Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1099 - Stress, Sweat, and Scores: The Exam Pressure Epidemic

Transcript

#1099 - Stress, Sweat, and Scores: The Exam Pressure Epidemic · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:04
Speaker 1: It's the happy family's podcast.
0:07
Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
0:10
Speaker 2: wants answers.
0:11
Speaker 1: Now. I kind of want to start this podcast by saying,
0:15
Speaker 1: I love Monday's, but today's pod is really mishappy families
0:20
Speaker 1: having a rant, and I'm not sure how anyone's going
0:22
Speaker 1: to feel about Monday once they listened to this conversation. Kylie,
0:26
Speaker 1: you went to a meeting last week that has got
0:29
Speaker 1: stuck in your cra What is a craw Do you
0:30
Speaker 1: know what a crawd?
0:31
Speaker 2: You don't know what a craw is? Used that word
0:33
Speaker 2: all the time?
0:33
Speaker 1: Stuck in your crawl? Got your goat?
0:35
Speaker 2: Got my goat?
0:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell us about the meeting and why you're so
0:39
Speaker 1: wound up.
0:40
Speaker 2: This is not my first rodeo when it comes to
0:42
Speaker 2: Year twelve preparations. I almost didn't go, but I decided
0:47
Speaker 2: that to be fair, to be.
0:50
Speaker 1: Supportive to our daughter, who is convincing you twelve even.
0:53
Speaker 2: Though I've gone through it three times previous, she hasn't.
0:56
Speaker 2: So we went along and attended a meeting that I
1:00
Speaker 2: I hadn't have gone to.
1:01
Speaker 1: Note I didn't go. I said, I'll look after Emily.
1:03
Speaker 1: I'll stay home with the younger children who need supervision.
1:07
Speaker 1: You can go to the school, you can go to
1:08
Speaker 1: the meeting.
1:09
Speaker 2: You're so kind.
1:10
Speaker 1: I do my best. So what happened? Walk us through
1:13
Speaker 1: the challenge? The I mean, you've come out I want
1:18
Speaker 1: to use the word gruntled. No one's ever gruntled, have you?
1:21
Speaker 1: We're only ever discgruntled, and you come out disgruntled.
1:24
Speaker 2: It's hard to know if this particular meeting was more
1:27
Speaker 2: pressure filled than previous ones, or whether or not me
1:31
Speaker 2: seeing it through my particularly anxious year eleven daughters' eyes
1:36
Speaker 2: impacted the way I received the information given. But what
1:41
Speaker 2: I find, generally speaking in my four experiences is this
1:46
Speaker 2: is an opportunity for teachers to kind of put the
1:48
Speaker 2: fear of God in these kids as they prepare for
1:53
Speaker 2: their final year of school. The idea that they have
1:57
Speaker 2: to work their bums off to the exclusion of everything else.
2:03
Speaker 2: It's probably one of the most damaging messages I could
2:07
Speaker 2: give my child.
2:08
Speaker 1: So let's get something concrete around this. What precisely did
2:11
Speaker 1: you hear that was so challenging?
2:14
Speaker 2: Fifty thousand students will be dumped into the economy by
2:18
Speaker 2: the end of twenty twenty.
2:21
Speaker 1: Five, right, so at the end of next year, when
2:25
Speaker 1: our daughter is supposed to graduate from school, there'll be
2:27
Speaker 1: fifty thousand kids that will leave school. Let me just
2:30
Speaker 1: pick up on that fifty thousand things before you go on.
2:32
Speaker 1: This happens every year.
2:34
Speaker 2: It does.
2:35
Speaker 1: Every state will release no tens of thousands. I guess
2:39
Speaker 1: New South Wales would be the highest state, and I
2:41
Speaker 1: know they've got about eighty year twelve school leavers each year.
2:44
Speaker 1: So that happens every year, and the economy manages every year.
