Get Booked – Emily Hughes, GCSE Survival Guide For Parents 010321

Hello, I'm Hazel Butterfield, and this is Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Here at Get Booked, we love talking to authors about their new releases, going into detail about the topics covered, the mental health and well-being elements, publishing and writing tips, and giving you that extra special insight into a different book each week. Now, we've all had to get a bit more involved with our children's education during the last year, and that's not to say that we ignored it before, but we have had more responsibility put on us due to homeschooling and trying to understand what's going on in the minefield of self-led varying platforms, resources, and requirements. And on top of that, motivating the little lovelies. As the pandemic has gone on, this has been less of a little blip to almost a whole year of schooling disruption, and we've needed to get clued up. Something else to add to the never-ending list. Oh joy. Today's guest is the fantastic and entertaining author of the GCSE Survival Guide for Parents, Emily Hughes. My own children are approaching the GCSE age, and after reading this incredibly practical and very relatable book, I not only feel less overwhelmed at the concept, I feel so much more informed in terms of how to help both my children study right now and to understand the system more and some nifty tips on how to ascertain what's going on with our children without nagging. Emily, hi! Hi! Thank you for sending me your book. I've loved getting through it, and the kids keep on looking at me going, "Oh great, she's going to be implementing something new and fantastical." But I've loved the book. You must have had a great response to it. Absolutely, yeah, it's been a joy really. I didn't think when I set out to write it that I'd get the response that I got, and it's just, it's been lovely to know the difference that it's made because our kind of, our mantra, our big reasoning for what we do is knowledge beats nagging. It's, you know, no parent likes to be nag, nag, nag, nag, have you done this, have you done that? But if you know what they're supposed to be doing, it's so much easier. So yeah, we're on a mission to help as many people as possible, and the book seemed like a brilliant way to do that. Well, actually, it was quite— there's so many books out there that, you know, you see the GCSE headline, you think, oh great, something else that we have to do. But, you know, you've actually brought the entertainment factor into the GCSE Survival Guide for Parents, referencing the well-needed gin and wine throughout the process. And there is more information as well for our listeners on parentguidetogcse.com, and we'll talk about that a little bit more as the interview goes on. You've actually managed to make the subject quite entertaining, and you've done it in bite-sized portions, a little bit like how GCSE revision needs to be undertaken. Absolutely. It's— we've been— I keep saying we, it's my husband and I that run The Parent Guide to GCSE, and we designed it around the fact that we know as parents people are just super busy. There's millions of things going on in our lives all the time. We're spinning all of the plates, and sitting down and trying to figure out everything you need to know about GCSEs in one go to help your kids is It's just not practical. No one's going to be able to do it. So what we do is bite-sized chunks. It's the same thing with our membership. We deliver bite-sized chunks of information so that people just know what they need to know right there and then. And it was designed, the book, to be a very practical sort of handbook almost. You can dip in and out, just little happy little chunks of information, bits you can do. And, you know, if it was going to be a textbooky sort of a read, no one was going to read it because nobody has time for that. Nobody has the willpower for that. We've all tried to read those books where you kind of know you have to, but oh my goodness, it's hard going. So, so I thought bringing the entertainment was the way forward. And after 15 years of trying to make algebra entertaining, I like to think I've got some skills. I've actually quite enjoyed some of the algebra sections of the homeschooling. So I've got a 14-year-old who's going to be doing GCSEs next year. And I've got an 11-year-old who's just about to go into secondary school. And, you know, the one in junior school, obviously it's a little bit more parent-involved. All the high schools, or secondary schools as you want to call them, they've been a little bit more structured and predominantly led by teachers in Zoom and Teams and whatever platform each school has chosen. But I found that this book has helped me understand a little bit more about what they're doing and the syllabus and the education system and, you know, what teachers kind of are looking out for. They're not there to kind of make it harder. It's just, it is a minefield, isn't it? And knowledge beats nagging every time, as you say. I love, I love it that you've put that on your website because it's just exactly how we need to go. If my parents nagged at me, I'd switch off. Totally, yeah. And when you tell them to do stuff as well, they switch off, which is why I'm kind of, I'm the scapegoat. I'm the person that you can blame for this advice. So teenagers across the country are, well, no, they're not going to hate me because I hope I'm helping their parents to nag less, but it's all my fault. Because I mean, I tell the story a lot. My mum recommended that I should read the Harry Potter books because she said, you'll absolutely love them, you should read them, they'll be fabulous. So I did not read the Harry Potter books for about 2 years, just on principle, just because I didn't want it to be right. And I'm pretty sure I was an adult at that point. So it was last year, wasn't it? Yes, but we're kind of predisposed as teenagers to not want to listen to our parents. It's part of the whole, you know, growing up, getting more independent, figuring out who you are, that you, you don't want someone to kind of know that stuff about you. You want to figure it out for yourself. So if you can point at the chapter in the book and say, look, she says you've got to do this, or you can watch one of the Facebook Lives that I do, look, this is what she says we've got to do, then it means it's not your fault as the parent. It's not mum thinking she knows everything again. It's somebody who's an expert giving useful practical advice, and it means you're working on the same team. So it stops it being that battleground, that constant, you know, fight over revision because, you know, you're working, you're singing from the same hymn sheet, so you're working together rather than against each other. So yeah, I'm quite happy, I think, in my new role as scapegoat. Well, another reason why I absolutely love the information in this book is that I know I could have done so much better in my GCSEs if I'd have revised more, and we have a different mindset as teenagers. We don't sometimes understand the repercussions, or, you