Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks.
Speaker 2: Be good friends, and welcome back. This is the Weekend Collective.
Speaker 2: If you just joined us, you're a couple of hours late.
Speaker 2: But if you hit our couple of hours late, you
Speaker 2: want to catch our earlier hours. The panel with Mark
Speaker 2: Krassel and Wilhelmine Shrimpton. Great fun, Wilhelm and is just
Speaker 2: Scott engaged. We had a bit of not fun at
Speaker 2: her expense. We celebrated that a little bit. And also
Speaker 2: the Wonderof Radio show with Debbie Roberts from Property of
Speaker 2: But right now the Parents Squad and my guest is
Speaker 2: Catherine Burkett. Good afternoon, Good afternoon. How are you doing
Speaker 2: all right? Keep me out of my good thank you?
Speaker 3: Well sort of, that's good.
Speaker 2: That's good, that's good. We want to talk about the
Speaker 2: whole kids study and homework thing. And I said tomorrow
Speaker 2: they go back to school, but of course it's Monday.
Speaker 2: I think I must be mentally on Sunday already. And
Speaker 2: just the best way to get your kids to study,
Speaker 2: let's just say successfully, let's not put too much on it.
Speaker 2: You want them to study what they need to study.
Speaker 2: You want them to do well, you're not reay to
Speaker 2: grind their gears too much. But then again, you want
Speaker 2: them to spend the time that they're spending effectively, so
Speaker 2: things like playing music and all that. What did I mean,
Speaker 2: what was your approach as a as a mum to
Speaker 2: kids homework and especially exam time, study time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some brain science around it. I mean, the
Speaker 3: brain science says that we can't multitask and when we're
Speaker 3: doing multi things that our brain is trying to concentrate on,
Speaker 3: you know, opening up different areas of the brain. But
Speaker 3: in practical terms, certainly through lockdown when my kids were
Speaker 3: trying to do work, my daughter wants complete silence and
Speaker 3: so I couldn't even play any music when she was
Speaker 3: trying to study. But I remember one day my son
Speaker 3: actually wasn't during lockdown. He was a bit behind on
Speaker 3: work and he was in the lounge. He said he'd
Speaker 3: get his stuff finished because in the lounge he had
Speaker 3: the TV on, he had his phone next to him
Speaker 3: watching the basketball or something. And I went in he
Speaker 3: was working. I was like, nah, you need to turn
Speaker 3: all that off. And I said, just a minute, actually,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what, show me what you're up to
Speaker 3: what you've done. I'm going to come back in an
Speaker 3: hour and I'm going to check in and how much
Speaker 3: you've done. And he had done a heap of work
Speaker 3: and he got it all done by the end of
Speaker 3: the day. And the teacher even wrote and said she
Speaker 3: couldn't believe how much work he had got completed. So
Speaker 3: there's science.
Speaker 2: And actually that's counterintuitive to me.
Speaker 3: Absolutely to me as well, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: Interesting because I would think, I think, okay, because I
Speaker 2: haven't thought about this too much, but I look back
Speaker 2: to when in terms of just being hassled to do homework.
Speaker 2: But I think it's probably about the environment. So if
Speaker 2: he's watching the basketball, I don't think he's working. But
Speaker 2: if he's got the basketball on because he loves the
Speaker 2: vibe of it and it's something when he sits back,
Speaker 2: he goes, oh, what's the score, I'll call on back
Speaker 2: into it. If the environment is conducive to him to study,
Speaker 2: I can see why that would work. But if it's
Speaker 2: if he's on his phone, well.
Speaker 3: We need it. Yeah, that's what we need to just
Speaker 3: And that's what I'm saying. It's totally opposite to what
Speaker 3: I would have I couldn't do it. But what we've
Speaker 3: got to do as parents is stop telling them to
Speaker 3: put a jersey on because we're cold. Right. So, so
Speaker 3: that's the way that my brain worked, So I'm assuming
Speaker 3: that's the way his brain works. And it's not like
Speaker 3: I like music. I like to go. I'm writing a
Speaker 3: book at the moment, and I have to go down
Speaker 3: to a cafe where it's noisy, where it's where it's
Speaker 3: really busy so that I can focus. If I sit
Speaker 3: at home, I can't do it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Other people say they could never do that. What we've
Speaker 3: got to do is say to a young people, is
Speaker 3: you prove to me that you can get work done
Speaker 3: in this space. I'll check in on you. And if
Speaker 3: they are, then how are we to say, would you
Speaker 3: put a jewzy on?
Speaker 2: Actually, I do think that it's easy to confuse it.
Speaker 2: When you were talking about he had what did he
Speaker 2: have on? He had music and the basketball or what
Speaker 2: was it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the basketball when he had his phone next to him,
Speaker 3: which to me is very distracting. But yeah, you.
Speaker 2: See, because I think that if he was actually watching
Speaker 2: the basketball actively, then he wouldn't have been getting the
Speaker 2: work done. But do you think it? You think what
Speaker 2: I said before is more closer to the point that
Speaker 2: he was. Simply, it's like his version of a busy cafe.
