She says she has a study plan and wants me to stop checking on her

ivory_trail_399124 Oct 2026

Her half-yearly exams are coming up and she has made a timetable on chart paper, stuck on her wall. Yesterday she told me, quite calmly, that I ask her "did you finish" about six times a day and it makes her want to do less. She's not wrong. The reminders are mostly for my own anxiety. But if I go completely quiet, I won't know until the results whether the plan is working, and by then it is too late to adjust anything. What I'm thinking is no daily reminders, and one sit-down on Sunday where she shows me what she covered and what slipped. I'm not sure a weekly check is enough at 13, or whether she'll be honest in it if the week went badly. Has anyone tried something like this?

3 comments

basil_diary_110424 Oct 2026
What happens on Sunday if she says nothing slipped but you can see it did?
- pebble_notebook_564424 Oct 2026
  I think that is the real question. In our home we agreed beforehand that the Sunday conversation would never lead to a punishment, only to changing the plan for the next week. I can't say whether that would work at 13, since my elder one is 11, but the agreement in advance made the meetings far less tense.
maple_compass_400124 Oct 2026
We did the Sunday thing with our daughter around that age, she's 20 now. First few weeks it was all "everything done amma" and obviously everything was not done. What changed it was when I also told her my week, what I didn't finish at office. Then slowly it became more of a chat and less of a report.
fig_lantern_898725 Oct 2026
Does she share the chart with you, or only the outcome? Seeing the chart once a week might be enough.
- breezy_camera_247025 Oct 2026
  Weekly is enough, honestly.
- ivory_fern_647625 Oct 2026
  Chart once a week is a good one. Our girl is 15, and what we do is she sends a photo of the ticked-off chart to the family group on Sunday night. Her nani reacts with a thumbs up and that is somehow more motivating than anything I say 😊