As if this past school year wasn’t challenging enough, now your teen is facing summer school. Ugh!
Despite your best efforts to get them to complete and hand in assignments, they failed a course (or two). It might seem like they got lazy, gave up, and stopped trying. But there’s hope!
This WILL NOT happen again!
You might be tempted to lay down the law, limit all technology, and restrict sleepovers, making it clear that summer school is serious business. But hold on, that approach might backfire. When their self-esteem is already low, these consequences can feel like punishment, shame, and isolation.
Your Teen Didn’t Try to Fail
Your teen hates the thought of summer school as much as you do. They didn’t want to fail and would much rather have passed. Summer school is a stark reminder of their struggles, both in meeting your expectations and their own.
10 Strategies to Help Your Teen Conquer Summer School
1. Create a Consistent Schedule Together
- Break down their course load into reasonable time chunks. Let your teen decide how many hours each day they will study and when to empower them and respect their autonomy.
2. Set Small, Achievable Goals
- Celebrate baby steps of progress, not perfection, or grades. Small victories build confidence and momentum toward completion, i.e. break harder topics into even smaller chunks for lower anxiety and increased concentration.
3. Check In Supportively
- Agree on regular check-ins to ask, “How are you feeling about summer school? Is there any support you need?” This shows you’re there to support, not monitor or police.
4. Offer Empathy on Hard Days
- Acknowledge their feelings: “I know this is hard and you’d rather be doing other things. This has been a tough year and online learning isn’t your jam.” Normalize feeling anxious, frustrated, or not smart enough in the face of challenge.
5. Focus on Today
- When they’re running on empty, they get overwhelmed and feel like they’ll never get through. Remind your teen to take it one day at a time, working in shorter periods, is the best way to complete larger tasks.
6. Promote Self-Esteem Boosting Activities
- Help them stay connected to friends and activities that boost their self-esteem for better mental health and focus during work periods (using these things as a reward decreases motivation).
7. Create Meaningful Rewards
- Let your teen choose small, reasonable rewards for weekly progress and something for finishing summer school. It doesn’t have to be expensive, or cost money at all, just meaningful to them.
8. Let It Go After Summer School
- Once summer school is over, don’t bring it up again. Let them enjoy the rest of their summer without reminders of their struggles, or what’s coming in September.
9. Build Their Confidence
- Affirm your teen when you see them trying, even for short periods. Focus on what they’re doing right and the courage it takes to complete work that previously reinforced a lack of intelligence.
10. Reflect Without Judgement
- Before the new school year starts, get curious about what habits and homework schedules worked (and what did they like about how YOU approached summer school). Ask questions without judgment to encourage your teen to implement those in the new school year.
Seeking More Personalized Support?
Are you feeling exhausted and hopeless because your teen isn’t living up to their potential and no matter what you’ve tried, they aren’t stepping up?
If you’re craving a proven solution to get your teen to care about their education and engage with you as their greatest ally and support, I invite you to watch my free masterclass. In this masterclass, I share my proven, 3-step framework that shows you how to:
- Understand why nagging, reminding, and creating more consequences doesn’t work.
- Implement effective methods that build your teen’s own internal motivation.
- Set boundaries that build respect with your teen to foster their success.
Watch My Free Masterclass Now!
Learn the proven methods to transform your relationship with your teen and help them succeed in their education! Click below to select and time and I’ll see you there.
See you soon,