Speaker 2: Some people like a you know, sit there with a
Speaker 2: coffee or something. There are people coming in and going,
Speaker 2: but you focus on things and you like the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: You who run. Whereas if he was watching it, it
Speaker 2: would be okay, buddy, you've been watching that and cheering
Speaker 2: and what have you got done? Bugger all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's exactly it. So I gave him a
Speaker 3: chance to show and then as a you know, I
Speaker 3: would keep checking in. If you were thinking, Okay, they've
Speaker 3: done the first hour and they've got it done. Next
Speaker 3: minute they think, oh cool, mum, that they're not watching
Speaker 3: me anymore, I'm off the hook, I would just say,
Speaker 3: if you want all this distraction around you, then you
Speaker 3: need to prove that you can still get it done.
Speaker 3: So I'm just going to check in every hour, every
Speaker 3: couple of hours, and I want to see that there's
Speaker 3: some more work done. And if they are doing it,
Speaker 3: then were we to judge what they're doing. But if
Speaker 3: they're not, then you have the right to say, no,
Speaker 3: that's distracting. You are watching it now, I can see
Speaker 3: that it's got down to the final whatever, and that's okay.
Speaker 3: But I think what we're doing is we're assuming that
Speaker 3: that's how I studied, that's how I learned, therefore that's
Speaker 3: how they should and that's not the right way of parenting.
Speaker 2: How do you, well, just from your own point of view,
Speaker 2: how do you best get stuff done? Do you need
Speaker 2: silence or do you need some other sort of vibe?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I said, I'm trying to write a book,
Speaker 3: and I don't like writing. I talk much better than
Speaker 3: I write, So I do go down to a cafe
Speaker 3: where there's lots of distraction and I have I feel
Speaker 3: like I have to hone in and concentrate, Whereas at
Speaker 3: home I'm sort of up and I'll go do the
Speaker 3: washing or do something else. You'll find something to distract me.
Speaker 3: So I prefer chaos around me. But I grew up
Speaker 3: with five siblings and a mad household, so potentially that's
Speaker 3: or maybe it's just genetics. I don't know what is it.
Speaker 2: I mean, your specialty is a neuroscience. What is what
Speaker 2: do we know about the way the brain works in
Speaker 2: this respect in terms of learning, focusing, studying.
Speaker 3: What we what we shouldn't be doing is multitasking. So
Speaker 3: when and we can't multitask, but that word is used
Speaker 3: to think that we do two things at once, but
Speaker 3: what we're actually doing is shutting down one part of
Speaker 3: our brain and opening up the other. So we can't
Speaker 3: do things like right and then check an email and
Speaker 3: then answer the phone call. That's multitasking. But if you've
Speaker 3: got something and you were describing the basketball as being
Speaker 3: a background thing, that's a really lower brain behavior. It's
Speaker 3: very procedural. We don't have to concentrate on it. That
Speaker 3: actually arms the brain. I was doing a presentation yesterday
Speaker 3: and there was a lady knitting up there and showed
Speaker 3: me all of the knittings she'd got done. And that's
Speaker 3: a very low lower brain procedural thing that helps the
Speaker 3: upper brain engage. But you can't do multiple upper brain
Speaker 3: things because we have to switch between them. That's not good.
Speaker 3: So you don't want them going on social media and
Speaker 3: then going back to their work and doing that. Do
Speaker 3: you see? You don't want them. And the reason I
Speaker 3: could leave my son with his phone is because he's
Speaker 3: not a social media person. If it was my daughter,
Speaker 3: I probably would have taken the phone off because she's
Speaker 3: a social media person and she might have been switching
Speaker 3: into that, But again that's up to you as a parent.
Speaker 3: Brain can't switch between cognitive tasks. Sorry, it switches between
Speaker 3: it and that uses energy. It can't do two cognitive
Speaker 3: tasks at once.
Speaker 2: Okay, this has made me rethink a couple of things
Speaker 2: with my own kids, because we're on a bit of
Speaker 2: a warpath about phones. Just you know, my kids are
Speaker 2: not that old either. They're twelve and thirteen, and we're
Speaker 2: sort of on the warpath because we want them to
Speaker 2: not rely on their phones. As every parent, you don't
Speaker 2: want them to be joined at the hippen. They can
Speaker 2: be addictive. But for instance, I think my daughter, one
Speaker 2: of my daughters, likes to have a bit of music
Speaker 2: on when she's doing her homework, and I think we
Speaker 2: might have rained on that, paraded a bit. But now
Speaker 2: I'm sort of thinking maybe so long as she's not
Speaker 2: checking her messages all the time, because I suspect that's
Speaker 2: the music is the pretext for being able to keep
Speaker 2: in touch on the messages. But if it was just
Speaker 2: music and that's what she wants to listen to she's
Speaker 2: got her headphones on, then I'm thinking I need to
Speaker 2: chill out on that a bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in all honesty, what I'd do is, if
Speaker 3: it's only music that she wants, then she can put
Speaker 3: the music on, she can transfer it to her headphones,
Speaker 3: and the phone can stay next to you and she
Speaker 3: still gets her music. And you know she's not checking
Speaker 3: your messages, right, So if it is about the music,
Speaker 3: then she can agree to that and she can have
Speaker 3: the music.