2:48
Speaker 1: We seem to be able to create more jobs. We've
2:51
Speaker 1: seemed to not really have any employment problems in this country,
2:54
Speaker 1: so I'm not convinced that that's a massive issue, but
2:58
Speaker 1: it certainly sounds stark and scary, doesn't.
3:01
Speaker 2: It one hundred percent? If I'm a year eleven student
3:05
Speaker 2: and I hear a message like that, and I'm being
3:08
Speaker 2: told that I have to put my very best foot
3:11
Speaker 2: forward because there's going to be fifty thousand people that
3:14
Speaker 2: are going to be buying for positions in my community.
3:18
Speaker 1: So it's ultimately a scarcity mentality that says if you
3:22
Speaker 1: don't work, you'll miss out.
3:23
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
3:24
Speaker 1: The problem with this as well is that not every
3:27
Speaker 1: student is going to go out and do the same thing.
3:28
Speaker 1: It's not fifty thousand people competing for one university slot
3:32
Speaker 1: or one but a year.
3:34
Speaker 2: As a year eleven student. Do you not think that
3:36
Speaker 2: that's kind of what I'm hearing. I'm actually competing for
3:39
Speaker 2: whatever it is that I want to do with fifty
3:42
Speaker 2: thousand other people.
3:43
Speaker 1: I just don't feel like society works like that. But
3:45
Speaker 1: clearly your experience the other night was let's be clear
3:48
Speaker 1: as well, this is not about beating up on teachers
3:51
Speaker 1: and education staff. I often speak about the things that
3:54
Speaker 1: we're talking about now in schools, and I have principles
3:57
Speaker 1: and well being leaders come up and almost hug me
4:00
Speaker 1: and say, I'm so glad you said what you said
4:02
Speaker 1: because there's just too much pressure. But in our daughter's
4:05
Speaker 1: case this year twelve preparation night, it sounds like there
4:09
Speaker 1: was some pressure. What else was said?
4:13
Speaker 2: I think a couple of things that really stood out
4:15
Speaker 2: to me was there seemed to be a push for
4:19
Speaker 2: a highly structured, highly study focused lifestyle in year twelve,
4:25
Speaker 2: at the exclusion of a social life, spending time with
4:30
Speaker 2: our families, and even getting rid of part time jobs.
4:35
Speaker 2: All of those things, or any one of those things
4:37
Speaker 2: could be a positive in removing from the big picture
4:43
Speaker 2: of your child's life. Depending on your family circumstances and
4:46
Speaker 2: your child's circumstances, how do they cope with stress? Do
4:50
Speaker 2: they actually need time outside of things? But to kind
4:54
Speaker 2: of put it in again in that context, with the
4:57
Speaker 2: idea that your social life will be waiting for you
5:00
Speaker 2: at the other end, and that now is the time
5:02
Speaker 2: to basically work your bum off and focus on what matters.
5:07
Speaker 1: Most, which is getting a high ATA.
5:09
Speaker 2: I feel like it's a really damaging message if I
5:12
Speaker 2: just kind of literally just do some crude mass here
5:16
Speaker 2: and put into a daily timetable what an average year
5:21
Speaker 2: twelve students timetable would look like. Based on the recommendation
5:25
Speaker 2: of last week's meeting. We've got one to two hours
5:28
Speaker 2: of commute a day, whether you're catching a bus, you're
5:31
Speaker 2: doing the daily commute in a car dealing with traffic.
5:35
Speaker 2: One to two hours I think is a fair average
5:37
Speaker 2: of what most people would be dealing with. You've got
5:40
Speaker 2: seven hours at school. On top of that, they're now
5:43
Speaker 2: saying that they want a minimum a minimum of three
5:46
Speaker 2: hours study. So for a kid again who has high
5:49
Speaker 2: hopes of achieving, well, they're not listening to the minimum. Right,
5:52
Speaker 2: they don't want to do the minimum, They're going to
5:54
Speaker 2: do as much as they can. And then you have dinner,
5:58
Speaker 2: hopefully in their somewhere, and some meals. So all up,
6:02
Speaker 2: I've got twelve hours of absolutely structured time outside of
6:09
Speaker 2: any other things that they're going to do. How is
6:11
Speaker 2: that helpful, beneficial or allowing our kids to live some
6:17
Speaker 2: kind of meaningful life.
