Test Prep SanityHow to help your child excel on standardized tests without driving each

other crazy

2

Test Prep Sanity:How to help your child excel on standardized tests without driving each other crazy.

Elie Venezky

Copyright © 2012Copyright Holder

ISBN: 978-1-937445-38-6ISBN DIGITAL: 978-1-937445-39-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012949643

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the

prior written permission of the publisher.The information in this book is provided for informational purposes. Neither the pub-lisher nor the author shall be liable for any physical, psychological, emotional, financial,

or commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages caused or allegedly caused, directly or indirectly, by the use of the infor-

mation in this book. The author and publisher specifically disclaim any liability incurred from the use or application of the contents of this book.

Published by Bush Street Press237 Kearny Street, #174

San Francisco, CA 94108www.BushStreetPress.com

Cover by Zoe Lonergan

Printed in the United States of America

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3 Acknowledgements

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I would like to thank a number of people for helping me with this work: my mother, for her unwavering support and constructive honesty; Phil Cohen, for his additions and

wisdom; Michael Yacavone, for his feedback and support; Caroline Brokaw Tucker, Micah Kelber, Amy Klein, Alex Wenger and Leslie Schnur, for their edits; and Nathan Otto, for

the idea of turning my blog into a book.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, who knew all this stuff and more.

4 Table of Contents

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Table of Contents

Foreword 7Anxiety 8My Philosophy 8You, the Parent 9

Your Attitude 10Why does my attitude matter? ......................................................................................10How do I change my attitude? ......................................................................................11How should I view the test? ...........................................................................................12Why are test scores important? .....................................................................................13How important are test scores? .....................................................................................13Why should I ignore other parents? ..............................................................................13When should I disagree with my child’s guidance counselor? ......................................14

Your Emotions 16How can I avoid stress? .................................................................................................16What can I do if I’m already stressed or angry? ..........................................................16How can I control my emotions? ...................................................................................17

Your Interactions with Your Child 18Why won’t my child listen to me about the test? .........................................................18How should I talk about the test with my child? ..........................................................18Am I accidentally discouraging my child from studying? ............................................18Why should I make a schedule? ....................................................................................19How should I deal with complaining?...........................................................................19Why must I occasionally compromise? .........................................................................20What if my child just won’t do his work? .....................................................................21

Summary 23Your Child 24

Framing the Test 25General rules ..................................................................................................................25How to frame mistakes ..................................................................................................27How to frame poor early results ....................................................................................28How to frame studying ..................................................................................................28The myth of multi-tasking .............................................................................................29A final note on framing the test ....................................................................................29

Your Child’s Attitude 30Why is attitude important? ...........................................................................................30What should I do if my child has a poor attitude about the test? ...............................30Why should my child ignore her friends? .....................................................................31Why doesn’t my child care about the test? ....................................................................31

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How to Help 32How can I help my child succeed on his test? ...............................................................32What are some online resources? ..................................................................................33How does food affect preparation? ................................................................................34How does sleep affect preparation? ...............................................................................34What can I do if my child won’t study? .......................................................................35Should I reward my child for studying? ........................................................................35If my child is struggling, why can’t I tell him he’s just not a good test-taker? ..............36

Summary 37The Tests 38

Methodology 39How do standardized tests differ from school exams? ..................................................40Why don’t study and practice help as much as they should? .......................................46

Registration 47The SAT 48The ACT 51Should My Child Take the SAT or the ACT? 53The PSAT 54SAT Subject Tests 55The ISEE 56The SSAT 58The SHSAT 60Summary 62

Test Prep 63An Overview 64

What’s the best way to prepare? ...................................................................................64How should I structure tutoring? ..................................................................................64Why are mock exams important? ................................................................................65When should we start tutoring? ....................................................................................66What should my child study? ........................................................................................66How should my child study? ..........................................................................................66

Dealing with Test Anxiety 69How does test anxiety affect my child? .........................................................................69How do I deal with test anxiety? ...................................................................................69That’s great . . . but how do I do that? ..........................................................................70Hypnosis?! Won’t I end up clucking like a chicken? .....................................................70What’s NLP? .................................................................................................................71What? .............................................................................................................................72I’ve heard NLP is pseudoscience and has been disproved by therapists. .....................72What else can help with test anxiety? ...........................................................................72