Speaker 2: What's music? Because you talk about the upper brain up,
Speaker 2: what's the expression you used upper and lower one of
Speaker 2: them's in the background and the other ones. You know,
Speaker 2: that's multitasking level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I use the words red and green brain
Speaker 3: when I train, And the red brain is the lower brain.
Speaker 3: It's the two year old brain. It's what we can do.
Speaker 3: It's the stuff that we do without thinking, procedural stuff,
Speaker 3: automatic stuff. And then the green brain is the very cortical,
Speaker 3: executive functioning, thinking processing part of the brain. Really, so
Speaker 3: we can have something like music, or we could walk,
Speaker 3: or we could be sitting on a Swiss ball. You know,
Speaker 3: those sorts of things are really good for the lower
Speaker 3: part of the brain. The lady who was knitting was
Speaker 3: very clear to me that she didn't have a she
Speaker 3: didn't have a pattern. She was just doing it all
Speaker 3: from me. If she'd been looking at a pattern and
Speaker 3: having to learn a new way of knitting, that would
Speaker 3: have been upper brain, green brain. But she was very procedural.
Speaker 3: She knew how to do it without even thinking. So
Speaker 3: that's the difference. You can do a lower brain in
Speaker 3: an upper brain task at the same time, but two
Speaker 3: upper brain tasks require switching between an energy transfer.
Speaker 2: Okay, by the way, you want your calls on this
Speaker 2: O eight hundred and eighty ten and eight. How do
Speaker 2: you approach getting your kids? Oh, I want to find
Speaker 2: a nice way of asking this question. Sorry, I guess
Speaker 2: opposed to getting your kids to do this? How do
Speaker 2: you support support that? Thank you, thank you, Catherine. How
Speaker 2: do you support your kids to get their homework done
Speaker 2: or their exam study done to a level where they
Speaker 2: are going to do their best and give themselves a
Speaker 2: good chance at success? And I didn't say maximize because
Speaker 2: I think that just implies all this pressure and everything
Speaker 2: that you're going to do. You're going to nail everything.
Speaker 2: But so your kids are establishing themselves with good habits,
Speaker 2: so when they turn up for the exam, they've done
Speaker 2: the work they need to do to give them a
Speaker 2: good shot at really doing well, and do you actually
Speaker 2: ride them on it? Because I always had to think
Speaker 2: of my own childhood because my kids aren't at exam
Speaker 2: age yet. And I don't know if my mum ever
Speaker 2: told me to go and study Catherine. I think she
Speaker 2: might have, but I might have ignored her, and I
Speaker 2: just I was a last minute sort of guy anyway,
Speaker 2: And I think I've got the exam tomorrow, I better
Speaker 2: do some work on it, which was probably not ideal.
Speaker 2: But then again, I think if Mama just nagged me
Speaker 2: into doing it when she thought I should do it,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that what that would have achieved. Maybe
Speaker 2: a plus, who knows.
Speaker 3: I mean, come on, life is we're successful in life
Speaker 3: because we make our own track. So if you're going
Speaker 3: to have to nag and nag and nag, then seriously,
Speaker 3: what's that meaning for your child's future? And also there's
Speaker 3: so much genetics. I never really pushed my kids in
Speaker 3: a big way to study, and my daughter was just
Speaker 3: a massive studyer, that's just what she did. My son
Speaker 3: not so much. I actually had to ask my daughter
Speaker 3: to stop studying sometimes and chill out. But you know,
Speaker 3: completely the opposite for my son, so there was the difference.
Speaker 3: But you're definitely if you're going to nag, that's not
Speaker 3: going to work. Also, the brain can't continue to concentrate
Speaker 3: in the green brain for long periods of time, so
Speaker 3: we do need to let them have brakes, go for
Speaker 3: a walk, have something to eat, you know, stop and
Speaker 3: do something that's not cognitive brain. So you know, laugh
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm hilarious. It's easy. He actually just on that.
Speaker 2: I've got lots of questions. I've got a few texts
Speaker 2: on this stuff as well. Let's just go as somebody's
Speaker 2: texting me saying I'm thinking about ADD as I'm listening
Speaker 2: to you, Attention deficit disorder. And of course there's all
Speaker 2: the different acronyms or whatever. I can't keep up with them.
Speaker 2: But are there certain brains that either need not distraction
Speaker 2: but need other stuff going on, like you like the
Speaker 2: noisy cafe and things. But in a way, that's your
Speaker 2: silence from what you described to me, because otherwise you're thinking,
Speaker 2: I've got to go do the washing and do this
Speaker 2: at home, so you remove yourself from distractions. But are
Speaker 2: there certain brains that need stimulation outside music, noise, chaos,
Speaker 2: and what makes the difference between those who need Look
Speaker 2: if I hear a pin drop, I'm distracted.
