Dd awful exam results - best parenting strategy?

[stirling]

In your opinion or preferably experience please?
She's finished y10 and her predicted grades were all 9s and 8s based on the fact that she's in top set, FFT grades high as she did exceptionally well in primary (I worked with her a lot throughout primary ). But the phone addiction , social media addiction is horrendous and it's the only thing I can say has led her to achieve shockingly bad results and emails of disappointment from her teachers too about her disorganisation.

She says she feels bad about her results and yet doesn't want limitations on her phone.
Parenting books suggest leaving teens to make their own choices, not rescuing them. Even if it means they get lower grades and outcomes in their future.

It just pains me so much to do that though. I wouldn't mind if she was average. She's so bright and it's all wasted . Plus she loathes her appearance and that's 100% down to social media.

Would you leave her to it or set restrictions for year 11 against her will?
Thank you, sorry to ramble on

😂😂

there are levels of reliance/ habit etc - listening to music WHILE WORKING really is not comparable to NOT working because you are watching 30 second tik tok videos that are specifically designed so that the human mind flicks straight to the next one.

I often feel sick at how much the internet distracts me from work - it's really really unfair on children and teenagers to expect them to manage and control their use of these addictive devices.

Sit down with her, tell her you are doing this for her own good (as parents do many other unpopular things for their kids benefit!) - and put a blocking app on the phone like Qustudio - if you want, negotiate the limits

Tell her it will take a little while as she is addicted to the dopamine hits but she will recover slowly and may find she enjoys not watching tik tok or youtube for hours.

I agree with a pp that said you might want to consider ADHD due to your daughter being intelligent enough to do well on exams but is

• easily distracted by her phone
• has “addictive” type behaviour- ie hyper focus on something on her phone
• reported by teachers to be disorganised
• does worse than expected in an exam setting compared to course work (inability to focus, delays in processing information)

These are all red flags for ADHD.
Theres not enough time to go via the NHS, but if you can afford it a private assessment is around £500. ADHD is one condition that if medication works for the person, it can be a life changer.

Whether you get an assessment or not, I think getting a tutor for her weak subjects would be a good idea. Just putting her at a desk with a timer and no phone isn’t going to result in her revising in a way to retain the learning if she has attention deficits. She may end up away with the fairies or frustrated and loss confidence.

Only if it happens rarely and on complex tasks. For those with ADHD the above affects them every day on almost everything.

Music while revising isn’t recommended for a child like the OPs that is easily distracted and struggles to focus. Please don’t project your children on the OP’s DD.

It’s not just about her exam results and I wouldn’t present it like that. It’s her self esteem which is the main thing. I do think you need to restrict the phone for now but long term work on getting her out the house and enjoying life away from the phone.

We had this exact same scenario, DD assured us she could revise and go on her phone at the same time and she would be fine. We didn’t agree but said we’ll let’s wait for your Yr 10 results and we’ll see won’t we? She bombed her Year 10 exams. DH and I immediately told her how it would be going forward in Year 11. No phone during homework and revision - it came downstairs where we could see it, no music, nothing. She hated it but we were uncompromising and told her how it was going to be. To be fair she accepted what we said and got on with it,

Revision for November mocks started as soon as she went back in September. More complaining but we told her she had to make up for having done no work in year 10. Proper revision and some excellent November mock results transformed our daughter from a lazy student who didn’t believe in herself to a grade hungry person. The difference was astonishing and, at last, she wanted the good grades for herself and became incredibly motivated. To the point where i actually said to her did she think she was doing too much!!!

I suppose I’m saying we didn’t give her any leeway over her phone and school work and came down hard on her about it and it worked. It was a non- negotiable rule and she thanks us for it now. She was still allowed her phone in the evening just not when it was time for school work. It’s hard and the arguments over it spoiled many an evening but this was our line in the sand.

I have a 15 year old and we have clear restrictions on her phone and maximum time periods allowed on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat etc. they have very poor impulse control at this age. Frankly, so do most adults when it comes to social media. Sometimes I wish my Mum would put restrictions on my phone!

We use Family Link as she has an android but there are lots of tools available.

I would leave her. Hopefully her results will have shocked her

I would say for most teenagers this happens most days

With my DDs their phones got charged downstairs overnight until they were 16. This was a daily source of arguments, but I stuck to it. It's not easy and I really feel for you, OP.

Love and support ? Mental wellness activities
We are borrowing a dog to get kids out for walks
Maybe make it fun ? Find out what books she will be studying and go see the plays / film get cartoons ?
Go to museums

For how long? Long enough to bomb their GCSE and reduce their FE options?