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Hire a Tutor 74What does a great tutor offer? .......................................................................................74

Finding the Right Tutor 75Three costly misconceptions about tutoring .......................................................75Five mistakes to avoid when hiring a tutor ..................................................................75Three rip-offs to avoid ...................................................................................................76Five questions to ask before hiring a test prep company ..............................................77Four steps to choosing the right tutor ............................................................................77

Summary 79Test Day 80

The Month Before 81Two Weeks Before 81

What should my child do? .............................................................................................81What should I do? .........................................................................................................81Should I tell her she’s going to do well? .........................................................................81What if my child explodes or says she doesn’t want to take the test? ...........................82

A Week Before 82The Night Before 82

What do I do? ................................................................................................................82Should my child study? ..................................................................................................82Should she go to bed early? ............................................................................................83

The Morning Of 83What should she eat for breakfast? ...............................................................................83What should she wear? ..................................................................................................83Why should she exercise? ..............................................................................................83Should she bring a lucky charm?...................................................................................83

Do NOT let your child see this page. 84Test Warm Up 85During the Test 86

Speak up. ........................................................................................................................86Don’t talk about the test during your breaks. ...............................................................86Don’t worry if you miss a string of questions. ..............................................................86Push through tiredness. .................................................................................................86

After the Test 87What should we do? .....................................................................................................87My child thinks he bombed the test. Should he cancel his score? ................................87How do I cancel an SAT score? ....................................................................................87Can we cancel Subject Test scores? ................................................................................88How do I cancel an ACT score? ....................................................................................88

Summary 89

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The Results 90Basic Facts 91

How long until scores come out? ...................................................................................91What’s a good score? ......................................................................................................91What if I think a mistake has been made in scoring? ..................................................91How do I handle a bad score? .......................................................................................91Do schools see all of my child’s scores? .........................................................................92If my child bombs his first attempt but does well on his second, will his bad score hurt his chances of getting into school? .......................................................93What do you mean, look into it? ...................................................................................93If my child does worse the second time, which score will schools count? .....................93If my child didn’t do well, and he’s taking the test again, what should he do? ............93

A Final Note about College 95Summary 96

Resources 97Test Registration 97Where to Find the Actual Tests 98Reading and Viewing Recommendations 100Exercises to Shift Your Focus 101Breathing Exercises 101

About the Author 102

8 Foreword

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Foreword

As parents, we all wish only the best for our children and will provide them with uncon-ditional love. At times, unfortunately, this unconditional love puts unnecessary anxiety on them. This occurs quite often when we ourselves are “in the dark” about what is being asked of our children. This especially occurs when it comes to their social and academic lives. Being a parent myself, I feel this anxiety, too. Each day we send our children off to school to learn, interact and find themselves; it is during these hours of the day that they are no longer under our guidance and supervision, and we cannot protect or enlighten them. As parents we understand that this is a natural part of our children growing up, but it’s still difficult.

Our anxiety heightens even more when it comes to our children’s academic futures. We want to give them all the best opportunities to attend the “best” schools/colleges and have successful and meaningful careers. We know, as we have all been through it one way or another, that standardized tests are an integral piece of their academic careers: it is how they will be evaluated for admission to schools. With that said, we unfortunately do not always understand standardized tests, especially how we can assist our children and what are the dos and don’ts. Often, we unknowingly get in the way of our child’s progress on these exams, not because we don’t care, but because we love our children and want them to succeed.

Too often, we are unsure how we can best provide for our children when it comes to their schooling and specifically standardized tests. I believe this book will provide you with a clear road map on how you can best serve your children for their exams, and many of these ideas can cross over to other aspects of their lives, as well. I commend my business partner, Elie, for the many hours he has dedicated to putting together this comprehensive road map that we as parents can follow during this journey.

Phil CohenDirector/Co-OwnerPrestige Prep

9 Our Philosophy

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Anxiety

I’m just so worried. All I can think about is that test and M. crashing. I mean, if he doesn’t do well, where’s he going to go?! His grades are OK, but they’re not good enough. He doesn’t even take this seriously. He says he’ll do the work, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t care, and it’s killing me!