Speaker 3: And again that's genetics, that is neurodiversity. Absolutely, there's some brains,
Speaker 3: but not every ADHD or add any person works in
Speaker 3: the same way. So there's more difference within neurodiversity categories
Speaker 3: than between. And why I'm saying that is because again,
Speaker 3: just check in with your kid and just say, how
Speaker 3: do you work best? What can I create for you?
Speaker 3: What situation can I create? Again, during lockdown, my daughter
Speaker 3: had to go away and aid to be really careful
Speaker 3: about not playing my music when I was working because
Speaker 3: she found that really difficult and really distracting. So I
Speaker 3: respected her space. So let's check in and yes, this
Speaker 3: diagnosis can help, but actually just ask a young person
Speaker 3: and the diagnoses don't define us. They give us a
Speaker 3: little bit of guidance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we want to have for you, Oh eight hundred
Speaker 2: eighty ten and eighty what how do you support your
Speaker 2: kids when it comes to studying for exams and homework?
Speaker 2: And is it okay to study with distractions? Because I
Speaker 2: think the point that Catherine Burkert our guest has made
Speaker 2: is that just because your cold, don't make your kids
Speaker 2: stick on a jersey, they might be fine. It's a
Speaker 2: little bit of an approach probably every parents should take
Speaker 2: just about on every issue. I think we'll think of
Speaker 2: some exceptions to that they won't be Catherine in the
Speaker 2: break it is twenty one minutes past five News Talks.
Speaker 2: You'd be helping your kids to study, and also should
Speaker 2: you just let them? Should you push them? Or do
Speaker 2: you need Is there a point where you're like, okay, me,
Speaker 2: Naggin's not going to do it. Maybe you have to
Speaker 2: learn this lesson the hard way. Eight hundred eighty ten
Speaker 2: and eighty twenty one past five. No Crystal Long Sancho
Speaker 2: that she's bad blood paper, Captain Sancho, and welcome back.
Speaker 2: This is the weekend Collective untim Beverage, and this is
Speaker 2: the parents Squad. My guest is she is an educational
Speaker 2: psychologist with her Actually, how do we you've got it? Do?
Speaker 2: I say? With a bent on neuroscience? So how do
Speaker 2: we put it? Catherine Burkeert, you're Acien.
Speaker 3: I'm actually not an I'm not an education with a psychologist.
Speaker 3: I haven't done my registration, but I do have my
Speaker 3: masters of educational psychology, just to clarify, but that's okay.
Speaker 3: I call myself a neuroscience trainer.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you've done a master's in educational psychology and
Speaker 2: you're a neuroscientist. Whether okay, there we go, well, we'll we'll,
Speaker 2: we'll tighten that one.
Speaker 3: Up something like that. And I'm applying for my doctorate.
Speaker 3: So and in six years you'll be able to introduce
Speaker 3: me as a doctor. Fantastic sex years.
Speaker 2: I was actually just chatting with my producer that you
Speaker 2: look very relaxed and bright eyed and bushy tail today
Speaker 2: or something. We're thinking, wonderful, wonder if you wonder what
Speaker 2: you've been what's been keeping you busy or not.
Speaker 3: Been knowing the lawns today? So maybe it's beautiful sunny day.
Speaker 2: Virtuous glow, that's what it is. There we go. You know,
Speaker 2: we're talking, let's take some calls. We're talking about how
Speaker 2: to get your kids to support your kids to study
Speaker 2: and how much you should push them to actually do
Speaker 2: some homework because there will be the procrastinators and the
Speaker 2: prevaricadas and all that. Let's go to a call here, Jan.
Speaker 4: Hello, Hikin and Ti Hi, I have a couple of ideas,
Speaker 4: and I'd like to ask you about Catherine. When I
Speaker 4: was doing my nursing training, I found reading the notes
Speaker 4: onto a tape and then playing the tape while it
Speaker 4: was sleeping at night helped me to retain a lot
Speaker 4: of them information. Quite surprisingly it worked.
Speaker 2: Well, Okay, that's one, we'll love that one away. What
Speaker 2: was the second question?
Speaker 4: And the other one is with communicating with anybody, children especially,
Speaker 4: You can make a mood barometer. It's a bit like
Speaker 4: a clock, and you have on one side all the
Speaker 4: happy adjectives and on the other side all the sad adjectives,
Speaker 4: and you have the big hand in the little hand,
Speaker 4: your little hand. The child can move it to how
Speaker 4: they're feeling their mood and because often they have trouble
Speaker 4: expressing how they're feeling or what they want to communicate,
Speaker 4: and it gives a doorway into the communication between adult
Speaker 4: and child, and the adult can move the large hand
Speaker 4: to indicate how to read in the child.
Speaker 2: What age is the child at this stage when you're doing.
