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

Mum of a year 12 and 9 here

older DS always in top set and got good grades, started to coast as thought predicted grades were a given - passed GCSEs but below where he expected and he was devastated

now in 6th form - AS mocks same situation so had to have a open and honest conversation - if your not going to put the effort in you won't get the grades so look for a job/apprenticeship now rather than in another 13 months. He seems to have worked a lot harder for AS levels but results will tell....

I think you need you need yo be open and honest - no work no results

very few can coast and achieve - oh and made him get a PT job min wage entry level washing up - told him this will be his future unless he starts working and taking education seriously

V similar with my y10. She now has to hand her phone over at 9pm and hand over when revising. Good luck xx

oh and made him get a PT job min wage entry level washing up - told him this will be his future unless he starts working and taking education seriously

That's what my late MIL did with my SIL. SIL wanted to leave school at 15 before she took her O levels (you could back then), but MIL put her foot down. It worked.

Dd3 is 15 and just finished year 10. She always brings her phone downstairs about 9pm to be charged. I think covid has made it more difficult to control online usage.

As a parent of adult men whose gaming massively impacted their results, with the benefit of hindsight, firstly I would have never bought the fucking thing and secondly usage would have been severely restricted.

This is a tough one. I was like your daughter but for me it was my computer, reading and writing stories that were my distractions, not a phone. My mum nagged me beyond belief and I found ways around her restrictions and I just didn’t do the amount of studying I should have been doing. I did fine but I didn’t get all the A’s I ‘should’ have done. Neither did I get top grades in my A levels. But I got enough for uni, spent 20 years as a teacher. Quit my job, went back to uni to do a Masters and just graduated with distinction. I’m 49. My mum died before I even started my Masters. I didn’t have a good relationship with her. I found it impossible to live up to her expectations and I resented her for it. My advice, as the mother of teenagers is just love your daughter. Teach her to love herself. Support her in every way you can. Talk to her about how she is feeling and LISTEN to what she’s telling you. And she’ll be fine. I’ve taught enough y11s who turned it around at the last minute to know that she’ll be fine. And maybe she won’t get 8s and 9s but truly - who cares! As long as she gets high enough grades to allow her to access the courses she wants to do in Y12 & 13, the 8s and 9s are pretty meaningless - they’re just bragging rights more than anything else.

We left DS to it with the warning if he did badly in his year10 mocks we would reduce his game time prior to gcse mocks or not at all during gcses.
He did better than he even expected even. So said same again.
What did her teachers say?

Teenagers are very adept at manipulating their parents into feeling guilty.

Don't let them get away with it. You are the one who is in control of your own emotions, so tell yourself you are not going to be made to feel guilty for doing what you know is right.

The thing parents can do is turn off the router which we did. Yeah we're part of the problem.

We have just had the same thing with DS Y10 exams. Awful!
He has a timetable of 2h per day for the holidays and an hour after school plus attending all Y11 revision sessions at school.

Hi OP, mine are younger but I have a friend who felt that her teens' phone addictions were negatively impacting them in many ways.

So she and her DH called a family meeting which was also an AA-style "intervention". They basically read out data around phone addiction, the algorithms used by tech companies to create and feed them, plus testimonies from people who are "recovered". They talked about social media monetising someone's insecurity and capitalism profiting from low-self-esteem.

They told their kids how much they love them and how amazing life is without addiction and how they want that for them and would support them to get better. How to restore self-esteem and self-worth outside a SM bubble.

They got the kids on board with a radical plan to move the WHOLE FAMILY, including parents, to dumb brick phones - only calls and texts. It made all the difference that the parents did it too as the kids weren't resentful, didn't feel it was hypocritical.

They put WhatsApp and iMessage on a laptop so that there was a way to keep up with group chats, but only during set "laptop use" times.

They made a family timetable for after school hours, including homework, parental input on homework, tv, reading, bedtime. And some window on the laptop for limited social media but in the room with the whole family present...

It really turned things around for them. I think their situation and their solution were both at the extreme end (due to the issues their teens had being quite severe) but I take my hat off to them - great parenting, IMHO.

Wish you all the best however you decide to go forward.

my DS got awful mock results and was putting minimal effort in and was also a phone addict, loved nothing better than watching mindless videos on TikTok etc.
in year 11 I made the decision to step in and helped him plan revision and actually revised with him.
Not everyone’s choice but I happily did and hope that I have helped him. He did become much more focused and admitted he just didn’t know where and how to start revising as found it overwhelming.
I am hoping it will have helped him achieve better results.

you said it, it’s the addiction. treat it as such, assist with withdrawal and help her regain control of her life!