know, we want to fight against what we're told to do. And so there are lots of hints and tips in there about how to try and figure out what's going on, like sneakily, like your examples of, I'm just going to WH Smith or whatever, do you need anything? Do you need any folders? Do you need this, that, or whatever? And it's kind of Rather than saying, "Right, I'm going to WHSmith. I want a list of everything unique because I don't think you're doing what you're supposed to be doing." And it's just those nice kind of little phrases which sometimes you'd think are common sense, but when you've got so many other things going on, it's quite hard. And just trying to know the best way to tackle what's going on. I'm so strong-minded and I think I probably would have done a little bit better in my GCSEs if I'd have had this kind of information, or if my mum had had this kind of information. It's a lot to do with, um, kind of just trying to get into the mindset and not overwhelm each other, because you end up kind of butting heads. Oh yeah. And my son is so much like me that it scares me sometimes. Yes, yes, we don't realize how frustrating we are to live with until there's a tiny version of ourselves that we have to live with. Yep. I mean, in a way, I kind of want to put in my mum's next Mother's Day card, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize how hard I was," but that would involve me having to admit that, you know, she was right and I was wrong. Yeah, she knows, it's fine. Yeah, well, the book, the whole point of the book is We're both teachers, Paul and I, and we have, what, 30-odd years experience teaching between us, but then we got to the point where our twin boys were doing their GCSEs and it all went out the window because when it's your own children it's completely different. You don't have that kind of teacher-student relationship, you have your teenagers who are rolling their eyes at you, and so all of the tips and tricks are born from necessity because we had the twins who are very chalk and cheese, needed very different types of motivation, so we kind of did it all at once in one go. And then we've got another one coming up who's currently in Year 7, but it's begun already. So yeah, I wanted to make it as, as simple as possible so that you don't have to go through the dramas that we went through and deal with the issues, because it is totally different when it's your own kids. And you might know kind of academically, you might know what you're supposed to do, but then all of the little patterns that you have with your children kick straight in and you fly off the handle when you wouldn't with anybody else's child because it's your child and that's just the pattern that you're in. You know they can do better and so rather than being slightly more patient with them, you're just like, "Ugh, but I want this for you. I want you to do so well. Why aren't you doing this?" and getting really frustrated. I mean, I was speaking to one of our members the other day who is actually a therapist and she said it's ridiculous. I teach other people how to relate to their child, but I find myself just going straight off at mine. "What do you mean you haven't done all of your revision for today? Well, why not? Why? We need to go and do this," rather than, you know, the caring and supportive, "Okay, well, that's fine. You've worked really hard today, actually. Let's just carry it over to tomorrow." And I don't think we realize how difficult it is to kind of set aside our own emotions in the when dealing with this stuff, because we are very charged over it. These are our kids, and we care really passionately about how well they do, sometimes more than they care, and/or will admit to caring anyway. And so it makes us slightly irrational sometimes, just, just a tiny bit. So, uh, so yeah, hence all of the, the sneaky ninja tips and tricks. And, uh, you know, it's not psychological warfare, but But it is a little bit. The thing is, it's more relevant right now as well because so many more people are at home and actually taking on the responsibility that teachers used to have. You know, before you kind of, you had parents evening to catch up and every now and again you go, 'Right, I'm gonna have a look through your books and see what's going on.' And you know, you knew that it was happening at school, they were in an environment where they were learning and we need to be more informed at the moment. There are people who— the whole idea of GCSEs and assessments have kind of gone up in smoke over the last 12 months, and we don't actually know what is going to happen for the next 12 months. So the more information you know and the more you can plan, you know, the better really. And I found that I understand the schooling system a lot more from reading this book when I actually thought I was relatively clued up to start off with. I wasn't at all. Unless you're in it, that's, that's the trouble. I mean, we have quite a lot of people who've read the book who've written to me and said, thank you so much, because I actually went to school in another country, and so I had no idea how all this worked. So I didn't know where to even start helping my child because we do have our own little quirks in the UK and I mean, even at the moment, the differences between England and Ireland and Scotland and Wales are— they've set things up differently for the summer. There's all sorts of stuff going on. So it's kind of being aware of all the little quirks and inconsistencies and what have you so that you know. I mean, it's all about knowing where the goalposts are. That's what it is at the moment. That's the issue is they've taken away the goalposts for this summer. We don't know what we're doing just yet. As we record, they still haven't told us about the official plan for exams. And so, you know, they've taken away the goalposts and we don't know where to aim, which has been really challenging. But luckily, I mean, if teacher-assessed grades are going to happen, which is what it sounds like it's going to be to whatever extent, then the rules haven't changed from what I wrote down in the book. It's all, you know, little and often lots of revision, lots of evidence, working smarter rather than harder. And I think there's still— it's all still relevant, which I was really pleased with because obviously, you know, they cancel exams again and your heart stops. Oh no, it's all not going to make any sense anymore. But it's, yeah, it's very frustrating for parents at the moment because it is Not only the usual, I don't really understand what they're talking about with this stuff from school, but now currently nobody understands because we don't know the rules. So yeah. But in the same way that you said working smarter, try and figure out what you can understand, and that's what this book is going to do. I mean, we're all in the same boat in terms of not understanding what's going to happen over the next 6 months. My eldest son's parents' evening was last week and you know, I said to the teacher, 'So what do we know yet about the assessments?' And they said, 'No, we're still figuring