Speaker 4: This, anyone, okay, couple you know, and you can hang
Speaker 4: it on the wall. So it seems you can buy
Speaker 4: a little clip thing literally pushed through the whole to
Speaker 4: join the hands and together.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting one. Does sound like something you could
Speaker 2: also move quite passively aggressively on moving the little hand
Speaker 2: to angry right now. But actually that first to comment
Speaker 2: from jan there on the studying. I have heard about
Speaker 2: people the subliminal stuff when you're sleeping. I must say
Speaker 2: that sounds like the short path to hell for me.
Speaker 2: But is there anything in that you know, her having
Speaker 2: dictated her notes and then playing them back at night
Speaker 2: as she's falling asleep or asleep.
Speaker 3: I can't talk to the sleeping stuff could be. I
Speaker 3: can't say yes or no. But what I definitely know
Speaker 3: is that the more the more ways we put it
Speaker 3: into our brain, if we have to use different parts
Speaker 3: of our cortex to process that information, it actually the
Speaker 3: process of learning is myelination. We connect the cells through myelination.
Speaker 3: That is increased if we're listening and talking, and you
Speaker 3: know that sort of thing. So I always if I
Speaker 3: found something quite difficult, I'd read it out loud to
Speaker 3: myself when I did, because I knew that now I'm
Speaker 3: speaking it and hearing it and reading it all those
Speaker 3: parts of my brain at the same time, increased the
Speaker 3: myelination and increase the likelihood that the brain will remember that.
Speaker 3: So absolutely, the using different modes of sensory does definitely help.
Speaker 3: It's excellent information.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Actually, what's the thing with concentration as well, my
Speaker 2: memory is that when it comes to really learning and
Speaker 2: absorbing information effectively, twenty twenty five minutes at a time
Speaker 2: is pretty much the max you can do when you're
Speaker 2: in that green zone, I guess, Or is it longer
Speaker 2: than that? What do we know?
Speaker 3: Gain genetics, Some people can do it for amazing amounts
Speaker 3: of time, and we've got to be careful about things
Speaker 3: like that. Theoretically, you can't train for more than a
Speaker 3: certain amount of time, but I have for twenty years
Speaker 3: and it's still been you know, people taken info. So
Speaker 3: it also depends on how you do it. To really
Speaker 3: focus is hard. But I can focus. If I get
Speaker 3: into focus, I can do it for an hour and
Speaker 3: I haven't faulted in my focus. If I'm writing, if
Speaker 3: I can get really into that zone, but then other
Speaker 3: days I can't. So I think we need to be
Speaker 3: really careful with words and numbers like that. But you
Speaker 3: can't do it for a long, long period of time
Speaker 3: because it takes a massive amount of energy. So it's
Speaker 3: actually the energy that's being used to activate those parts
Speaker 3: of the brain. You need to go and move and
Speaker 3: walk around and you know, have a dance or something.
Speaker 2: Texas says. My seventeen year old son gets great results
Speaker 2: at school. He has the Big Bang theory on continuously
Speaker 2: while doing his study at home. It drives me nuts
Speaker 2: until I realized he was actually learning and doing great.
Speaker 2: He did find exams difficult because of the distractions of
Speaker 2: one hundred other students being around him. In preparation this
Speaker 2: year for exams, he stops the Big Band theory a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks before the exams. Very common within his cohort.
Speaker 2: Love your shows, Tim, Well, that's very nice. Thank you
Speaker 2: for you. That's a comedy. I would find it that
Speaker 2: quite a distraction unless he's listened to it so many times.
Speaker 2: It's just a familiar sound.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my son. Again, he has the office and stuff
Speaker 3: on in the background all the time and he just
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to notice it. So again, that's beautiful to
Speaker 3: hear that the parent is listening to the young man's
Speaker 3: way of learning. What she has noticed and what is
Speaker 3: something that we do need to put into context is
Speaker 3: that the way that the brain puts information in is
Speaker 3: the way it's more likely to take her out. So
Speaker 3: it is right than in exams it's often very quiet,
Speaker 3: you can't move, and so that is sometimes the way
Speaker 3: we need to practice being able to regurgitate this information.
Speaker 3: We might take it in a certain way. But then,
Speaker 3: like she said, she's that weeks four and some of
Speaker 3: the friends have done that is because they need to
Speaker 3: learn while they're regurgitating that information to do it with silence,
Speaker 3: you know, quiet, because that's what the situation of the
Speaker 3: exam is. So there is the research that suggests that
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: That intuitively makes sense because you get people who study
Speaker 2: and do well in their and they do terribly in exams.
Speaker 2: And I would have a suspicion that from some of those,
Speaker 2: if not many of them, it's simply because the environment
Speaker 2: of an exam is so foreign that their brain is
Speaker 2: massively distracted just by the fact they're not comfortable.
