MrsS, I have learnt to my cost that being bright is not enough to guarantee that a young person will make the right choices about their learning. In the end, the will to do well has to come from the child/young adult, and if they cannot really bring themselves to focus on doing what they need to do in order to pass the exams, it is going to be a struggle. It is a horrible feeling, watching helplessly as your reasonably able child piss away their chance of decent grades. I shouted, cajoled, threatened, bribed, rattled the school's cage, used every trick I knew and learnt a bunch of new ones, but in the end it wasn't enough to make dd think differently in time. Yes, she was ill, but she was also keen on keeping reality at arm's length with some creative magical thinking about how everything would come good eventually. I have, however, always said to my dd that she won't be living here aged 18+ without paying rent, unless she is a student or on some kind of training course. Does dd1 have an idea about what might be the consequences if she doesn't do well enough to get into HE?
Dd has not had a miracle cure. She still makes plenty of poor choices and I still get hysterical phone calls at 3am if I have forgotten to turn my phone off. She is making a mess of her financial arrangements in a way that I don't particularly want to investigate, because I don't want to do any pointless arguing about spending, and she continues to procrastinate in a way that is pathologically avoidant, etc etc. I have just made the decision to step away and not focus on anything other than the big, important stuff that really requires my input. Which is actually not that much. She will have to live with the consequences of her mess-ups. I don't really know how she is doing on her course, so we shall doubtless have to wait until exam time before finding out if she is actually going to progress on to a proper degree course or not. It's enough for me at the moment to know that she is more or less managing the social side of things and allegedly going to lectures. Living away from home and jolly well having to get on with everything has done her as much good as I thought it would, but my God it's been a painful slog to get her this far.