out. You'll know as soon as we do.' I'm like, 'Right, okay.' But the key is find out what you can find out now, and that's what this book can do. It can help you prepare whether, you know, like my child who's in Year 9, you know, I feel as if I've got enough information now to set out a decent plan for when he hits Year 10. But there's lots of information in this book as well that helps you at all the different stages. I mean, there's some people out there that might even be thinking about getting pregnant and they're going, well, you know, planning ahead, you know, we all, we all can plan at different stages. Um, but it's kind of just knowledge is power, isn't it? And setting up good habits, the earlier you can start, the easier it is for them. I mean, we all did it. I was the same with my GCSEs. I could have revised a lot harder. I coasted because I could, and me too, didn't get the grades that I should have got. And I sorted myself out for A-levels and worked really, really hard. But, um, but yeah, I still kind of regret that. And I think I could have made my life a lot easier by setting up better habits earlier on. I mean, simple stuff like writing up your notes as you go along. Just at the end of the school day, do a quick brain dump of the key points of the notes from the day, and your revision notes are written. In, you know, 5 minutes a day. It doesn't need to be anything long and complicated, but it means you check you've understood what you were talking about today while it's still fresh in your mind, and you've got all your revision notes written down, which means then when you've got a, like, an end of topic test or a mock, or even your final exams when we get those back, then you've got it all written down. It's all right there, and it's such a simple thing to set up, but it requires kind of very deliberately setting that as a habit. And that's the challenge because, as you said, teenagers, not so great at the forward thinking a lot of the time. So, yeah. I think that was the best tip actually about just doing the brain dump at the end of the day. Only needs to be 5 minutes. But even with myself, when I'm trying to write a blog or something like that, and I just can't face it because I know it's an hour's worth of work, I know that if I just say, do it for 5 minutes, before you know it, you're in the swing of things and you've done 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and you just realise how easy it is just to, just start with a little bit and it kind of, it blossoms. But there's a great phrase on, let's have a look, it's page 7, which it's the "And so it begins" chapter. "Have you ever stared down the barrel of a pile of ironing taller than you are and seriously considered just throwing it away and seeing if anyone notices?" that's how your teenager feels about revision. That kind of sums it up perfectly. Yep, true story. It's, it's just, it's such a daunting prospect. It sounds easy, but you know, where do you start? With a revision plan, where do we even begin? I'm supposed to do maths today, okay, well, that's an entire subject that takes us 2 years to cover of all of the topics, so which topic shall I do? And there are so many ways you can make that easier to deal with just by, you know, mapping out a revision plan, which is why we built the Revision Plan Generator. Because we started off when we launched the business, we started off by doing a quick hit video like, here's how to write an epic revision plan. And oh my word, it was painful. All of the tools out there were just clunky and glitchy and painful. And Paul got really quite cross trying to record the video for it because it just kept messing up his structure and he'd have to start the whole process again. So we thought, you know what, we can do better than this. So we got our very talented web guy to design this planner, which means you literally put in your term dates and your subjects and press go, and it will generate you a revision plan for the entire year. It'll only say maths or physics or French or whatever, but you— and you have to add the topics. But that start, that someone telling you what you need to do is often the key, because when you have to make the decision, that's where you get overwhelmed and that's where you procrastinate. So, if you're looking at that pile of ironing again and you're thinking, "My goodness, I have to get through all of this. Where do I even begin?" You can spend easily 30 minutes sorting it into piles first, or, you know, "Oh, I'd better just go and do this first," or "I'll do it once I've made a cup of tea," or, you know, something. If somebody comes in and says, "Mum, I need my school uniform ironing for tomorrow," that's where you've got to start. So you start with that, and once you've started, as you've said, you kind of blossom into it. It gets easier because you've done the hard part, which is starting. So things like putting a topic on your revision plan, that's the key to just taking out that overwhelming sense of, "Where do I even begin?" and just making it easier. And that's what the book is all about really, is those little things that you can do that just make everything that little bit easier for you as you go along. Just tiny little gains that add up. Ironically, um, I hate ironing so much that I started buying clothes that were either slightly too small for me or quite tight-fitting so that when I put them on it'd stretch the creases out. Amazing. How many I don't think we're going to bother ironing again once lockdowns are all over and stuff. That's the thing, isn't it? There's going to be so many people going, "I can't wear pyjamas to go to work? What?" I mean, I'm sitting here right now, my hair's wet because I don't have to care. I digress. What I did find quite interesting as a way to motivate children is actually going back quite a few steps So when the kids are saying, I want to go and do this, I want to go and buy this item of clothing, look at this house, it looks amazing, you turn around and say, well, is this what you want in your life when you're a little bit older? Do you know how much this costs? Work backwards and see how much you have to earn a month to be able to afford that, and what kind of work do you think you're going to need to do to get that? In which case, what kind of 'What kind of qualifications do you need to get? What kind of subjects do you need to be going into?' And it's kind of working it back and feeding it through to, you know, kids are very materialistic at this age, and if they don't want to do well but they, you know, they want to have fancy cars and go on nice holidays, then sometimes you need to spell it out to them a little bit clearer and then kind of even go that step further and say, 'Well, if you want to do this, do you know what route you need to take? In which case you need to do these qualifications, or you need to make sure you can go on to doing this kind of higher education, and it's kind of explaining it a bit more and realising the importance, not just because we've nagged and GCSEs are a part of life. Well, it's about making sure that you're happening to