Speaker 3: And stress response is huge in exams, I mean, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, exams are first to assessing whether that human
Speaker 3: can get themselves into a calm enough state and feel
Speaker 3: confident enough and safe enough in that space to access
Speaker 3: their green brain. After that, if the informations there can
Speaker 3: you know, they can get it out. But actually most
Speaker 3: exams are actually testing whether we can get into the
Speaker 3: cortical areas of our brain. And that's why I disagree
Speaker 3: with them in some ways, because some of our young
Speaker 3: people do activate a bit of stress in there and
Speaker 3: they're not able to process the stuff that they do
Speaker 3: know and get it down. But we have exams, so
Speaker 3: we've got to learn how to do them the best way.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that I do. I've been banging on to
Speaker 2: my audience. Will know, I've been teaching myself French through
Speaker 2: an app. But they have time trial sort of vocabulary matchups,
Speaker 2: and when you get into it, I know if I
Speaker 2: get tense about trying to finish within time, otherwise I
Speaker 2: have to start again, and so this anxiety builds up
Speaker 2: and I become less and less good at it. And
Speaker 2: I've actually found that if I tell myself that almost
Speaker 2: not to engage with it at all, just it's there,
Speaker 2: the vocabulary, and if I basically just look at it
Speaker 2: and go, well, my brain knows the answer. I just
Speaker 2: see what my brain can do without caring. I can
Speaker 2: almost go twice as fast because my brain is making
Speaker 2: the connections that it knows without that the nervous pulse,
Speaker 2: and how much it can cock up your progress. It's
Speaker 2: quite amazing how much quicker you can be if you
Speaker 2: simply don't care. And when I say don't care, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. When I reduce the anxiety of
Speaker 2: the competitive nature, it's just like, well, what sounds to that?
Speaker 2: And what's that? Whereas if somebody said this hundred bucks
Speaker 2: on this, I might stumble.
Speaker 3: Yep. My daughter's doing law exams this year and one
Speaker 3: of her exams is fifty percent of the year's mark,
Speaker 3: and if she fails, then she has to sit the
Speaker 3: whole year again. That's a lot of pressure on one exam. Now,
Speaker 3: luckily she does quite well because she's learned lots of
Speaker 3: ways and she's done you know that sort of stuff,
Speaker 3: and so hopefully she'll be right. But there's a lot
Speaker 3: of young people that for that, just walking in there,
Speaker 3: just knowing the pressure. You can't say it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: like your friends, you know. And that's why we do
Speaker 3: need to let our kids have as many exams because
Speaker 3: you've learnt through doing it. We do need to advocate
Speaker 3: for our kids being in exams in undergrads and you know,
Speaker 3: in their early years at college. Let them be in exams.
Speaker 3: People say they're anxious, so they shouldn't have exams in
Speaker 3: year nine and ten. Actually give them as many exams
Speaker 3: as possible, give them as many things in sports spaces
Speaker 3: or whatever that's going to make them tense and anxious,
Speaker 3: and talk to them about that so that they can
Speaker 3: realize that actually, what you've realized is what they need
Speaker 3: to realize, because otherwise that's going to be the hindrance
Speaker 3: to the exam success rather than the knowledge.
Speaker 2: That's interesting that my daughter's schools they are having tests
Speaker 2: and exams. I think that's you know, they have from
Speaker 2: third form which is year year nine nine, and I
Speaker 2: thought that was a bit earlier. But they're probably onto
Speaker 2: it because they're introducing them to that when it really
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, even though exactly and.
Speaker 3: It does matter, but also it doesn't matter because they're
Speaker 3: not going to fail and they have to sit the
Speaker 3: year again, which could happen if by the time we
Speaker 3: get to year twelve. So that's why weis a lot
Speaker 3: of parents go, no, we shouldn't be having them, because
Speaker 3: they're making our kids anxious and year nine. Well, actually
Speaker 3: i'd rather than make get anxious and year nine talk
Speaker 3: to them about it, get them to understand that exactly
Speaker 3: what you have said, chill out, How can we do this?
Speaker 3: What would work next time? Hey, you got better next
Speaker 3: time and the exam you did way better than you
Speaker 3: did last time, which means next time you'll be even better.
Speaker 3: So that's the sort of reason we should be having
Speaker 3: practice so we can learn not to hopefully learn to
Speaker 3: get less anxious. And by the way, that's a really
Speaker 3: really easy thing to say, a difficult thing to do.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's well, even from my own experience, it's actually
Speaker 2: quite highly meditative to tell yourself you don't care you
Speaker 2: know that, to reduce that anxiety, because I know it's
Speaker 2: a funny one, isn't it. It's a complete letting go
Speaker 2: of all the things that would other world that you
Speaker 2: care about. In a way. But back in my day
Speaker 2: in law school, I don't know what it was like
Speaker 2: when you were doing exams in your first undergraduate days,
Speaker 2: but it was just about all on the exam law school.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think probably eighty percent sometimes maybe the
Speaker 2: whole year all on an exam. Great fun anyway, Hey,
Speaker 2: what about with kids who just start doing the work.
