I mentor PhD students, and I can't get my 12 year old to stop highlighting entire pages

saffron_drum_476420 Sept 2026

My elder daughter's class 7 history and geography textbooks are now almost completely yellow. When I ask what the important points are, she points at the page and says "all of it, that's why it's highlighted". I spend my working life helping research students pick out what matters in a paper, and it is somehow much harder at my own dining table. I have tried explaining, I have tried doing one page together. She nods and goes back to the highlighter. Has anyone found a way through this that doesn't involve confiscating the highlighters? I'm tempted, I won't lie.

2 comments

moss_kite_799120 Sept 2026
Ours highlights in four colours, each with a system she cannot explain. We let her keep the colours, but then she has to close the book and tell us what the yellow bits say. Usually she can say about half. Half is a start.
velvet_gecko_546821 Sept 2026
ours did the full page thing till class 9. stopped on her own when the syllabus got too big to highlight everything. not advice really, just what happened with us
- saffron_drum_476423 Sept 2026
  That is oddly reassuring. Two more years of yellow pages, then ♥ I may quietly try the closed-book question in the meantime.