6:19
Speaker 1: Probably one of the central things that I'm picking up
6:21
Speaker 1: on here is that we've got a really heavy focus
6:24
Speaker 1: on this atar thing right, and the pressure is if
6:27
Speaker 1: you don't get this right, it's going to be to
6:31
Speaker 1: your detriment.
6:32
Speaker 2: Well, that even came up the acknowledgment that once upon
6:34
Speaker 2: a time a university degree was.
6:37
Speaker 1: Free, free, free.
6:38
Speaker 2: Absolutely free. We've gone from having a free education to
6:43
Speaker 2: having fee helped education.
6:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean our education in Austraia is still reasonably
6:47
Speaker 1: cheap compared to many countries, obviously, especially the US, but yeah,
6:51
Speaker 1: I mean it adds up.
6:53
Speaker 2: And so the concept was brought up that if they
6:55
Speaker 2: didn't get things right, it was going to cost them
6:58
Speaker 2: more in the long run. If they, you know, for instance,
7:01
Speaker 2: and roll in a course and decide halfway through the
7:03
Speaker 2: year or even at the end of the year. This
7:05
Speaker 2: isn't really what I want to do. They're going to
7:07
Speaker 2: accrue more costs as a result of the changes that
7:12
Speaker 2: they make about that.
7:13
Speaker 1: Sort of stuff. But realistically, you put on the fee
7:15
Speaker 1: help thing once you've got your hex debt. I mean,
7:18
Speaker 1: we still call it a hex's debt or your help
7:20
Speaker 1: debt or whatever it is. It's indexed to inflation.
7:23
Speaker 2: But it's not like America where I have to pay
7:25
Speaker 2: for it.
7:25
Speaker 1: I have to pay it off in front, and you
7:27
Speaker 1: don't have to pay for it as well until you're
7:29
Speaker 1: earning a certain amount, and then it just gets deducted
7:31
Speaker 1: over the years. It's a thing, it's definitely a thing.
7:35
Speaker 1: I don't want to discount the debt, but it's not
7:37
Speaker 1: that big of a debt. And if you die, it
7:40
Speaker 1: gets wiped. It's not like somebody else has to pay
7:41
Speaker 1: the debt for you. It's a pretty easy to manage
7:44
Speaker 1: kind of debt.
7:46
Speaker 2: So I guess the big bee in my bonnet, Yeah.
7:48
Speaker 1: And then it sounds like you've got one.
7:49
Speaker 2: The big bee in my bonnet is with the literal
7:52
Speaker 2: pandemic that we're experiencing. I'm going to say across the
7:55
Speaker 2: world with mental illness. If you look at my twelve
8:00
Speaker 2: hours a day, I'm stuck in a classroom, I'm stuck
8:03
Speaker 2: at my desk, and I'm commuting. There's no joy factor
8:08
Speaker 2: in my day at all, let alone any time for
8:10
Speaker 2: mindfulness or really connecting with people that matter in my life.
8:17
Speaker 2: There's not even a place for recreation because if I
8:21
Speaker 2: look at this from eight to nine, literally every day,
8:26
Speaker 2: I'm instructured classes, I'm instructured study, I'm instructured commute like
8:33
Speaker 2: there is just there's no rigal room.
8:35
Speaker 1: My sense is that your central concern is actually unspoken,
8:39
Speaker 1: and that is that we've got a daughter who responds
8:40
Speaker 1: really poorly to pressure. She struggles with some anxiety sometimes,
8:44
Speaker 1: and that she came home and couldn't get to sleep
8:46
Speaker 1: until one thirty because she was so stressed about the
8:48
Speaker 1: rest of her life. If she doesn't do well over
8:51
Speaker 1: the next twelve.