Speaker 2: They've got exams coming up, and they're just finding excuses,
Speaker 2: they're procrastinating, they're avoiding. There's got to be a role
Speaker 2: parents can play in that process. But how do you
Speaker 2: play it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm going to give you some advice, but
Speaker 3: obviously every kid's different. But really I've talked to a
Speaker 3: lot of parents in this space. The biggest thing for
Speaker 3: a young people, and statistically especially a young boys, but
Speaker 3: it's not only a young boys, is this sense that
Speaker 3: they're not good enough, the sense that they they if
Speaker 3: they're not academic, if they're not successful there, then they're
Speaker 3: not worthy. And our levels of depression and other behaviors
Speaker 3: are increasing because they feel like they're not worth it,
Speaker 3: not useful that then they don't have money in this space,
Speaker 3: and for me, if you're doing this and your young
Speaker 3: person really doesn't want to study and really isn't doing well,
Speaker 3: if you continuously focus on the fact that they have
Speaker 3: to be academically successful in order for you to feel
Speaker 3: that they're worthy, you are doing a huge, huge disservice
Speaker 3: to your young person, And personally, I would run. I
Speaker 3: know that academics are important and I know it's great
Speaker 3: for young people who are academic, but if my young
Speaker 3: person isn't doing and my son left with no credits
Speaker 3: for school, none whatsoever. I think he's got three or
Speaker 3: six or something like that, I don't know. And then
Speaker 3: he went on to another course that he enjoyed and
Speaker 3: excelled and now he's working Scott work, heaps of work,
Speaker 3: doing amazing stuff. Why I'm saying that is because what
Speaker 3: we need to focus on is making sure our young
Speaker 3: people feel wanted, needed, accepted, connected, And if you are
Speaker 3: harping on about them studying, then that's not going to happen.
Speaker 3: So I do ask you to, ah, think what is
Speaker 3: most for my young person?
Speaker 2: Is there a way of harping on such a such
Speaker 2: an old school expression, but is there a way of
Speaker 2: doing it where you can say, look, you know, I
Speaker 2: know you're not confident with this stuff, but just give
Speaker 2: it your best go and whatever your best is, that's great.
Speaker 2: But wouldn't it be shame not to give it a crack?
Speaker 2: Is there a way? I mean, I guess what I'm
Speaker 2: as I'm saying that, I'm thinking that those conversations need
Speaker 2: to happen six months earlier anyway, don't they.
Speaker 3: And that's the feeling they need to have early. But
Speaker 3: also it's about saying, actually, if you do want to
Speaker 3: study with your music on, or if you do want
Speaker 3: to study in front of big Bang, then if that's
Speaker 3: going to get you studying, then do it. But a
Speaker 3: lot of parents are saying you need to study my
Speaker 3: way when I ask you to, and so they're not
Speaker 3: getting the engagement. So let's think how could I change
Speaker 3: my space to make it so that young person might engage.
Speaker 3: But if you can say that and you can engage them,
Speaker 3: then that's fine. I'm thinking that the question there is
Speaker 3: about young people who literally are not going to engage.
Speaker 3: And I would ask you to think, what's the most
Speaker 3: important thing for our young people? And it's to connected
Speaker 3: and valued.
Speaker 2: Somebod who's actually texted saying the AI is just around
Speaker 2: the corner for everything we're talking about, but it says
Speaker 2: I'm currently studying nursing. The best thing I've found for
Speaker 2: exams is a whig website called jungle Wizdolia whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Import websites. You can import powerpoints, et cetera. It makes
Speaker 2: quiz questions with AI and actually I've got another. My
Speaker 2: producers just told me that there are websites where you
Speaker 2: upload key documents for the course you're studying, and it
Speaker 2: uses AI to turn it into a podcast where two
Speaker 2: people chat to each other and ask questions about the topic.
Speaker 2: Part of me wants to go that sounds like the devil.
Speaker 2: Don't fall for it, But it might actually be something
Speaker 2: in there. It's just I would imagine that half compiling
Speaker 2: all the information to give to AI itself would possibly
Speaker 2: be good study in its own right, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. Going through the process of engaging with whatever works.
Speaker 3: You have to try and elate data, make sure it's
Speaker 3: right anyway. And how cool is that? I mean, what
Speaker 3: if people said radio, Oh my goodness, radio is going
Speaker 3: to ruin our world. If we had sat back and
Speaker 3: not let radio progress, we wouldn't be here. So we
Speaker 3: do have to go with the times. You do have
Speaker 3: to know that AI is here. I'm actually personally just
Speaker 3: writing a paper and I have found an AI site
Speaker 3: that can help me write my paper and it's absolutely
Speaker 3: fascinating and it'll give me the core I I still
Speaker 3: need to check it. No, it's not an exam, but
Speaker 3: it's it's for something in do buy, so I'm hoping
Speaker 3: it won't matter. But why I'm saying it is because
Speaker 3: our kids have got AI if they can learn to
Speaker 3: use it. But if it can make a quiz for you,
Speaker 3: or if it can make a podcast that can listen
Speaker 3: to and take that information and they still have to
Speaker 3: regurgitate it in the exam we're going to learn it,
Speaker 3: then yeah, why not.
