Modelling struggle: How all parents can help their teens study at high school

You may be struggling to help your teenager with their math homework, but you can still harness your parenting power.

“We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” JFK may have been talking about sending man to the moon but I think we can apply it to studying just as much.

One of my goals with Cram Lab is to help teenager’s realise that the process of studying can be made simple and that anyone can learn how to study. But that’s very different to saying that studying is easy.

Studying at its best is satisfying and rewarding. Taking on knowledge and coming to understand a complicated concept that previously deceived you but is now entirely clear is the stuff that natural highs are made of.

But at its worst studying requires you to sit down at your desk for extended periods of time, day after day, forcing yourself to learn something you may have absolutely no interest in.

Studying for exams is realistically a mixture of the good and bad.

Studying can be a struggle. But that's okay. The key is to accept that studying IS often hard. It requires strength of will, character and discipline. But it's because it requires these attributes that it's a completely worthwhile endeavour.

Okay... but how does parenting fit into this?

Last week I listened to Adam Robinson interviewed on the Knowledge Project podcast. This episode piqued my interest because Adam co-founded The Princeton Review and co-authored the New York Times best-selling Cracking the SAT test prep book. I was not disappointed.

Adam explains that in one study he conducted looking at what affects test scores the students who showed the greatest improvement had parents who had experienced struggle. We won't go into the details here, you can check out Adam's interview for yourself here; the discussion about education starts around 1hr 30m.

Parents — perhaps like you — are frustrated at their teen's lack of motivation, their apathy towards school, and that their grades don't represent their true potential. Because what can you do?! You can't force your teen to study and you can't do their study for them.

But if you take Adam’s findings, perhaps you can do something that only a parent can do. Model struggle.

Studying is like life… it can involve struggle

You can show your teen that struggle is a normal part of life, and it's certainly a normal part of studying. No one gets good grades without struggle along the way. Results come from hard work, determination, and perseverance.

A lot of teens ask me what they can do to improve their grades, and while I can dish out all our advice about motivation, organisation and studying effectively — ultimately — their academic success will still depend on how much work they're willing to put in.

Neither you nor me can force your teen to sit down at their desk and study, but as their parent, you can be a model for the hard-working and determined behaviour they need to see in order to understand that putting in the effort with their study now will pay off big time down the track.

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