8:51
Speaker 2: Months, that is a huge part of this. But she's
8:55
Speaker 2: not the only one that heard that message. She's not
8:57
Speaker 2: the only one who's going to be dealing with this.
9:00
Speaker 2: And as I sat there and I listened, I knew
9:02
Speaker 2: exactly what I was going to have to come home
9:04
Speaker 2: to and what I'm going to have to deal with
9:05
Speaker 2: now for the next twelve months as she wrestles with
9:09
Speaker 2: trying to find the balance so that she can live
9:13
Speaker 2: a fulfilling purpose for wife.
9:21
Speaker 1: I have some thoughts. Would you like to hear them? Sure,
9:27
Speaker 1: let's go. First off, important to recognize that there's going
9:31
Speaker 1: to be a whole lot of parents who go home
9:34
Speaker 1: with their kids. The kids are going to shrug their
9:35
Speaker 1: shoulder and say, yeah, whatever. There'll be a dismissive tone
9:39
Speaker 1: in a portion of the audience. Another portion of the
9:42
Speaker 1: audience will go home and say, oh my goodness, it's
9:46
Speaker 1: on what do we need to do? And they're going
9:49
Speaker 1: to carry that really, really heavily with them.
9:52
Speaker 2: If that was me in year eleven and I was
9:55
Speaker 2: told that there were fifty thousand people lying for positions
9:59
Speaker 2: at the end of year time, well, you've just lost me.
10:02
Speaker 2: I'm done, Like, there's not even a point in me trying,
10:06
Speaker 2: because how can one person compete against fifty thousand.
10:10
Speaker 1: As a parent, I'm having a conversation that goes like this,
10:12
Speaker 1: what are you going to do with the rest of
10:13
Speaker 1: your life? Because you don't have to go to university.
10:16
Speaker 1: This is very much an atar directed university focused conversation.
10:20
Speaker 1: We know that there are kids who go into apprenticeships
10:22
Speaker 1: or trainees ships. We know that some of them will
10:24
Speaker 1: take a gap year, we know that some are going
10:26
Speaker 1: to go and join the military.
10:28
Speaker 2: Or that's not the conversation, volunteer sir No, and that
10:31
Speaker 2: that's not the conversation. The conversation is so much that
10:34
Speaker 2: there is one pathway. In spite of the fact that
10:37
Speaker 2: we mentioned that there's multiple pathways, there is one right pathway.
10:42
Speaker 2: That's what it feels like.
10:43
Speaker 1: And this is the education industrial complex. That it's very worst. Okay,
10:46
Speaker 1: it says that education is modeled. I think there's only
10:48
Speaker 1: one way to success in life, and that way to
10:50
Speaker 1: success is that you have to have academic credentials. You've
10:52
Speaker 1: got to get a high a target into a challenging
10:55
Speaker 1: and competitive university course. Dog Eat Dog World be better
10:57
Speaker 1: than everybody else.
10:58
Speaker 2: Well, don't even get me started about Dog Eat Dog World.
11:04
Speaker 2: The acknowledgment that as a school, our structure is all
11:08
Speaker 2: about unity, inclusiveness and you know, kind of working together
11:12
Speaker 2: as a team until it comes to ata and then
11:15
Speaker 2: he literally said, it's a dog eat Dog world and
11:19
Speaker 2: you need to do everything you can to get ahead.
11:21
Speaker 1: So that's concerning, and it's almost like school culture doesn't matter,
11:25
Speaker 1: and what really matters as results. And this is a
11:28
Speaker 1: cynical view on my part, but I really think that
11:30
Speaker 1: too many schools are using atar results as a marketing
11:32
Speaker 1: strategy to get more people to go to their schools
11:34
Speaker 1: because every parent's worried that the child's not going to
11:36
Speaker 1: do that well. To me, that's unconscionable. Moreover, I mean,
11:40
Speaker 1: you highlighted that with all the structure and all the
11:42
Speaker 1: study and all the work, kids can't have time together.
11:45
Speaker 2: You Know.
