Parents
Supporting your young person studying for their HSC
Many parents ask me what they can do to support their young person who is preparing for their HSC. It is natural to wonder how you can help, especially if you feel like you were never really great at
school, or it's been a while since you were at school yourself and learned calculus and many other things!
That's ok, because being a supportive parent isn't about being able to teach your child all the knowledge they need to know for the exams (that's what their teachers help with). Young people need their
parents as they are learning to navigate things in life like setting good habits, including study habits.
As a parent, you lead the atmosphere in your home, and you can create a good study environment. You can help your young person set a regular time for doing homework each day after school in a place that
isn't too noisy or distracting, and just get seated at their desk each day! Year 12 students commonly ask me about how to get motivated to study. While I teach them a bit about what motivates us as
people, I also teach that motivation often gets us started, but it's often habits that keep us going. And as a parent, you can help your young person shape their study habits.
Your young person is also looking to you and what you expect of them, and the positive or negative pressures and expectations you are communicating (whether you verbalise these or not!) It means so much
to them (whether they'll admit it or not), that you love and support them regardless of what their marks are looking like, and even regardless of the effort they are putting in. When you have this
relationship of trust with them, you will be a role model to them as to how you value giving things your very best go, and equipping yourself to be able to give things your very best go (which you
obviously value, if you are reading this website!)
Many young people would prefer that their parents don't compare them with older siblings or family friends' children. Study habits, the number of study hours, and each young person's strengths vary -
not everyone works well at 5am, even if their older brother or sister did! Not everyone finds it natural to write essays or have numbers flow through their brain (or both!). You can help your young
person work to (and remember) their strengths and do more of what is working well!
You can also help connect your young person to the people with the knowledge they need for their exams. You can encourage them to ask questions of their teachers if they don't understand. (It may seem
obvious to you, but your young person is still young and learning to navigate life in general, and positive encouragement to ask questions may just help them get past that bottleneck in their knowledge
so that the rest of the topic makes sense to them.) You can also help your young person find the books about study, holiday workshops, tutors and so on to equip them to do their best (please don't feel
like they have to do all of these, because they don't, but some of these can be helpful resources).
My book is a summary of the study methods and techniques I used when I did my HSC. I had wonderful teachers at school, but somehow the study methods I was taught (like summarising the text book, and
doing study timetables) didn't work for me, at all! So I worked out my own study techniques, and since they worked for me, I just kept doing and refining them.
After I finished school, a friend who knew I had achieved a UAI (as the ATAR was called then) of 99.90, asked if I would help his sister, who he thought had more potential than her exam marks seemed to
show. I wasn't sure that I had much to contribute, as it had been a few years since I had done my HSC and I didn't remember many of the specific details of subjects that I knew I needed for my HSC exams.
But I sat down with her, and just looked at study skills and techniques, and she went from the middle of her class to near the top of many of her classes! Then I was surprised, not at her talent, but at
how much I had taken study technique for granted, and how much it really affected exam results! So because of her, I did a 'brain-dump' and wrote down everything I did when I studied, and this is now my
book. I hope it helps your young person as much as it helped my friend's sister.
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