A Parent’s Survival Guide to the HSC.
A psychologist’s advice.
It seems appropriate that I write a parent’s survival guide to the HSC given we all know that when a teenager goes through the HSC, really their whole family does too. Assessment tasks, rankings, ATARs, early entry, scaling and so on. The HSC is a whole beast, which by October of each year has taken over the functioning of approx. 70,000 families across NSW. I imagine that by release of results in December, most parents lay next to each other in bed and sigh with relief. One down, how-ever-many-siblings-to-go.
Whenever I’m supporting parents in this space, the key is helping them to understand the relationship between stress and the neurobiology of a teenager’s brain.
Firstly, the teenage brain is still growing. On the outside they might look like they’re all grown up, but on the inside the brain still has a HEAP of refining to do. Yes, they’ve mastered the basics. But what’s missing is the integration of parts. The pathways between their frontal cortex (the part that makes decisions, shuts down impulses, uses logic and reason) are not yet developed enough to subdue the messaging from the subcortical structures (the parts responsible for emotions, drives). In more simple language, the teenage brain feels all the feelings, but lacks the structures involved in managing them.
So where an adult can rationalise external pressure and feelings of stress (i.e., I feel stressed because my boss is pushing me on this deadline, but if I just do X, Y & Z, I’ll be fine), a teenager struggles to calm the system and instead is driven by the feeling (i.e., Everyone says the HSC is vital, unless I get top marks on every assignment, I won’t get into university). Can you see the problem here? Teenagers don’t yet have the cognitive architecture to adeptly manage high stress.
Secondly, when we’re feeling stressed or anxious, our brain releases a whole bunch of chemicals which essentially override our ability to think rationally. When this happens, our thinking becomes fixated, hyper focused and rigid. Even if new information is offered, our brains struggle to integrate it into our worldview. In this state, we are essentially self-absorbed and it’s near impossible to see a bigger perspective. In adulthood, we learn to manage this state over time. Our self-awareness grows enough that we can recognise when we’re being rigid and excuse ourselves to calm down and self soothe. BUT this is a learnt process, it develops with time. For teenagers, they haven’t yet had enough of this learning. Therefore, fighting with them to have a bigger perspective in moments of anxiety is largely fruitless.
So, if we put these two concepts together, and then apply the high stress environment of year twelve, we can start to see that the HSC is an unfair challenge. While the department of education and universities pump the pressure on, teenagers don’t yet have the tools to manage this effectively. From a neurobiological level, it’s going to involve tears at some point.
What this means for parents is accepting the journey. If you fall into the trap of approaching the HSC with your adult brain, you’ll never be on the same page as your teenager. You must coach from their skill level, not yours (because by this point in your life you just do it automatically, but they don’t). Most of the time this means being the actual integration between reason and emotion. Walking them through this skill, demonstrating how to do it.
Let’s think about this together. If you don’t go as well as you like in this essay, what is most likely to happen? Is that as bad as your imagining it will be? How might you problem solve from that point onwards?
You’re right you do have a lot of things due at the same time. That is a stressful feeling. I wonder how we could problem solve this?
You feel disappointed at your recent results in Maths and feel like you want to give up. That must be real crappy, because I saw how hard you worked at it. I wonder if you gave yourself some space from it for a few days, if it might help a bit? Maybe in a few days we could re-group and see how we might problem solve Maths from here on in?
Until next time,
Courtney
