How to Support Your Teenager Through the Secondary Years Without Taking Over
A new book by Alan Marshall. Working title, currently in first draft.
“Good tutoring makes itself obsolete.”
You want to help. You just feel you can’t.
You want your child to do well at school, but you often feel you cannot help, because you were never that confident with the subjects yourself. This book is written for exactly that parent. You do not need to understand the subjects. You only need to know how to help.
Who it’s for
Parents of Scottish secondary pupils, from S1 to S6 (ages 11 to 18): the Broad General Education years, then National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher.
The promise
How to help your teenager learn, and stand on their own, without taking over. The real goal of these years is not grades. It is a young person who can learn for themselves. Good support, like good tutoring, works by making itself unnecessary.
What’s inside
An introduction and twenty short chapters across five parts, each one ending with a plain ‘In short’ recap:
- Rethinking Your Job. Why the loving instinct to remove your child’s difficulty can quietly remove their growth.
- How Learning Actually Works. What the evidence says about how understanding and memory really stick (recognising something is not the same as knowing it).
- The Conditions You Can Control. Sleep, phones, motivation and the atmosphere at home: the soil every method grows in.
- The Scottish Years, Stage by Stage. A plain-English guide to the Scottish system, from the quiet early years to the pressure of Highers and results day.
- When Support Isn’t Enough. How to tell a passing wobble from a real problem, and how to choose help well.
At its heart is a simple, evidence-based approach to learning that any parent can understand and use, explained in plain language, with no jargon and no subject teaching.
About the author
Alan Marshall is the founder of Alan Marshall Tutoring, an online maths tutoring business for Scottish students. He has spent sixteen years in education, first as a classroom teacher and then as a tutor, working with over 1,600 students. He is also a father of four.
Be first to read it
The book is in first draft and not yet published. Register your interest and you will be among the first to hear when it is ready, and likely to receive an early sample.
If your child needs maths help specifically, you are warmly welcome to join the free parent webinar.