.

Geez. So many negative comments. Plenty of dc prepare for the 11+ and turn out fine. I have heard of dc prepping way more. I have had two go through the 11+ and I helped guide them on when to prep. They were willing to do the extra work and now thriving at their secondary schools. They were completely independent from the start at secondary. They look back and are thankful they did the extra work at 11+.

Honestly the 11+ is a waste of time. The high school reassess anyway. It needs scrapping. Scotland and Wales have never had any issues and haven't used it.

Children cannot really organise their studies properly, their executive function is simply not mature enough for that until much much later. This is especially true for boys so I wouldn't expect anything "pro-active". It's the parents' job to organise children's studies and activities.

Ignore the "let them be children ffs" brigade 😁

I bribed my DS to do 11+ work for his state grammar (he got a place). 2 hours a week plus whatever he didn’t finish in the tutoring session.

He’s naturally lazy academically but also competitive so I wanted him to be with higher achievers and not be allowed to slack. He wants to keep up with his classmates so does enough for that. Plus the sports facilities and opportunities which he does enjoy are much better.

Bribery all the way! But I also knew from primary school that he had/has a good, quick brain and generally finds concepts easy.