Speaker 2: Do as well? And that if you compile that information
Speaker 2: and in the process of doing it and I've got
Speaker 2: to put all this into AI, you've probably done a
Speaker 2: fair bit of swat already. And in fact, let's teake
Speaker 2: some calls on this.
Speaker 5: And I'm just calling regarding the talk. You guys been heavy.
Speaker 2: It's just.
Speaker 5: Like, you know, I grew out of it and I've
Speaker 5: had uh, I've had a rich family in bull but
Speaker 5: then I was the youngest of my family and so
Speaker 5: the expectations they had on me when I came to
Speaker 5: New Zealand about studying and how because my parents were
Speaker 5: quite old, the like we were like we're aging family,
Speaker 5: so we came here likes for like maybe in their forties.
Speaker 5: I was the younger in the family. We were working
Speaker 5: and all that. But then when we came to New Zealand.
Speaker 5: Everything just seemed a bit different and how the influence
Speaker 5: got to me and all that, Like, they just had
Speaker 5: a different expectation of me of doing how my father
Speaker 5: and everyone was making making money and making the wealth.
Speaker 2: So how did you How did it work for you
Speaker 2: with your study?
Speaker 5: Show hasn't worked out for me. I'm eight years old
Speaker 5: and I'm still I'm uh, they're finally understood about how
Speaker 5: things work out, you know, they've always expected.
Speaker 4: Me to do.
Speaker 2: It didn't help you? Yeah, hey, Raj. Unfortunately your phone
Speaker 2: line's a bit sketchy, so I couldn't quite catch what
Speaker 2: you were saying. But I think Raj was saying how
Speaker 2: it didn't work out from because his parents implosed their
Speaker 2: own expectations and what it should be doing. Is that
Speaker 2: what you caught from that, Catherine?
Speaker 3: Yeah, sounds sounds quite typical, isn't it that I'm saying
Speaker 3: about the Jersey on when you're cold? And I think
Speaker 3: that's what we do. I mean tell you, we as parents,
Speaker 3: all we want is the best for our kids. And
Speaker 3: we thought if only I had studied harder, if I
Speaker 3: had studied harder, I could have done that. And so
Speaker 3: I'm going to make my kids study harder. Well, actually,
Speaker 3: the world's not just about education. The world is about
Speaker 3: having a life and experiencing things and finding your own
Speaker 3: way through these things. And if we continuously push our
Speaker 3: kids through, you know, force to do these things, and
Speaker 3: as soon as they're away from ups, they're going to
Speaker 3: make their own decisions and find their own way anyway.
Speaker 3: So why don't we while we're with them and we
Speaker 3: can support that scaffold it, not push it directly, then
Speaker 3: why don't we let them find a good way and
Speaker 3: negotiate with them and work it out with them and
Speaker 3: support them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I must. I think I've learned something from that,
Speaker 2: because I've always just assumed, and especially when you're a parent,
Speaker 2: you just have this what are you doing over there?
Speaker 2: Why have you get your phone with you? Are you
Speaker 2: listening to music? And well, what are you doing? You're
Speaker 2: doing homework? Well, how can you focus when you're doing that?
Speaker 2: And actually, just for me, just pointing out the fact
Speaker 2: that the bleeding obvious now you say it, Catherine, that
Speaker 2: everyone's got a different way of working and just got
Speaker 2: to find out what's working for them. So long as
Speaker 2: they are trying to do what that's what they're trying
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 3: And I will, but I will say and all honesty,
Speaker 3: and I've done my device zombies TEDx Talk, and I'll
Speaker 3: talk about devices all the time. They are addictive. It's
Speaker 3: like saying to an alcoholic, go and study, and I'll
Speaker 3: put a bottle of gin next to you. It Actually,
Speaker 3: we do need to be a bit careful with devices.
Speaker 3: And that's why I say. If she's said she wants
Speaker 3: music on, then I would say, absolutely, you can have
Speaker 3: your music and your earphones, but the phone staying out
Speaker 3: here in the lounge, well where I am. Do you
Speaker 3: know I would? I would support my child by reducing
Speaker 3: their ability to access their device if they are a
Speaker 3: device addictive kid.
Speaker 2: Great advice. Hey Catherine, time flies when you're having fun.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for your time. People want to check
Speaker 2: out your work. Where do they go?
Speaker 3: Engage training dot co, do in Z. I'm about to
Speaker 3: upload some brand new videos in a week or two
Speaker 3: once it's relaunched, so check out on the TEDx Talk
Speaker 3: and podcasts with Peel Today are on there as well,
Speaker 3: so lots of things to look up.
Speaker 2: Fantastic. Thanks for your time, Catherine, Thank you. We'll catch
Speaker 2: again soon. We'll be back in just a moment. We're
Speaker 2: wrapping sport with Andy McDonald is with us at quarter
Speaker 2: two six.
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