Goals and agreements help keep your teen steady and strong when life is difficult.
Study goals are most easily achieved by taking small steps most days, not by cramming in lots of information just before exams. At this stage of their life they experience rapid growth spurts and sudden surges of hormones. There are often dramas, if not with your young adult, with their friends. Many young adults feel as though they are on an emotional roller-coaster. Although of course there are times they need to take breaks when there is a major event in their lives or in your family’s life, having education goals that they believe are important will still help them refocus on their study again as soon as possible.
Particularly as young adults they can often doubt their ability to achieve goals they want, and might feel easily defeated when there are difficulties. They might also hear from some of their friends that study is not really that important. They might become side-tracked by friends into behaviours not conducive to good study habits such as on-line games and drinking and drugs. (As a side-issue, Gaming Disorder has become a “Condition for Further Study” in the DSM-5(APA 2013). It is not yet an “official” disorder, but a condition on which the American Psychiatric Association request additional research). Our role as their support is to help them stay calm, focused, and optimistic. One way that I’ve found works well is to develop goals with them, and the steady study routines and consequences useful to achieving those goals.
I aim to never give up helping my students reach for the goals they want, so that they can continue reaching for them too. Once a teen makes study goals and agreements with me, I expect them to honour them. As their learning coach I check in with them each week, in a practical, respectful and helpful way, and without any blame, so that they learn to become fully accountable and in control of their study. When study agreements aren’t kept, I expect them to explain why they didn’t keep them (if it seems useful, we might discuss whether they want to change their goals and/or the agreement). We then problem-solve how they will make sure they can keep their study agreement to reach the revised goals and agreement. In my experience it can sometimes take a few weeks before they fully honour their coaching agreement, especially those who have not learnt to be fully responsible for their actions yet, so steady, respectful patience is required.
Does your teen not want to study? Students who haven’t taken responsibility for their learning are usually not studying enough. Sometimes they might actively fight your decisions by arguing, shouting, and refusing. Although those behaviours might shock and upset you, it can be easier to communicate with young adults who are that direct and open that they don’t want to study than those who are not. If your teen does not believe that they have the power to actively and openly defy you, they will often be resisting in quieter and more passive ways that can be quite difficult to notice. They might talk with you only when necessary, or do what they want to do when you are not looking, or unconsciously sabotage agreements between you while seeming to agree with you.
Unconscious sabotage is the hardest to notice. They might forget information, appointments, or agreements, lose equipment and books, seem unable to do a simple task set them that they could do previously, often feel sick or tired when it is time to work, seem unable to concentrate, sulk and not talk with you except when they need to, talk incessantly about unrelated matters or pick fights with you about unrelated issues so that you are sidetracked. If your teen has other issues, they might also behave in some of those ways regardless, but even then I have found that they can minimise some of those behaviours when they want to reach particular study goals, take full responsibility for their own learning, and use learning strategies and tools that help them learn more easily.
You might not realise at first that many of the behaviours that unconsciously sabotage study time at home are because they just don’t want to study at home, and your young adult might not realise that fully either. Perhaps, for example, both of you believe that they are naturally forgetful, or not able to concentrate well, or often tired. Notice however that your young adult might not forget information they find important and want to remember, that they can be alert, keen, and ready for activities they like, and that they can concentrate for hours to master a skill they enjoy doing. It often just depends on their state of mind when sitting down to study. Are they fully on-board with doing the required work to reach their goals or are they not? It is often that simple.
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Warmly,
Anne
Families as Coaches 