L. sat at the table, shoulders slumped. It hurt to hear, because I knew that she loved her son and only wanted the best for him. But she was driving him crazy with her constant lectures. She was driving herself crazy, as well.

My Philosophy

Most parents have a sound philosophy about their children’s learning: it should be geared toward overall improvement, it should increase self-esteem, and it should be individual in regards to a child’s abilities. Then standardized tests come along and all these beliefs go out the window.

It doesn’t have to be this way. I believe test prep doesn’t have to make everyone crazy. I believe it can improve a sense of self and a love of learning. And I believe it can impart knowledge and a set of strategies that kids will use for the rest of their lives.

These beliefs don’t mean there won’t be hard work. All the positive intentions in the world won’t save you on test day if you haven’t studied. But there’s a way to teach students every-thing they need for an exam while keeping everyone sane, relaxed and happy. This phi-losophy is what this book is all about.

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You, the ParentThe more relaxed, consistent and positive you are, the better your child will do on his exam. Believe it or not, the more uptight, negative and inconsistent you become, the

more your child will withdraw and the worse he’ll do.

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Your Attitude

Why does my attitude matter?You might think your child ignores you, and honestly, she might. But, I assure you, she picks up on your belief in her, and it affects her greatly. She won’t admit it for a number of reasons:

• She doesn’t realize it affects her.• She realizes it affects her but doesn’t want to admit it.• She’s hates talking about the test and doesn’t want to talk about it, especially with

her parents.

Again, just because your child doesn’t say your attitude is affecting her doesn’t mean your attitude isn’t affecting her. The power of belief and expectations used to be hippie talk. But recent scientific experiments have shown the power of expectation, and it’s, well, powerful. One theory that particularly applies is Dr. Robert Rosenthal’s principle of the Pygmalion Effect.

The power of expectation

In 1964, students at the elementary Oak School were given an IQ test. Teach-ers at the school were told that the test was the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition, which measured whether students were going to bloom aca-demically in the upcoming year. The teachers were then given a list of the students who scored in the top 20% of the class and who should therefore improve the most in the upcoming year.

The catch was that the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition didn’t exist. The students were just given a standard IQ test called the Test of General Ability, which makes no claims about academic potential. Also, the list of “top 20%” kids was chosen randomly.

The kids randomly chosen as having the most potential showed much high-er gains in IQ over the course of the year - even higher than students who had scored better on the initial IQ test.

Similar tests have confirmed Rosenthal’s results. Your expectations of your child’s perfor-mance matter. So set them high.

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How do I change my attitude?If you believe your child is going to do poorly, you need to change your attitude. It’s not easy, but it can be done. The best steps to change your attitude about your child and the exam are:

• Learn about the test.• Learn about college admissions.• Set up a schedule for your child’s studying.• Hire a tutor you trust.• Be honest.• Shift your focus to the positive.• Practice.

The first five bullet points are covered in depth later in this book. The last two points are covered below.

Shift your focus to the positive.Stop focusing on what your child is doing wrong and start focusing on what he’s doing right. This step may take practice, but it can greatly improve your feelings about your child’s preparation.

You may think the belief in the importance of positive thinking is weird and ridiculous. I understand that view. Until my thirties, I suffered from Last Honest Man Complex, where I felt everyone else on earth was full of crap. Positive people were kidding themselves and other negative people were whiners. I sought out proof to justify my worldview: people who littered, people who didn’t walk fast enough, people who talked too loudly about stupid things. I was always looking for people to prove the negative, and I found a lot of them.

Now, I’m much more positive. I seek out proof to justify this new worldview: people who hold open doors, people who smile, people who give up their seats on the subway for pregnant women. I find a lot of these people, too.

Are there still morons in the world? Of course. But I don’t go out of my way looking for them. The world hasn’t changed, but my experience in it is much better because I’m look-ing for what’s right instead of what’s wrong. Have the same approach toward your child’s study habits. Look for the positive. There’s a time for yelling and pushing (I get to when that is appropriate at the end of the chapter). Until then, be positive.