life instead of life just happening to you, because we all know someone who left school or left uni and got themselves a job because that was what was handy and available at the time and they needed some money. And then 10 years later, they're still in that job because they got a promotion. And it was then, I don't know, you can't really change jobs partway through if you've got a couple of pay rises under your belt, because starting in a new path means suddenly you're having to drop back down the pay scale again, and then you can't afford to pay your bills and stuff. So, you know, ending up 10 years down the line in a job that you that you didn't especially think was gonna be your life, and doesn't really light you up. In fact, you probably don't enjoy it very much. That's not what we want for our kids. So yeah, that's, our Motivation Masterclass starts with house shopping. We get them to go onto Rightmove and figure out, in 10 years' time, pick 3 houses you would be happy if you were living in, and then we work backwards from there, because that taps into that materialistic thing, 'cause otherwise, you can't picture where you're gonna be in 10 years' time otherwise. They could be doing all sorts of things. Houses, houses they can work with. So, so yeah, that is one of the most powerful things I think that we do with, with our members, with their children, is help them kind of look forwards a little bit and figure out what it is that they actually love doing. If it lights you up, if you absolutely love it, then it's not work. And that's the dream, right? Getting to sit and record podcasts with your hair wet because you can. You know, I'm living the dream. But I think this, that epitomises what this book is about. It's all relatable and practical advice. That's what I was aiming for because, you know, that's what we need. You don't need lots of heavy-handed somebody preaching to you about what you should be doing with your children because our kids are all different and we're the ones who know them the best. But there are lots of little bits that can be adapted in whatever way is needed to just help, not just help your child get through their exams, but also help you build your relationship with them through it all. Because otherwise you face that danger of, you know, if you're just constantly nagging and they're constantly feeling nagged and they're under all the pressure anyway, then it can start to feel like they're drifting away from you. And you get that anyway as they get more independent as teenagers, but what you want is to be able to build that stronger relationship at that point where they need you the most so that, you know, whatever's going on, if they're having a crisis with their revision or if they're having a crisis with their friends, you want them to be able to come and talk to you. And if you've got that clashy relationship where it's just you having a go at them all the time because they're not doing what they're supposed to, then they're not likely to do that. So, um, so yeah. It's, as I said, it's our mission to help as many people get through this sane and with a better relationship with their child as possible. So yeah, without alienating them. And I think the key is a lot of what I try to do with my children and what you focus on in this book, in my opinion, is about empowering our kids to make good choices about, you know, how their life goes, about how their grades go, about where they're going to go, you know, with these grades, you know, you know, help them to make their own decisions. They don't like being dictated to, but, you know, we can use, you know, as much information as we can to try and steer them in the right direction. Definitely. And helping them to be that kind of, that independent child. So our oldest two have now just gone off to uni. I say that, they're upstairs at the moment because they're not allowed to go back to uni, but We got to that point where we were sending them off and we wanted to know that they could cope with whatever life threw at them, whether that was cooking themselves dinner or sewing back on a button or, you know, dealing with motivating themselves through all of their uni work. And that wasn't going to happen if we'd been their motivation all the way through GCSEs and A-levels, if we'd been the reason that they were working because otherwise we'd nag them. So it's about helping them to be that independent young adult ready to go out and face the world, which is what we all want for them. You know, I think, I think I mentioned it in the book, I forget now, but you're not Google. Stop answering all their questions. Like, if they're anything like my husband, who will just put things down randomly and then, "Has anyone seen my phone, my whatever, whatever?" They'll figure it out. Yeah. If I always go, "Yes, dear, you left it on the whatever," then he's not got any kind of reason to start keeping track of where he puts stuff down. So if I stop answering the questions, I don't know, dear, and then if he's been searching for a little while, I'll give him a little hint. But that way I don't— I am exaggerating, I promise, he's fabulous. But with the kids, you know, if they don't get in the habit of remembering where they put stuff down, then when I'm not there to have a mum look for it, they'll never find it. So, um, so yeah, just it's about taking the pressure off yourself and remembering that what you're trying to build, much as you want them to need you all of the time because that's what we want as parents, like emotionally, we're trying to build an independent human being, which means it's not all down to you as the parent. You can stop giving yourself such a hard time about it because they've got to build these independent skills. So, um, I think That's the other thing, we put too much pressure on ourselves as parents and we take on all the responsibility and we shouldn't. Well, do you know what, interestingly, I channeled Emily Hughes earlier this week when I was at work. My eldest son phoned me and went, 'Mum, what's for lunch?' And I was like, 'Mm, yeah, you're 14, sweetheart, the fridge is full, you can figure it out.' Yep. And he's like, 'What?' I went Dude, you can make food, and when you're hungry, you can make cake. He can cook, he can do a mean spag bol. But I was just like, dude, figure it out. It's like, yeah, if you're hungry, I trust you'll sort it out. Anyway, mummy's at work, I'll speak to you later, bye. He's like, oh, okay. And I'm sure he's thinking, it's that book she's been reading. I'm the scapegoat, it's all my fault. Blame Emily Hughes. I love how you've broken down all the different sections as well. One of my favourite is, "The battle is won or lost inside their head. Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." That's Henry Ford's quote, but I love it that you've kind of broken it down into nice, easy, quite different sections, and with one main thing at the end of each section that, you know, if you can achieve one thing from each chapter, you're winning. Absolutely. It's just, it's easier to do. I mean, I read a lot of books, mostly kind of businessy books, sometimes marketingy, sometimes self-helpish. And if I come away with just a head full of ideas, quite often I don't do any of them because there's just too much to think about. There's too many things floating around in my head and I can't channel any of them. Whereas things where there's just no, do this, "Right now, do this." That I can cope with. So, I wanted to make it as simple as possible, hence the short bite-sized chapters and the little "do this one thing" at the end of it, because there's so much to think about and it's not all relevant at all times. There's stuff about mocks in there that's only relevant when they're doing mocks and you don't need to be worrying about that stuff the rest of the time. So, when you're having an issue with their mindset, which is usually what happens first. That's the reason I've put it in that order. You go, their mindset comes first, and then their organisation, and then the study skills, and then the practical kind of doing the exam kind of stuff, and then it's planning for the next stage. And putting it in that order, because that's the order that it happens in, is designed to just help you figure out what, what's useful right now. I don't need— I don't have time for everything right now, so what do I need to know at this particular moment? See, what I've done is, I mean, the book at the moment is so dog-eared because I've turned back so many pages. So, I loved the one things at the end of each chapter, and I've taken those on board. But what I've also done is, because if you want to start habits, you start, you introduce one, you get used to it, so it is just a habit, you know, and you carry on that way. And I've turned back the pages of things that I wanted to slowly integrate, and one of the ones that is on page 28 which I actually managed to utilise earlier this week is praise effort, not outcome. Don't use words like talented or intelligent, use words like hardworking and dedicated. Use the word yet a lot. When they say, 'I can't do something,' say yet. And I was speaking to my youngest son about certain sports that he can and can't do, and he was saying, 'I'm really good at this, I'm really good at this, but I'm not good at this.' I said, 'You're not good at it 'Yet, Jacob.' And it's like, 'Oh, okay.' And just that one word is a fantastic habit. Absolutely. And it's all— that's all from Carol Dweck, and she wrote the book Mindset. And I was lucky enough to get to go and see her at a conference when I was teaching. We were asked to run a whole staff training day on mindset, growth mindset, so they sent me to see her, and she was amazing. But it's made such a difference. I now look at people and the way that they talk about things, and I can see who's got this fixed mindset of, no, I'm not doing that, that's too scary, I might fail, versus the people who say, well, I'm not really sure I can do this, but I'm gonna figure it out. And the most awesome things have happened in my life since I just started just saying yes and then figuring out how to do it. And it's such an important thing that you can instill in your kids, just that little 'yet,' because we can all grow and develop and so on. We've learned so much about the brain in the last couple of decades, and we know now that when you learn new skills, when you learn new information, it makes new connections in your brain, and it makes your brain stronger. Literally makes your brain stronger and better. And so the more you learn, the more awesome you get. So 'yet' is a very Very powerful, very powerful word. It's interesting because, I mean, I read a lot of books as well, and some of them fiction, some of them funny, some just, you know, helpful to do with the mindset. I read a lot on mental health and mental well-being, and I read a book on the language we use, and it's quite scary just how some simple changes can affect our mindset. Things like using the word never, or I never get this done, or I, I'm never appreciated by that person. It's a voice that we use our own head, and it's the one person we speak to the most, ourselves. And we can— we should just change and tweak the certain phrases or the language we use to completely change our mindset. And it's scary to realize, you know, the words we've been using to other people and to ourselves and to our children. And sometimes it's hard to kind of relearn these habits, but it's so incredibly important. I do— I'm very good at correcting other people, like when I've got friends who say, oh, you know, why doesn't this person like me? Or why does— why do I always do this wrong? And I'm like, no, you sometimes do it wrong, but you sometimes do this incredibly as well. And it's just trying to learn the effect of the language that we use and just to make little tweaks. It's, um, it can be quite— well, it is mindset altering. And trying to do that with our children as well. Yeah, definitely. And it's, it's— we're our own worst critic. We always are. And training your brain out of being that little nagging voice in the back of your head that talks to you the way you would never talk to anyone else, ever. You wouldn't dream of it. But the things you say to yourself that you let yourself get away with are mind-boggling. If you actually said them out loud, people would look at you like, you said What? And we do that, but you can train yourself out of it. I think it was a self-help seminar somewhere as part of a, I think it was a women's conference day that I went to with my mum. And the lady that was running it was talking about the little voice in your head. And she said, picture it, picture it like the little devil on your shoulder in Tom and Jerry, or like the cartoon Gremlin that follows you around. Picture that little voice. And when it starts talking to you, smush it. You know, cartoon frying pan to the head, whatever it takes. Dropkick it. Imaginarily, obviously, because is that even a word? Probably not. But if you're wandering around smashing imaginary things with frying pans on your shoulder, people are going to start worrying. So just in your brain, but it's just telling your subconscious, I don't want to listen to that voice anymore. And it starts to make a difference, and it's amazingly powerful. It is unnerving, the difference between how I used to talk to myself and how I talk to myself now. It's made such a difference. It's well worth investing a little bit of mental energy into. As you said, it's mindset altering, and it makes such a difference. Well, one of the examples that was in the book that I read was they asked you to pick up a bottle of something, you know, whether it's a bottle of squash or a bottle of wine, or, you know, whatever floats your boat. And they gave two phrases, and And one was using negative language and one was using positive language, and it showed you how heavy the object was when you use negative language. