Why nothing you've tried seems to work
If you've ever found yourself thinking...
"We've tried everything."
More practice.
More encouragement.
More reminders.
More sitting beside them at the kitchen table.
...and your teenager still seems to get stuck...
I want to reassure you about something.
You probably haven't been helping the wrong way.
You may simply have been trying to solve the wrong problem.
I know that feeling.
For years, I believed exactly what most English teachers believe.
If students struggled with writing...
they simply needed more practice.
So I created more worksheets.
More vocabulary activities.
More planning pages.
More writing exercises.
Some students improved.
But there was one group of students who didn't.
No matter how many resources I gave them...
they still froze when it was time to write.
And I couldn't work out why.
Then one quiet conversation changed everything.
One afternoon I sat beside a student who had been staring at a blank page for almost ten minutes.
I quietly asked,
"What's making this so hard?"
He didn't say,
"I hate writing."
He didn't say,
"I can't be bothered."
Instead, he looked at me and whispered,
"I just don't know where to start."
That sentence stayed with me.
Because suddenly everything made sense.
I had been looking at the writing...
instead of what happened before the writing.
I'd been trying to improve essays.
But many students weren't even getting to the point where they could begin one.
Imagine asking someone to climb a ladder...
without giving them the first rung.
That's what writing can feel like for many teenagers.
Not because they aren't capable.
Not because they aren't trying.
Because they can't see the first step.
That's why more practice doesn't always help.
When a teenager feels overwhelmed...
giving them another worksheet often feels like giving them another mountain to climb.
The problem isn't effort.
It's overload.
Once I understood that...
I stopped asking,
"How can I get them to write more?"
Instead, I started asking,
"What's making it so hard to begin?"
That one question changed the way I taught forever.
Your teenager may be carrying more than you realise.
From the outside...
it can look like procrastination.
Avoidance.
Laziness.
A lack of motivation.
But underneath...
many teenagers are feeling something completely different.
They're overwhelmed.
They're worried about getting it wrong.
They're trying to hold too many ideas in their head at once.
And sometimes...
they simply don't know what to do first.
When we understand that...
our response changes.
And often...
so does theirs.
One thought I'd love to leave you with...
The next time your teenager gets stuck...
instead of wondering,
"Why won't they start?"
Try asking yourself,
"I wonder what's making the first step feel so difficult?"
Sometimes that tiny shift changes the entire conversation.
Over the next few days, I'll continue sharing some of the biggest lessons I learned from working with thousands of teenagers.
My hope is that by the end of this short series, you'll understand your own teenager in a completely different way.
With care,
Francesca