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Practice

The most potent thing in life is habit. -Ovid

Habit is ten times nature. -Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

I didn’t lose my Last Honest Man Complex overnight. I had years of practice being sour and pessimistic. It took some time to shift my habits. But I eventually succeeded. And if I can become more positive, you definitely can do it, because I was a world-champion grouch.

Practice exercises similar to, but slightly better than, the ones that helped me shift my focus are included in the Resources section at the end of this book.

How should I view the test?People tend to talk about standardized tests in one of two ways:

• They’re stupid and don’t measure intelligence.

Or

• They’re super important and must be taken seriously.

Both sides are right.

The case for stupidThese tests measure how you do on timed, multiple-choice sections of math, reading, vocabulary and grammar questions. They don’t predict success in life, which, after college, is pretty much free of timed math, reading, vocabulary and grammar tests.

Success in business, I’ve found, has much more to do with working intelligently, being personable and marketing well, none of which are measured by any standardized test. Therefore, these tests are stupid.

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The case for importantStandardized tests are very important and must be taken seriously, because they play a major role in whether your child gets accepted into high schools and colleges. Since schools find these tests important, they’re important.

You may think that they shouldn’t be as important as they are, and that it’s unfair. If today is the first time you learn that the world is unfair, congratulations! The entire educational system is unfair, so why should high school and college admissions be any different?

Don’t live in the world of what should be true. Live in the world of what is true. And one thing that is definitely true is that your child needs good test scores.

Why are test scores important?There are too many students applying for too few open spots in most schools, and there aren’t enough people to read their applications. Scores help narrow down the field.

These scores also let school admissions counselors compare students from schools on different levels

How important are test scores?For colleges, it’s important that students score above a certain range. Whether you get a 2120 or a 2160 on the SAT won’t make a difference, but a 2120 versus a 1900 will.

In my conversations with college admissions counselors, they’ve all downplayed the importance of the SAT in their selection processes. But my experience with students has shown something different. I don’t think schools like to admit how big a role test scores play in admissions, but they play a very big role.

High school entrance exams range from extremely important to all-powerful. For private high schools and boarding schools, other factors come into play, such as a student’s char-acter, personal life, athleticism and the parents’ connections. That said, administrators still have too many students applying for limited spots. Test scores represent a way to pare down the field and to explain to an irate parent why his son was rejected.

For test-in public high schools such as Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, your admission is solely based on your SHSAT score.

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Why should I ignore other parents?I get a lot of frantic emails and phone calls from parents about some rumor they heard from another parent. The rumors always fit the following mold:

I heard that [colleges or high schools] will turn you down if you [insert some harmless act]. Another parent was telling me that [some imaginary person] did it and didn’t get in anywhere!

Most parents know little about standardized tests and the college application process, but that doesn’t stop most parents from spreading rumors. It’s understandable in some ways: Parents are stressed, and that stress makes them more likely to believe misinformation, especially when it’s bad. Like vampires need blood, stressed-out people need to stress their friends out as well.

Don’t believe me? Tell four people the following rumor:

Did you hear that colleges now look at the Facebook profiles of applicants’ par-ents!?! A kid last year got turned down because of his father’s profile picture!!!!!

I guarantee it will come back to you within a month, like a bird returning to its nest.

Want to be miserable and on edge throughout the testing process? Believe everything other parents tell you. Want to be calm and relaxed? Ask your tutor if what you heard is true.

When should I disagree with my child’s guidance counselor?I’m pro-guidance counselors, just like I’m pro-teachers. But guidance counselors don’t have time to follow each student’s test preparation. As a result, they often make statements about students in general, and while these statements are right for most students, they may not be right for your child.

The following is an actual conversation I had with a student I’d been tutoring for six months. She was a junior who had signed up to take the November SAT. On her last mock exam, she had scored almost 2300. It was October.

Her: My guidance counselor told me not to take the test in November.

Me: Why?

Her: She said I wouldn’t be ready.

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Me: Do you feel ready?

Her: Yes.

Me: Me, too. You scored a 2280 on your last mock exam.

Her: She said that no junior who’s ever taken the exam in November has ever done well.