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it makes such a difference. And I think one of the things that I've realised more as I've got older is the difference that your mindset makes. And it's something I didn't even think about as a teenager, although I suppose we talked about it less, probably, when I was a teenager. It's so powerful and it's why we spend so much time on it in the book. It's because it makes that much of a difference. It's that important. And also what I have found that was helpful as well, and again altering your mindset, but also explaining just how simple you can make revision, the Smarter Not Harder for the Win, as the chapter starting on page 72, is, you know, instead of just thinking, oh, I've got 2 years worth of revision to do, you know, the whole education. It's things like making the most of empty time and realising that, you know, you can actually get an hour of revision done a day just by listening to something on your phone on the way into school and on the way back, or on the way on an exercise walk or anything. It's amazing how easy you can get things done. I mean, I was— I started listening to Barack Obama's book and it's 29 hours long. I thought, "How am I gonna get the time to do that?" But actually it's a couple of exercise walks, you know, a day and you're kind of done in a week or two. And it's just, you break it down and find ways of multitasking. And I mean, the one making the most of empty time, that was brilliant. I love that chapter. But again, as you said before, making notes as you go rather than sitting down and actually you know, wrecking your brain 2 months down the line. Spend 5 minutes a day doing it while, I don't know, you're eating biscuits and getting a hot chocolate or something like that. And I do find it, when you break it down, which is what you've intentionally done in this book, it's nowhere near as overwhelming as people think it is. Well, yeah, it's just, it's again, knowledge is power. The more you kind of premeditate this almost, the more you set yourself up for success, the easier it is. What we need to do is we need to find— we need to basically get people on TikTok. Oh yeah, if they cover the GCSE syllabus, I mean, the kids would be absolute geniuses. And do you know what, the bit that you said about with TikTok where you had to do a little bit of research so that you knew you know, a little bit more about the platform. An hour's gone in no time, isn't it? Oh, so easily, it's ridiculous. It's— and the kids are absorbed in it. Yeah, that's why it's so, so powerful, is it's those tiny little bite-sized chunks, you know, they've got this tiny attention span because they don't have to concentrate on anything very hard. It's designed to be entertaining, and they can just flick through and get something new and exciting every few seconds, which is why it absorbs you. So, so much, and there's some really clever content on there. It really is impressive. But yes, I've moved the app to the last screen on my phone so that I'm not as tempted anymore. But that's the thing as well. The other bit of advice that you gave is like, turn the notifications off. I mean, I know if I have to get some work done, I have to leave my phone in a completely different room because— and I have one of those with smartwatches as well. I have to take that off otherwise I get a little vibration on my wrist and I'm like, "Something's happening." And you then can't concentrate. And what did you say? It was something like 26 minutes to get back into the— up to 26 minutes to get back into the swing of things if you get distracted. And it only has to be half an hour that you switch off all notifications. We're not asking you to kind of switch off for weeks at a time. You know, half an hour, get your concentration and then go back to your apps. Trust me, whatever's happening, on WhatsApp or Facebook, it predominantly— wait. Well, yeah, and you can get the same done in that 30 minutes of actual focused work as it would have taken you in 2 hours of ping distraction, ping distraction, kind of half-hearted work. And if you can save yourself an hour and a half's worth of time in terms of your revision by just ignoring your phone for half an hour, why would you not do that? It's just it's a no-brainer, right? It's, it's so much easier when you can focus because you get so much more done. And it's again working smarter, not harder. You don't need to put in hours and hours and hours of revision. I mean, I think a lot of parents think that revision looks like 3 hours sat reading a book or something, sat in your room. That's not how it works. You get much more done in little half-hour blocks doing something like creating a mind map to link things together and it makes you pick out the key topics, the key facts, not just I've written a whole page about this particular thing and I won't remember most of it, but it looks like I've done a lot of work, you know, and that's the difference. If you can take all those various bits and put them together into a really focused revision plan, you can get it done in half the time easily. And that is basically what the book helps you figure out how to do, how to plan for it, how to find unique ways, how to speak to your children, and how to kind of get your own mind around it as well. But you do also offer plans on parentguidetogcse.com as well. Do you want to explain to our listeners a little bit more about what membership can— what membership to The Parent Guide to GCSE can do to help support parents? Yeah, so basically the book is a sort of condensed version of, and a slightly simplified version of, what we cover through the year. But the idea of the membership is we will support you and basically hold your hand all the way through the entire process through the year. So members get a weekly email with a little bite-sized chunk of, this is the information you need right now, here's the one thing to do each week. And we send that out as an email, or it's a little video which is 5 minutes tops each week that you can then either read or sit and watch with your child. So you're both singing from the same hymn sheet and you know what you're expecting from each other. We then have a fortnightly Q&A session on Facebook in our private members group. So it's, you know, your 5 minutes at parents' evening flies by and you don't have time to cover all the stuff that you want to know. This is like having teachers in your pocket, basically, so you can pop in, ask your questions, and will, will help because if we don't know it, we've got time to research it and find it out for you. So you've got that support so that you're not having to do it on your own throughout all of this. So we've got the, the membership option and we currently run it for Year 10, Year 11, and Year 12. We normally only open it in September each year, or at the end of the summer holidays rather, but at the moment, given everything that's going on, we're leaving it open so you can join whenever because we know everyone's getting a little bit stressed out about this. Just understatement of the century there. We also have little kind of mini packages that people can buy if membership isn't maybe something that floats your boat, you just want some kind of, oh my goodness, how do I get my child through GCSEs, particularly given remote learning and teacher-assessed grades and stuff right now. So