11:45
Speaker 1: What I found was when I was going through university,
11:47
Speaker 1: the most effective way for me to study it was
11:48
Speaker 1: in groups. I'd sit down with my Palm cards, I'd
11:51
Speaker 1: sit down with my study notes, and I'd say to
11:52
Speaker 1: three or four other people, Hey, let's go through these together,
11:54
Speaker 1: and we would quiz each other. And what a difference
11:58
Speaker 1: that made. It became some of the most valuable social
12:00
Speaker 1: time that we had.
12:01
Speaker 2: The challenge we have those we're dealing with year eleven
12:04
Speaker 2: students as opposed to a mature age university student who
12:07
Speaker 2: knows what he wants to do and is there for
12:09
Speaker 2: the right reasons.
12:11
Speaker 1: I want to highlight two other things before we talk
12:13
Speaker 1: about the conversation that needs to be had. And we've
12:14
Speaker 1: got to do this fairly quickly because your frustrations you're
12:18
Speaker 1: being in your bonnet has taken up a lot of
12:19
Speaker 1: time for this podcast. I want to emphasize that we
12:22
Speaker 1: elevate university and we should not be doing that. It's
12:25
Speaker 1: just not the only way for somebody to have a
12:28
Speaker 1: successful life. When I ask parents, how many of them
12:31
Speaker 1: are doing today what they thought they would do when
12:33
Speaker 1: they finished high school, less than one intent put up
12:35
Speaker 1: their hand in my workshops. Moreover, there are so many
12:37
Speaker 1: people who do things that don't require university degrees, where
12:39
Speaker 1: they make fabulous contributions to society. They make more than
12:42
Speaker 1: enough to support their families and make a contribution in
12:46
Speaker 1: whatever way they wish to. It's not like university is.
12:49
Speaker 1: I want to use our son in law, Jared as
12:51
Speaker 1: an example. He was a terrible school student. He had
12:54
Speaker 1: no academic aspirations and really still doesn't, and after floundering
12:58
Speaker 1: for a couple of years after school, he got an
13:00
Speaker 1: electrical trade. He's now a fully qualified electrician and at
13:04
Speaker 1: the age of what is he twenty five, twenty six
13:06
Speaker 1: something like that, he and our daughter have just bought
13:09
Speaker 1: their first house on the Sunshine Coast, and it's a house.
13:12
Speaker 1: It's got to pull on double garage like that. It's incredible.
13:15
Speaker 1: And he's twenty five. I don't know too many university
13:18
Speaker 1: graduates who at twenty five are buying their family a home.
13:21
Speaker 1: He's married, he's got a child, and he's really I mean,
13:23
Speaker 1: he's doing so well, and he's a trade And just
13:27
Speaker 1: recently he and a few of his friends were at
13:28
Speaker 1: our place doing a little bit of work on our home.
13:31
Speaker 1: And there's all these mid twenties guys and they are
13:36
Speaker 1: they're living great lives, they're financially secure, they've got a trade,
13:39
Speaker 1: they're doing work that they really do enjoy. And I
13:42
Speaker 1: just thought to myself, why is it that we elevate
13:45
Speaker 1: university so inappropriately. It's not the only way to make
13:49
Speaker 1: a living.
13:49
Speaker 2: So I actually think we value money.