Thank you, guidance counselor, whoever you are, for putting such a negative thought into my student’s head right before her test. In his defense, the guidance counselor was looking out for my student’s best interests. But he hadn’t seen the mock exams and practice sets, the improvement in focus and attitude.

If your tutor says your child is ready, but her guidance counselor says she’s not - especial-ly if his reasoning is based on students in general and not your child specifically - listen to the tutor.

That said, be careful of alienating your child’s guidance counselor! He will write a letter of recommendation for your child’s college application, so you need him in your corner. If your child’s tutor and guidance counselor disagree, have the tutor provide you with a writ-ten assessment your child can share with her guidance counselor to keep everyone on the same page.

For the record, my student who supposedly wasn’t ready for the November SAT scored a 2340. Your SAT score ranges from 800 to 2400, and 2340 put her in the top .001% nation-wide: she scored better than 99.99% of the other test takers that day.

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Your Emotions

I was a wreck. I was so nervous I couldn’t even think straight. I knew I was driving my son crazy, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

The parent above is correct: she was driving her son crazy. Your emotions matter, and like your attitude, they can greatly affect your child and his performance.

How can I avoid stress?First off, your goal shouldn’t be no stress. That’s too much pressure on you. It’s a stress-ful time; you’re not wrong to feel anxious. The key is to manage your stress so it doesn’t overwhelm you. The best way to manage stress is to be aware of your emotions and stress levels. Notice when you’re feeling anxious, before you’re so stressed you need to explode.

If you feel yourself getting stressed, take care of it right away. Don’t try to ignore or deny it. Deal with it by doing something you enjoy: go to the gym, talk to a friend, journal, read a book, eat a lot of dark chocolate - whatever makes you happy and calms you down, do it as soon as possible.

If you’re the type of person who doesn’t realize you’re stressed until you explode, then plan a weekly relaxation event as a preemptive strike. It’s not selfish. A more relaxed parent results in a more relaxed student, which results in a higher test score. If that last result is important to you, then take care of yourself.

What can I do if I’m already stressed or angry? The most important step in dealing with an intense emotion is to admit it. Trying to ig-nore it or to pretend it’s not happening will only make it stronger. Strong emotions are like toddlers pulling at your sleeve. They want attention, and if you ignore them, they’re only going to pull harder. Admit how you’re feeling, and you’re already on the path to getting over it.

Why explaining helpsThe next step is to explain how it’s affecting you physically. An example is:

I’m feeling angry with my kid. I feel it in my chest, and it feels kind of like a burning sensation. I can also feel it in my legs, on the outsides of my calves. There it’s more like energy shooting down to my feet.

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The amygdala is the part of your brain responsible for many negative and base human emotions such as fear and anger. When you’re triggered, you send activity to the amygda-la, which makes you angry or scared or whatever the supposedly appropriate response is.

Your pre-frontal cortex is responsible for higher functions, such as the ability to describe feelings. When you’re describing something, you send activity to your pre-frontal cortex.

Therefore, when you start describing your negative state and how it feels, you’re taking activity away from your amygdala and moving it toward your pre-frontal cortex. Remov-ing activity from your amygdala lessens the severity of your negative state.

How can I control my emotions?People think that emotions just happen to them, but you’re actually creating your emo-tions. Dr. Wyatt Woodsmall, a leading expert on retraining thinking patterns, talks about three key methods we use to create our emotions:

• The images you play in your head.• The words you say to yourself.• The tonality of your inner voice.

What I’ve found with most students, and a large number of adults, is that we’re not very nice to ourselves. We imagine disaster scenarios constantly. We talk to ourselves in ways we would never talk to anyone else or allow ourselves to be talked to.

We berate ourselves; we call ourselves stupid; we are sarcastic and mocking of our efforts. And then we wonder why we’re upset. If you want to better control your emotions, pay careful attention to the three methods listed above and treat yourself as you would treat someone you love and support.

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Your Interactions with Your Child

Why won’t my child listen to me about the test?

I sat her down, and I showed her how to do the problem. But she wouldn’t lis-ten! Why!? I was showing her how to get this question right!

Your child won’t listen to you because you’re her parent. It’s that simple. You’re the one who tells her what to eat and to clean her room. She doesn’t want more of you telling her what to do.