Neither!
Whats the point in setting phone restrictions when her teachers have said she's disorganised. That's missing the point.
Whats the point in leaving her to it ? Who is going to teach her to be organised?
If you are organised yourself I would imagine you would already have talked to her about her organising abilities and how to get better so I can only assume you're pretty bad on that too?
Phones BTW have some great features for helping her stay organised. I use a planner app that holds my to do lists, shopping lists, meal plans, reminders and events. Get her to pick one, help her get it set up with everything she needs then use discipline (yes) to ensure she uses it.
If she doesn't like apps pick another method. If she refuses any method then think of appropriate punishment.

My child is that age and did zero preparation for the end of year exams. I wouldn't do anything - hopefully the poor results will have given her a reality check. At least wait and see what her work ethic is as the mocks approach.

Yes, I’m sure a teenager with little self control is TOTALLY going to sit there like an eager beaver using her phone for study apps and organization systems, as opposed to goofing around on it for hours on end, watching stupid videos and chit-chatting with friends. (/sarcasm)

I was a ‘failure’ at secondary school and on my first 2 rounds at college.

If my DD does what I did, I will be scaffolding her to the hilt in terms of tightening up on screen time, paying g good tutors, enforcing digital sunsets to allow her to sleep and monitoring poor nutrition, because I wasn’t financially independent until way into my 30s.

I didn’t bother my parents with this (they couldn’t have helped anyway) but I did get into heaps of debt and felt really shit being an intelligent person being bossed around at work by bitchy managers doing menial work for hardly any money for years on end.

I pulled myself out of it all by going back to college in my late 20s and retaking GCSEs and A levels, then going on to finally getting my degree as a 30 year old but it was all so hard because I had to work full time around this.

I had to start my professional job at 30 when many of my colleagues were younger than me but on more money and far more senior.

The whole thing was an embarrassing launch into adult life and has left me vulnerable to bullying in the work place because of low self-esteem.

Like many women, I was diagnosed with ADHD at 40, and have finally become more forgiving of myself for being such a ‘failure’.

I just don’t believe in this, ‘let them fail’ idea unless you know that ultimately they will be okay. I don’t come from a family where I would be okay if things didn’t work out and now, my sister (age 41) is looking set to be working in min wage jobs for the rest of her life.

I think it’s neglectful not to support them to get back on track especially when they’re under your roof. It’s tough love now to set them up for when you’re no longer here.

If your DD wants to have children, she will be in a better position for this to be an enjoyable experience if she is financially stable and chooses a career path with maternity rights because these are far from a given.

She needs a wake up call. She needs to connect her behaviour now to where she’ll be in 10 years time.

Don’t let her humiliate herself. If she’s got it in her to do well, do everything in your power to make that happen.

Start removing her phone overnight now the summer holidays have started to get her used to it. I assume she'll have mocks at some point? Ask her how she can do better in these than the exams she's done badly in, how can you help her etc? If she messes those up as well, then you'll need to restrict her phone use further.

What? What books? And what author in any good conscience possibly recommend this as a course of action? As a teenager I made some appalling decisions and still regret them now. I wish I had received more parental input and some lines in the sand

Dd3 is the same age (15) and did zero preparation for her end of year examss- and even admitted as much in her end of year report though she did say it was useful to do the exams in the same hall as she'll do her gcses next year! Unfortunately she obtained 9s in all her tests and was awarded the academic excellence prize so so lessons learned. I just think it's incredibly hard to parent teenagers now. My eldest dc are in their 30s.

Dd3 who has just finished y10 went to a state school up to y7 and got 119 greater depth overall in her SATs but as she now goes private these results are not looked at. Instead in y7 they did MidYIS which also apparently predicts gcse grades. I hate having her results every year compared to this. I think it should be objective though I'm probably showing my age!

My 15 year old has been predicted all 9s and has been told she should look at Oxbridge. I've got a feeling she might self sabotage as her 2 elder sisters went to Cambridge and I don't think she'll want to go there (entirely up to her on my part).

I think I would try and work wíth her. Maybe agree she gives you her phone when she comes home from school and you give it back when she has done all her lessons and homework. Maybe then it would feel less like a punishment.

This!

Those who say “Let them fail,” I have to ask, would you be OK with your 15yo getting married or pregnant or having the freedom to make other decisions that permanently impact the course of their lives in a negative way?

I’m glad that we are finally seeing some pushback on this. Five years ago, the consensus on here would have been “Just let her have her phone and she’ll learn to self-regulate!” (Eyeroll).

I'd say the exam results are just a symptom of a much bigger problem. Don't make it "you need to get off your phone so you can get better grades". She needs to get off her phone because it's making her unhappy and incapable and robbing her of her youth and self-esteem. She needs to know that she is worth more. Make sure she doesn't feel like a defective exam-sitting machine, as that will just drive her back into the arms of social media. Sorry I haven't RTFT so apologies if I'm treading old ground. Wishing your family all the best.