we've put together a How to Do Remote Learning and our motivation masterclass, which I talked about earlier, where we get them to think forwards to the future. We put them together in a little package, which is parentguidetogcse.com/epic, because it's how to get epic GCSE grades even when exams have been cancelled. And then they have the— they're then armed with the choices of what they want to do if they've got the grades. What ironically this whole kind of concept reminded me of is, do you know when you find out you're pregnant and you sign sign up for those emails that kind of tell you each week, you know, what size— size of feet, yeah, yeah. And what's happening each week, and it kind of breaks it down for you. And then when you have the baby, you have an NCT group where you're all in the same boat and you're chatting, and you might not— you don't necessarily know each other or live near each other, but you're all still going through something very similar, and it's like a support network. That's how I kind of saw this membership, and I just thought it's brilliant. It's kind 15 years later after the deed, you're— because everyone assumes that by the time they're teenagers, you know what you're doing, but teens are a whole different ball game. It is interesting because, um, I remember lots of other people saying to me a couple of years ago, oh, it'll all change. I'm thinking, what, my cute, lovable little kid that's just so nice to me and he's funny and caring and just wants to be around me all the time? That's not gonna change, not my kid. And then bang, literally he woke up on his 14th birthday, and I just, for the last few months, I've just had visions of Kevin and Perry. Yes, right, it does, it's funny. It's so annoying. Yeah, oh, nobody prepares you for this. There's all the books on what to expect when they're, you know, firstborn and they're tiny, and then you hit teenager and it is just all the stuff you see in the sitcoms. And, you know, it's laugh or cry. Well, sometimes they do it, you know, I actually, I think they actually do it as a kind of, it's a process, isn't it, where they want to kind of feel as if they're separating from that kind of infancy, and that the only way to do that is to separate themselves from the person closest to them that was there throughout that period of their life, and they just want reasons to argue and find a way to express themselves. I mean, I turn around to my eldest who said to me, "Oh, Dad buys better steaks than you." I said, "Fine, here's my credit card, go to the butcher's and go choose a steak." Yeah. It's like, well, no, that's no fun, they've got nothing to complain about. And I was like, that pretty much epitomizes what it is to raise a teenager. Yep, looking for reasons anyway. Um, something that I like to ask all of my guests here for Get Booked are, is on, um, 3 tips on wellbeing, mental health, mental wellbeing, any tips. It could be absolutely anything. Do you have 3 for us? I do. First up is always schedule in some me time. Whatever it is that works for you. It's really important that you take some time for your own sanity, for your own well-being, and if you don't schedule it in, then everybody else's needs will overtake yours and it won't happen. So you've got to make sure that you make that time and plan it in. It's, it's one of the things we get kids to do with their revision plan is schedule in your me time first and then put your revision around it, because otherwise it doesn't happen. If you're trying to revise and you know your favourite TV show's on, you're not going to be concentrating, so you plan that stuff in first. Number 2 is say no. Don't be afraid to say no to stuff. If you're like me and you're a people pleaser, then somebody will ask you, oh, could you just do this? Oh, are you interested in doing this or being on this committee or helping out with this, whatever? You need to sometimes just say, "No, I don't currently have space for that in my life. I'm not interested," although you've got to be quite polite about that one, but being able to say no when you want to is something that a lot of us find quite difficult, but it's really important. And number 3 is my top tip, works personally for me: get lost in a good book. When your brain's going doolally, so I've been trying to write something, there's been a coding issue on the website, and my brain's just been like a giant bowl of spaghetti swirliness, and I got myself lost in a good book, and it was the first time that my brain had just quietened down in days. It makes such a difference. So find a really great book to get lost in if you need a bit of quiet time. Do you know what? It is the distraction. It's kind of delving into it, whether it's fiction or somebody else's life, a biography or an autobiography, and it's just kind of understanding something else and just, yeah, absorbing yourself somewhere else. Or just actually, you know, entertainment. I had read a lot of books on mental health and mental well-being, and I needed to rest my brain a little bit. And I just put it out to the Twitter writing community. I said, "Right, I need some things funny, ridiculous, and probably a little bit dystopian kind of in a funny way. What have you got for me? Terry Pratchett. Always Terry Pratchett. Oh really? Yes. Oh, funny, somewhat dystopian. Oh yeah, you need Terry Pratchett in your life. That is my go-to. I need to switch my brain off. I've read, I think, everything he ever wrote and got quite sad when I got to the last one and knew there wouldn't be any more. But yes, they're fantastically funny. Oh really? I mean, I did come across, oh, it was a fantastic book. It was, it's actually the author that recommended it, but it was, it was brilliant. I mean, this is the joy of books, you can get lost in it completely. And whether it's like, it depends on what you need, whether you need just a proper physical book, because if you're reading on a Kindle, then you are connected to your devices, which can be a little bit of a problem. Or if you want to do it while you're you're out walking, you can go for Audible. There's lots of different things that you can kind of— different ways that you can get into reading a book. But I read Andrew Shanahan's Before and After, which was a bit like the apocalypse, but it was very sweary and very ridiculous. And basically people were taken over, um, and they got kind of really sweary and rude and quite critical once they'd been taken over as zombies. It was hilarious. Yes, it was stupid, but I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed it. It was kind of like I Am Legend meets The Biggest Loser. I am writing that one down right now. Before and after, yeah, ridiculous. I mean, you've got to be happy with some pretty hardcore swearing, which I am, you know, I'm a northerner, you know, that's— if you don't swear in a sentence, then have you actually really spoken? But I do love it. I think fantastic 3 tips, and I just, I think one of the things is that Both my children are into reading, and as soon as my teenager hit 14, he kind of ditched his books. Yeah, we had that phase as well, although