Most likely, she’s a teenager, which is not a great time for listening to begin with. Now throw in the anxiety of your expectations (which she can feel), and you’re the last person she wants to talk to about her exam.

You’ve got more important things to teach her. Don’t waste your energy and the small amount of patience she has for you on test prep. Hire a tutor and make life easier on everyone.

How should I talk about the test with my child?The best way to talk about the test is honestly and rarely. As I said earlier, standardized tests are both important and stupid. Let your child know exactly that. If you admit this fact to your child, you take away one of his main complaints, which is that the test is stu-pid. Now if he says it, you can reply, “You’re right.”

And don’t talk about the test much. It leads to less studying, not more. In fact:

Am I accidentally discouraging my child from studying?Sally is concerned that her son John isn’t studying enough for his exam, so she casually mentions to him on Monday night that he might do his ISEE homework, since he has free time. When he doesn’t, Sally mentions it again on Wednesday. On Thursday, she gives John another hint, and another on Friday, a little sharper this time. Finally, on Saturday, Sally sets the rules: no going out until he’s done his ISEE work.

In the above scenario, John has not studied one minute or done one piece of homework. However, in his mind, he’s worked almost every single day.

Neurological studies have shown that our brains react the same to the thought of doing an action as they do to actually performing that action. So a student who is constantly

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thinking about the exam will feel as if he’s constantly working on the exam. From my ex-perience, most kids think about their standardized tests a lot. They think about how they probably should study but don’t want to. They think about how much they hate the test. They think about how unfair it is. That’s a lot of time and mental energy spent on the test. None of it is useful, but that doesn’t matter to their perceptions; they still feel like they’ve worked.

I understand the frustration when someone we love won’t do what he needs to do. But continually mentioning the test works against your goals.

Why should I make a schedule?You need to ensure your child is studying, but constantly monitoring him will have a negative effect. Plus, it’s a pain. The solution is to make a schedule. With a schedule, you won’t have to ask your child if he’s studying; you can check on him at the agreed times and know.

Sit down with your child at the beginning of his prep and find times for him to study. Let him have some say in the schedule. He’ll be more invested in a schedule he helped create than in one given to him. And if he doesn’t follow it, your repercussions will seem fairer.

Schedule = less work and fewer arguments for youNo schedule = uncertainty and irritation

How should I deal with complaining?I don’t care if a student complains about tutoring. I don’t care if a student stares at me like I just stole his birthday. And I don’t care if a student likes me or not. I do care if a student does his work, has confidence in his ability and aces his test. Anything else is a bonus. My goal is that they do well on their standardized tests, not that they like them.

Students have a lot of homework and not much free time. Test prep means even more of the former and less of the latter. Sometimes students complain. I would. Complaining is a method teenagers use to blow off steam and exert some control of their lives. It’s irritating, but there are worse crimes.

The best way to deal with complaining is to validate the feelings behind the complaint. Be aware that there’s a difference between validating feelings and validating the actual com-plaints. For instance, if your child says:

“I hate this test! It’s so stupid! This work isn’t helping at all!”

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Respond by focusing on his frustration:

“You’re right, it’s stupid. You’ve got a lot of work this year, so I imagine it’s really frustrating to have this on top of it.”

That’s it. You don’t need to tell him how important the test is. Now is not the time for being instructive. Now is the time to show you hear his complaints and give his feelings merit. Think about the last time you were really upset. Did you want a reason why your thoughts weren’t 100% accurate, or did you just want to be heard?

The statement, “This work isn’t helping at all,” bears looking into. It could be that he actu-ally believes it, in which case you should talk with his tutor and then LATER talk to him. He could just be blowing off steam, or there could be a problem with the tutor. Ask again when he’s calmed down.

Often, once you validate the complaints, the complaining stops. If the complaining ever becomes truly too much, or is being used as a reason to not do work, then you can address it. But do so when he’s calm, not when he’s enraged. A little complaining is fair trade for doing the work.

Why must I occasionally compromise?I bartended at a number of different places before getting into tutoring. Some bars were highly regimented, and I had no control over what I wore or how I made drinks. Other bars were looser, and I could choose what music to play and how to dress. Guess which bars I worked harder for?

