“Stop nagging at me to revise!” If you’ve got a teenager taking GCSEs or A-Levels you’ll no doubt know the stress and anxiety of trying to get them to revise, to encourage and support without losing your proverbial.
As adults, with our fully developed brains, we understand how important revision is for exam success and how much exam results (and the exam stress) can impact future life choices. To adults it’s simple: “revise now, to have the best opportunities later.” Many of us regret not studying harder when we were teens. The problem is our teens don’t think like we do (there is a reason we didn’t study harder when we were their age).
Teens struggle with hypothetical, or “what if?” thinking. They live in the present and focus very little on the consequences of their actions today. This doesn’t make them lazy or irresponsible, it just makes them a teenager with a brain that has still got another decade’s worth of development to do.
While it is entirely normal for teens to be unaware of the real urgency of revising well for exams, it’s also difficult for parents to weigh this neurological knowledge up with the fact that exam results are undeniably important. New research has found that GCSE results have a strong impact on later academic achievement, success at work and also future emotional wellbeing for many years. These results are even more profound for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
As a parent, you know how important revision is, but how do you get your teen to revise read on to see how I can help...
My teen won't revise what can I do?
I always recommend starting off by asking them the question “do you know how to revise in a way that works for you?.” You’d be amazed at how many teens have no idea of where to start. The confusion and anxiety this brings almost always leads to procrastination, which ends up in a vicious cycle of more anxiety, more confusion, and more procrastination. This often reaches a peak where the teen is almost physically unable to revise until the exam looms large and they find themselves desperately cramming the night before, or even morning of the exam, which is clearly not ideal. Starting with checking your teen knows how to revise and helping them to find ways that work for them is absolutely key. Don’t presume that they are taught this at school either. While life and study skills sessions touch on revision, there are a lot of presumptions and a lot of teenagers, schools and colleges can’t provide individual, nuanced help here, that’s where you - their adults - come in.
8 tips to help teens to revise
- Watch their diet
- Focus on better sleep
- Find techniques that work for them
- Break it down into small chunks
- Find a study buddy
- Encourage them to test themselves
- Suggest regular breaks
- Factor in little rewards
1. Watch their diet
When teens are stressed they tend to either reach for sugary carbs and highly processed foods, or skip meals altogether. Research shows that teens who take morning exams after skipping breakfast struggle with significantly reduced attention spans and poorer memory recall than those who do eat breakfast.
Having the 'right' foods in your fridge can help, as well as pre-preparing some quick ‘grab and go’ breakfast bags for your teen at the start of the week can really help. Bananas are also great exam fuel, as the potassium they contain has been shown to strengthen memory. Making sure your teen drinks enough water can also help, especially during the exams themselves. Research has found that teens who take water into the exam hall with them score an average of 5% higher than those who don’t.
2. Focus on better sleep
Parents often wonder how much sleep their teenager needs, and they're not alone as sleep difficulties and teens often go hand in hand, with late nights common. Teenagers have different circadian rhythms (body clocks) to younger children and adults, becoming natural night owls.
Once again, this isn’t them being irresponsible, it’s simple biology, their bodies are not ready to sleep until later than adults. Unfortunately, the teen circadian shift causes difficulty during exam seasons. Research shows that 83% of teens struggle to get enough sleep while taking exams, which can obviously have a negative impact on memory and concentration. Talking this through with your teen and encouraging them to wind down in the evenings, restrict screen time and give themselves the best possible chance of a good night’s sleep, especially the night before exams.
3. Find techniques that work for them
Mind maps, pneumonics, note cards, recording voice notes, watching revision TikTok’s or YouTube videos, online tests, re-writing notes, or taking practice past papers are all great ways to revise. That said, they don’t all work for all teens.
"[not revising] doesn’t make them lazy or irresponsible, it just makes them a teenager with a brain that has another decade’s worth of development to do."
Their friends may be busy writing note cards, or using an app to help them to revise and your teen may struggle, causing them to give up or do less revision because they’re trying to use a technique that just doesn’t suit them. Encourage your teen to try some different techniques and abandon any that don’t work for them. It’s OK that they do different things to their friends and what their teachers taught them.
4. Break it down into small chunks
The average teen revises for between 3 to 5 hours a day during the working week while on study leave. It may be tempting for them to lump these 3 hours together into one mega revision session per day, especially so that they can go out with their friends or hop onto their PC for the rest of the day but breaking these 3 hours into two sessions of an hour and a half, or 3 sessions of an hour will help to keep their concentration levels up, which means more committed to memory.
5. Find a study buddy
Revising alongside a friend can be really helpful to some teens. If both teens are taking the same subject, they can test each other with past paper questions, discussing answers, which is a great way to revise. Even if they are taking different subjects, the moral support of having a friend working close by can really help, especially for teens with ADHD. In the ADHD world this is called ‘body doubling,’ where having a friend close by enables the teen with ADHD to concentrate more.
6. Encourage them to test themselves
Perhaps the most effective way to revise is for teens to test their own knowledge, using past papers, questions they have made up for themselves, multiple choice tests on apps and websites or making note cards with questions on the front and answers on the back. Sometimes it can help if you offer to read the questions and allow your teen to explain the answer to you, and you may learn something new too!
7. Suggest regular breaks
It may be tempting to encourage teens to keep going when they finally get into the swing of revising, however it’s important for them to take regular breaks, get outside in nature and get some exercise. Exercise can improve memory retention and concentration as well as reducing stress and improving sleep. A quick hour’s walk with the family dog, a bike ride around the local park, or even just a picnic in nature can recharge your teen’s batteries.
8. Factor in little rewards
Teen brains are very pleasure and reward-seeking, much more so than adults and younger children. This neurological fact can be spun to your teen’s advantage if they and you devise some small rewards that they can achieve after a set amount of revision time. These rewards don’t have to be big; they could be something as simple as a bar of favourite chocolate, watching a movie, meeting up with a friend for a coffee, or buying a new nail varnish or gym bottle. These rewards can provide the last little push teens need to finish revising, especially if their motivation is flagging.
While not strictly a revision tip, I strongly believe the most important thing parents can do for their teens around exam time is to show them unconditional love and support. Exams are tough for teens for so many reasons. They need us to be their safe place, with as little pressure as possible at home, and they need to know that we are proud of them no matter what. Our love should not be conditional on hours spent revising or grades achieve in an exam, so my final suggestion is to tell your teen that you love them and that you’re proud of them, no matter what.
Exam season throw up so many questions for parents, like how much sleep do teenagers need to function as best as they can? But while it feels necessary to step in a help out as much as you can, it's also important to let your kids have some alone time as giving teens ‘space and opportunity’ to be independent helps them thrive according to an educator. While you step away for a bit, why not use the time to learn some teenage slang so you can join in with the terms your teen might use.