13:52
Speaker 1: Well, it's not money that we value, it's status, okay,
13:57
Speaker 1: because we've got all these people who are in trades
13:59
Speaker 1: or who are entrepreneur and running their own businesses. But
14:02
Speaker 1: we as a society value status. And you get status
14:05
Speaker 1: from university that you don't get from other places, especially
14:09
Speaker 1: if you do a particular kind of degree versus a
14:11
Speaker 1: different kind of degree. I just want to hammerd this
14:15
Speaker 1: point as hard as I can. You look at the
14:17
Speaker 1: latest stats on university dropouts in first year. As a
14:19
Speaker 1: former university lecturer, I've made this point many times around
14:23
Speaker 1: about eighty percent of the kids who are doing first
14:25
Speaker 1: year UNI probably shouldn't be there. I just don't think
14:27
Speaker 1: that they need to be at university. There's a twenty
14:30
Speaker 1: five percent dropout rate in first year university students around
14:34
Speaker 1: Australia at the moment. The ATAR this is fascinating. The
14:37
Speaker 1: ATAR is predictive of whether or not you will or
14:40
Speaker 1: will not make it through first year university. The Center
14:44
Speaker 1: for Independent Studies released through report not too long ago,
14:47
Speaker 1: and in their findings they said that the ATAR is
14:50
Speaker 1: significantly associated with completions and attrition. With each are sending
14:55
Speaker 1: ATAR band completions rise and attrition falls. Low ATAR students,
14:59
Speaker 1: that is, students have scored in the bottom sixty zero
15:03
Speaker 1: to sixty, their dropout rates are three times that of
15:05
Speaker 1: high ATAR students between eighty and one hundred. Also, non
15:10
Speaker 1: ATAR based admissions are almost twice as likely as ATAR
15:13
Speaker 1: based admissions to drop out of university in their first year,
15:16
Speaker 1: and completion rates fall faster for non ATAR based admissions
15:21
Speaker 1: than any other ATAR band. Nevertheless, we can't confuse causation
15:26
Speaker 1: with correlation. What's really going on here, I think is
15:30
Speaker 1: you've got a whole bunch of Last week on the podcast,
15:32
Speaker 1: we talked about self control being the performance enhancing drug, right,
15:37
Speaker 1: and what we're really seeing here. I don't think that
15:39
Speaker 1: it's atars that are truly the thing that's making kids
15:43
Speaker 1: stick with or drop out of university. I want to
15:45
Speaker 1: think it is as self control. The other thing that
15:48
Speaker 1: i'd highlight, just to wrap this up, I guess is
15:50
Speaker 1: that kids don't need to be doing three hours of
15:52
Speaker 1: study a night on top of their regular school work,
15:54
Speaker 1: on top of a full school day, as well as
15:56
Speaker 1: trying to balance friendships and family commitments and maybe a
16:00
Speaker 1: part time job at university. If you score eighty five
16:04
Speaker 1: or above, you get a high distinction. Right. That means
16:07
Speaker 1: your work is highly distinctive to get eighty five percent
16:10
Speaker 1: or above. In very crude terms, when I talk to
16:12
Speaker 1: our kids about this, I just say, if you want
16:13
Speaker 1: to get eighty five or above, you need to be
16:15
Speaker 1: highly distinctive. What is it from a workload point of view,
16:19
Speaker 1: that would make you highly distinctive. How much time are
16:21
Speaker 1: most people spending on this? So on average they might say, oh, yeah,
16:24
Speaker 1: it's an hour, and I'll say, okay, So would two
16:26
Speaker 1: hours make you highly distinctive? Would ninety minutes make you
16:28
Speaker 1: highly distinctive? At what point does the work that you
16:31
Speaker 1: put in make you highly distinctive? Because there is a
16:35
Speaker 1: dose response when it comes to the work you put
16:38
Speaker 1: in and the result you get back. And so if
16:40
Speaker 1: everyone who's listening to this can get their children to
16:43
Speaker 1: work in a highly distinctive manner, that is to recognize
16:46
Speaker 1: that the higher the dose they put in, the greater
16:48
Speaker 1: the response they get back to a point, then their
16:51
Speaker 1: kids will end up highly distinctive. They'll get eighty five
16:54
Speaker 1: and above, they'll be different to everybody else. Ultimately, though,
16:58
Speaker 1: my take on your rant, your frustration, which is I
17:02
Speaker 1: think completely appropriate, and I don't mind saying this. Even
17:04
Speaker 1: though our kids go to the school, and maybe there
17:06
Speaker 1: are people at the school who listen, this is something
17:08
Speaker 1: that happens universally. This is not just a specific school.