When I had some control over my job, it made the parts I had no control over easier to accept. When I had no control, I looked for ways to get around doing work.

Teenagers are similar. They want to control their lives. Obviously, they’re not ready to do so, but they don’t know that. Give them a little control. When you set the test prep sched-ule with your kid, let him win some of the arguments. He will feel like the schedule was partially his idea, and that will validate it in his eyes.

Look at it like a negotiation: You want both sides to walk away feeling like they’ve won. So if you want your child to study twice a week for an hour and a half, start out by requesting he study three times a week for two hours. Then you can compromise and still get what you want.

Also, if your kid just hates the whole process, let him get away with something (not doing

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his homework, taking a day off) once in a very long while. But when you do, make him agree that this day off is in exchange for working hard later.

If he doesn’t work hard later, you can bring up that he didn’t honor his part of the deal: “You said if I gave you a day off you’d work harder!” It gives you the upper hand in the argument, and it gives you an excuse not to give him another day off in the future. If you allow your kid some freedom, he’ll feel that test prep is a process he’s a part of, in-stead of another obligation forced upon him.

What if my child just won’t do his work? Up until now, I’ve put forth the idea that you should back off your kid and not nag about studying. But some kids need to be pushed and some need consequences. My business partner, Phil Cohen, who’s a parent of two boys and who has been working with kids for over twenty-five years, is a master motivator of children. So I asked him what he would advise a parent to say, and this was his response:

My advice to parents is to be up front with their kids. Be honest and say, “If your goal is to get into a good college or be in a great music program, there’s this part of life where you just have to ‘play the game.’ And the game for you right now is this test. You have to do well on it. And not because it’s fair or it’s right, but because the people who decide whether you get into their schools judge you by it. That’s the game.

“We all play it. We all have jobs and responsibilities, and your job right now is school and studying for this test. You perform well at your job; it opens up doors for you to do what you want to do.

“But if you don’t perform well at your job, it creates an issue for us, because I wouldn’t be doing my job as a parent if I let you get away with it. I’d be failing, and that’s something I won’t do. And you can’t be feeling great about doing poorly, even if you don’t care about it. So look at school and test prep as your job and take them seriously.

“I know you want free time to do what you want, and frankly, I’d rather you get your work done so you can have it, so that come seven or eight at night, when you want to go online, or a friend calls up and wants to do something, I can say yes, and I don’t have to ask if you’ve done your work, or worse, tell you that you can’t go because your work’s not done.

“So I’m not saying you have to work all the time, but work smarter. Don’t spend half an hour arguing about doing work that would have taken ten min-

23 You, the Parent

Test Prep Sanity

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utes to do. You’ve just wasted half an hour and you still have to get work done. And this work has to get done. This is not the battle to choose to get defiant. You don’t want to clean your room, fine, we can argue about that later. But ac-cept that this test is important because it doesn’t just affect you today; it affects you years down the line.

“I’m trying to relate to your common sense, which I know you have. But if you don’t relate to that, we have to get into consequences, and I have to think about what I’m taking away from you instead of what I’m giving you. So let’s get rid of the back and forth. Put this time that we would spend arguing now into do-ing your work. You’ll have more free time. I don’t know how else to say it.

24 You, the Parent

Test Prep Sanity

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SummaryIf you want your child to have a good attitude about the test, you need to lead with a good attitude of your own. You must stay positive and remain as even-keeled as possible. This doesn’t mean accepting everything your child does. There is a time for consequences. However, you can set up a system that makes the need for them much less likely. Your best steps to creating a positive, study-inducing environment are:

• Set high expectations about your child’s chance for success.• Stay positive.• Notice and control your stress.• Take care of the emotions that will undoubtedly occur.• Understand that a standardized test is not the final decision-maker of your child’s

future success.• Ignore other parents who try to scare you.• Be honest with your child about the exam.• Set up a schedule so you and your child always know when it’s time for studying.• Avoid the extremes of constant praise and constant criticism.• If he’s doing his work, accept a moderate amount of complaining. • If he’s not doing his work, set consequences and enforce them.• Hire a tutor so your child gets a higher score and you and your child can maintain

a better relationship.