IMO that is just setting them up to fail. They need more support at this age.

I would try And work with her and her own values, what does she want to achieve what does she love doing etc.
she might say I want to get 8s in most of my exams and I feel happy when I'm out walking the dog or drawing or baking or whatever.

Then look at her phone screen time with her. Remind her she should sleeep 8 hours a day then 6 hours at school- how can she follow
Her dreams if she's on her phone 6 hours a day. What does she think is a reasonable amount? How could she reduce this?

The pomodoro technique is also a great one to use for studying (with phone outside the room)

"Do not allow music while studying, it is extremely damaging. Facts learnt while listening to music are best recalled listening to music. Exams are silent. Learn in silence to recall in silence"

Bit draconian! Not everyone find the same things helpful. What works for you doesn't work for others. If someone tells you they work better a certain way, then I'd be inclined to trust their judgement first rather than impose my style on them without any knowledge of what works for them!

Lol at not allowing your child to revise to music if that's what works for them.

I can't bear background noise but my DC work far better and are far less easily distracted in the home when working with it on.

If they're working I'm not going to ask them to switch it off! And, of course, it doesn't impact their ability to do an exam in a quiet environment. What a strangely fixed view.

Thank you everyone. Really taken aback by the number of replies and helpful suggestions and strategies.
This has been such an incredibly helpful thread for me .

I would think about what your daughter might say to you in 10/15 years time (or when she has her own children). I guess it'd be, why didn't you step in and stop me spending so much time on my phone? You don't have to look too fat to find threads on here from adults who wish they'd invested more time in their education for an easier life now (more money / choices).

It just also help to remember that all this time on the phone isn't neutral, it's harmful, so you'd be benefitting her mental health as well as her education.

Google inattentive adhd very common in females and goes unnoticed in childhood until a child has to organise themselves in high school. It’s a busy mind rather than a busy body and phone distraction is used as a way to cope. Does she draw pictures / doodles on paper during classes?

This is why I’m not a fan of y6 sats results being the predictor of gcse results. Those parents who do put in extra work or get tutors during primary to get them through their sats are potentially setting them up for future struggles. Schools should have picked up earlier on this though if she has been struggling and may well out some interventions in place next year to support - extra revision sessions after school for example. I’ve taught kids who had home tutors to get them through the 11+ and into a local grammar school (not private) but then they struggle and end up needing tutoring to keep up the standards.

On another note, some kids do badly in their mocks and then knuckle down for the real exams.

I don’t know what to suggest RE for phone use as my teen never had one.
Nope not a lie, ADHD, suicidal ideation and the thought of social media made me have such a strict boundary. I do not believe social media to be healthy for any child and I’ve stuck by that.

has it helped my teen? Perhaps but we have other issues around exams inc late stage adhd and dyslexia diagnoses and the lack of phone has certainly helped in not having another avenue for dopermine mining and unhealthy distraction.

If she isn't going to learn self-control now, you are just passing the problem up the road to her next set of exams.

I'd provide advice, keep reminding her, but I wouldn't take over in managing her time by force.

Also, failing your exams (or getting slightly worse results) doesn't mean your life is over. Resits exist. Different life choices exist. Being clever without self-discipline isn't enough to succeed well, she needs both.

If she isn't going to learn self-control now, you are just passing the problem up the road to her next set of exams.

That isn't quite true. A 15 year old just needs more support to learn to exercise self control. It doesn't just magically happen. DD needed more cajoling at GCSE level than she did at A level, and none for her degree. A lot of it is down to emotional maturity.

I agree with the cajoling - I would absolutely cajole and encourage, generally model how to organise your time and put in effort. Stuff like that is presumably how she learned to manage independently.

But it think that's different to using force e.g. taking her phone away. That restricts her options, but it leaves her dependant on an external force to manage her behaviour.

With our three, the main phone rule we have is a night time curfew. We do discuss it when phone use is antisocial as well… no phones at the table, no phones lighting up if we’ve got the lights off to watch a film. But, I wouldn’t say ours are struggling with an addiction. You’ve got my sympathy, DD in particular occasionally gives us glimpses of things that honestly be called toxic.

We’ve had wobbles around grades. We deal with it through positive reinforcement around home work and revision. We’ve bent over backwards for anything they want around revising and homework. Complete silence? Done. Obscure techno music? Done. Want one of us to sit next to them for hour upon boring hour? Done. I know more about geography… We take them to libraries (and occasionally to work) if they want to revise in different settings. One year to go 😅