17:13
Speaker 2: And I agree with that. I mean, each of the
17:16
Speaker 2: times we've done this, it's been at a different school
17:18
Speaker 2: with a different child, and the message has been ultimately
17:21
Speaker 2: the same. I recognize that with time restraints and trying
17:26
Speaker 2: to get through a message. Ultimately what they're saying is
17:31
Speaker 2: give it your best shot, do everything you can to
17:34
Speaker 2: get a good grade because it matters.
17:36
Speaker 1: And they're right, well, yes, if it matters, if it matters.
17:41
Speaker 2: What they didn't talk about was the importance of connection
17:45
Speaker 2: and family time and spending time with people who elevate
17:48
Speaker 2: you and ground you. They didn't talk about, you know,
17:51
Speaker 2: kind of mindfulness and taking time out and away from
17:56
Speaker 2: the books. A couple of years ago, I attended a conference.
18:00
Speaker 2: They had classes from eight a m. Till nine pm
18:03
Speaker 2: on the hour. Every hour, I had multiple options. It
18:07
Speaker 2: was mind blowing and I loved every minute of it.
18:10
Speaker 2: But by the end of each day, my brain was
18:13
Speaker 2: absolutely fried and I couldn't even really tell you what
18:17
Speaker 2: I had listened to until I looked at my notes.
18:20
Speaker 2: There was so much information. We need to give them
18:23
Speaker 2: an opportunity to breathe for goodness sakes.
18:25
Speaker 1: So here's how we do that. It's a three ye's
18:27
Speaker 1: conversation at the start of year eleven, where we say, hey,
18:29
Speaker 1: what's important to you? We explore right. What's important to
18:32
Speaker 1: you educationally? We explain. We explain by saying, the more
18:37
Speaker 1: you put in over the next two years, the better
18:39
Speaker 1: your results will be, and the better your results are,
18:41
Speaker 1: the more opportunities you'll have later in life, particularly if
18:43
Speaker 1: you have tertiary aspirations or even entrepreneurial aspirations. And then
18:48
Speaker 1: we empower. We say, so based on what you want,
18:50
Speaker 1: what we've explained, what is it that we're going to
18:52
Speaker 1: work towards, and how can we support you now? If
18:54
Speaker 1: you do that, your kids are going to do better.
18:56
Speaker 1: You'll have some children who say, parents, I want nine
18:59
Speaker 1: to nine points nine to five. I want to be
19:01
Speaker 1: doing medicine or law, a dentistry or one of those
19:03
Speaker 1: other high atar subjects. And therefore what I would find
19:08
Speaker 1: most supportive is if I can quit my job and
19:10
Speaker 1: if you will support me over the next two years
19:11
Speaker 1: so that I can study fourteen hours a day. You
19:14
Speaker 1: will have some kids that do that, and if that's
19:16
Speaker 1: what they want, you have to support them. Then go
19:18
Speaker 1: for it. And you'll have other kids that shrug their
19:20
Speaker 1: shoulders and say, I don't really know what I want.
19:22
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I want to go to UNI,
19:23
Speaker 1: at which point you say, great, well, how do we
19:25
Speaker 1: help you to maximize and have value in these next
19:29
Speaker 1: two years so that you have optionality at the end
19:32
Speaker 1: of it without busting a boiler and without us all
19:36
Speaker 1: losing the plot. And as you work through that strategy
19:38
Speaker 1: in that plan, your kids are going to be okay.
19:41
Speaker 2: I just wish more schools would take on that approach then,
19:45
Speaker 2: hoping that they're putting a fire under kids and motivating
19:48
Speaker 2: them by telling them that they have to do the
19:50
Speaker 2: very best that they can. What does their best look like?
19:53
Speaker 1: You feel better now, Maybe take a few deep breaths.
19:57
Speaker 1: We'll be fine. The Happy Family's podcast is produced by
19:59
Speaker 1: just Nerlan for Bridge Media. If you'd like more information
20:02
Speaker 1: about how to support your kids and make your family happier,
20:05
Speaker 1: you'll find it on our Facebook and Instagram pages or
20:08
Speaker 1: at happy families dot com dot au.