she's discovered Harry Potter now, and so she's— she ditched her book slightly earlier because she's only 12, but now we're Harry Potter obsessed, and every conversation involves some kind of reference to Harry Potter. Oh, really? Oh yeah. Oh, bless them. Do they come back round again? I mean, you've got those— how old are the ones that are at university now? 18, nearly 19. Does it come back round again? Have they gone back into books or anything yet? One is very much a reader, the other one has never really been a reader since we got out of the, you know, the yuck books when he was small. He He just wasn't really interested unless it was a sports biography. He wouldn't really touch it, but he'll still read some of those, so he's kind of come back around. The other one, I don't think he ever really stopped. He's worse than I am, face always in a book. It's awesome. Yeah, I've got a little reading corner, I love it. But the thing is, you can combine the two things, you know. If your kids are going on about wanting to go on tech, you know, that's your time to schedule your you time Mm, definitely. And they think they've got away with getting something that they wanted. It's brilliant. Yup, cycle on, I wins again. Win-win. Something else I like to ask my guests as well is, especially with what's going on at the moment, who out there in the public eye do you think is absolutely smashing it out of the park? You know, just somebody who you think has got it right, or they're saying the right things, or being a good role model, who would that person be for you? I kind of went with someone I knew actually, and who's in the public eye, so it still counts, but Sunetra Sarkar. She is possibly the loveliest human being I have met. So you might know her as Zoe from Casualty or from acting. Oh yeah, she was on Strictly and Celebrity Gogglebox and things. We reached out to her because she has a son in Year 11, or was in Year 10 at the time, just before we were due to publish the book. And funnily, she only responded because my assistant's name is the same as someone she went to school with, so she thought it was the same person. But it worked, and she got a copy of the book, and she has been been so ridiculously supportive since then. It's just been wonderful. She and I had a chat. She'd done the same thing. She got a PDF copy and had printed it out, and she'd written notes all over the book and wanted to ask me questions about it. And we did a recorded chat for half an hour, which I could then use to kind of publicise the book as well. And she's now one of our members and will quite regularly ping back an email when I send something new out to members saying, "Oh, do you want me to promote this on my social media for you. She's just so, so, so lovely. It's been a real delight to get to know her. I mean, there are lots of people who, you know, you're very aware, I think, when you're in the public eye that endorsements from you carry weight and lots of people charge good money for it. She has just been really supportive and selfless, and I think she believes in what we're doing because she's seen the difference that it can make. And so, um, so yeah, she's She's just genuinely a lovely human being and does lots of work supporting charities and things. So she is my top celeb. Oh really? I like that. Do you know what? You forget that she's been around since like Brookside. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so even if you don't know her name, you will know her face. She has been in all sorts of things, got a fantastic career and is just still lovely and down to earth and awesome. Well, even your foreword's by Terry Dwyer, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, and we got a jacket quote from Claudia Winkleman as well, which I mean, I didn't stop doing happy dances for about 2 weeks when we got all the things coming together at once. It was fantastic. Lisa, who's my assistant, was busy setting all this stuff up and doing the research and what have you, and she invoiced police on several occasions for what she called celebrity mum stalking. But you know what, that's the thing, these are people who are busy as well, and we all have the responsibility to our children. And anybody that can just demystify it, make it easier, and actually make it— well, break it down, but make it entertaining as well. And just, you know, as I said with the whole analogy about about the NCT group, it's just making you feel as if you're part of a community. And feeling like it can feel extremely isolating dealing with a teenager because only you know your teen, your own child, that much. And, and it's— and as you said before, it's only you that can be affected as much by, you know, how they're behaving or how they develop. And it can be scary. So just having Well, again, knowledge is power, and just having the additional information to help us through this minefield, I think, is fantastic. The book, GCSE Survival Guide for Parents, is fantastic. The review's up on hazelbutterfield.com, and also, if you just click on the picture of the book, it will take you through to Amazon to buy it nice and easily as well. Have you got another book coming out? Not currently, but I have been, I think, bullied by several people into considering the Parent Guide to Post-16 next. So the Post-16 Survival Guide for Parents, which will, I guess, be all about helping them prepare for whatever's next, whether that's uni or a degree, apprenticeship, or a job, or whatever. You've got all the additional dramas that come with them being old enough to drink and old enough to drive and, and so one, so I'm sure there'll be some practical stuff in there too. Yeah, I'd like a copy of that one as well, please. Just, you know, again, forewarned is forearmed. Noted. It might be a summer project, possibly sitting in the garden, which is what I had to do last year because there wasn't any space in the house because it was full of, you know, children. So I went and sat in the garden and just wrote frantically and poured out my brain onto the computer screen, and it was quite nice actually. I'm sure you probably had to utilise your own hints and tips of how to get stuff done, starting with 5 minutes, making sure the environment's right, turning off the notifications, you know. That's the thing about this book, a lot of it is transferable. Oh, totally, yes. That was why I ended up in the garden, because I couldn't— I was too distracted in the house. There were just there was always someone. It was like Piccadilly Circus. So I went and parked myself in the corner of the garden, put in some headphones, and the AirPods that are magical and do noise-cancelling stuff— oh my goodness, game changer when you've got a house full of everyone, particularly in lockdown. It's good for concentrating. But yeah, all of those tips and tricks are— yeah, let's be honest, they're from me because I'm terrible and procrastinate all the time. Well, thank you so much, Emily. Chatting to me today, Thea here for GetBooked. I've thoroughly enjoyed chatting to you, and listeners, go out and get the book. You need it. Thank you very much.