Summary Keywords
parents, child, kids, oc, vocab, tutoring, questions, fireside chat, coaching, exam, understand, selective schools test, home, selective schools, year, test, centres, foundations, bit, week, selective test, oc test
Speaker
Steve Xu
Transcript
Steve Xu 00:09
Hey parents, and welcome to the first fireside chat, comment down below for you guys here, and we are gonna get started right away. So for those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Steven. I’m the founder of Scholarly. And obviously, I’m the person who runs the Selective Schools Test Facebook group.
So you guys are all involved in now do comment down below if you guys can hear me, this is a new setup. This is a setup that I haven’t really tested before. So we’ll see how it goes. But hopefully you guys can all hear me. And hopefully you guys will enjoy what I have to say, though, maybe you guys might get a little bit triggered. Anyway, today I want to talk about parenting.
Okay, so through these kinds of videos, I want to kind of give you my thought process my philosophy on parenting and how that coalesces with the selective schools test and scholarship preparation. Now if you’re watching this from the free selective test groups or OC test groups, you guys kind of know my spiel. Right, you guys have seen four day challenges. You guys send three day challenges. You might be like, Who on earth is Steven? What on earth does he do? What is his challenge? What is his dogma? What’s going on? Right? So I know a lot of parents out there have questions about you know, what my qualifications are, who I am, what I do. And so I wanted to just kind of clear that out just so that everyone’s clear. So my name is Steven, I graduated from a pretty top private school with a scholarship, I got entrance into James Ruse Agricultural High School. And I attended OC test opportunity class. During my university years, I was studying law at Sydney Uni. I’ve obviously since graduated from there.
During my university years, I got started with a lot of tutoring, a lot of parents asked me to tutor their kids, initially, it started off with just the private scholarship exams. But later on, obviously, parents started realising that I was pretty good. And then obviously, they started asking me to cheer them for selective schools. And then later on with the OC tests, right. And obviously, with the results that we’ve gotten, they’re pretty good. So in my time of teaching kids, in my time of mentoring parents, I’ve come across a whole bunch of different parents, a whole bunch of different kids from kids who are, you know, very undisciplined to kids who are very, very disciplined to parents, who are very uncertain to parents who are very, very sudden. And through my time of talking to all these parents, through my time of dealing with all these different kids, which by now has been literally in the hundreds, almost, maybe even 1000. I’ve come across a whole bunch of different people. And I’ve developed a whole bunch of insights right?

Now, today, I’m only going to talk about one type of parent. Today, I’m going to talk about the biggest pains in parenting that I see as of late because again, on a weekly basis, our team, we have a whole team of kids, sorry, a whole team of consultants who talk to a whole bunch of parents every single week, we’ve noticed a couple of things. I kind of want to share that in tonight’s Fireside Chat. The biggest problem that I see with parents and one thing that I don’t think parents understand is that nobody is going to care about your child more than you do. So let me say that again. Nobody is going to care about your child more than you do. And that’s a really, really important concept to understand. I get a lot of parents call me up. And like Steven, can you get me to James service? Can you get me to Norman house? Can you get my child to Matthew PSoC? And I’m like, okay, yeah, I can. But what about you? And a lot of parents like, What do you mean? Like, can you get them? Like, what’s the track record? Seven? Have you gotten kids? I’m like, Yeah, I’ve gotten plenty of kids here. But like, I mean, how much effort are you willing to put in? Are you committed to the process? And that’s where the parents are like, Ah, I’m not sure. I don’t really know. And I’m like, Well, what have you done so far? And then we start unravelling the pot. Right. So the most important thing that I want you parents to understand is that the quality of your child is directly related to the quality of the parent, the quality of your parenting, not the quality of the tuition, not the quality of anything, but the quality of your parenting. Let me give you guys an example. So oftentimes, I get a lot of parents who come to me, and they’re very uncertain. They’re like, Steven, I’ve been going to all these different tutoring colleges, I’ve been going here beyond, they’ll be going everywhere. And it’s all working. And I’m like, What do you mean, it’s not working? They’re like, I’ve tried everything. It’s all working. And I’m like, Well, what did you actually do? Did you actually sit down and figure out why your child’s weak? Do you know exactly what’s going on with the child in Maths and English? Do you know what’s going on? In terms of the reading comprehension?
Steve Xu 04:33
Do you know where the issues lie? And the parents like no, it was meant to do that on like the group tuition. Class is meant to do that. And I’m like, Are you Are you being serious? Because you cannot send your child to a group tuition class, like any group tuition costs, mines included, and expect your child to just get results. Miraculously, there are kids who will be able to do that. But again, kids have kids, you can’t expect them to be able to do work without being taught. So have a lot of parents who don’t take on that responsibility that kids are not good. And the kids will never be good, right? Again, because they did not take on that responsibility. The quality of the parent is quality of the child, your child is a reflection of you. So for all those parents out there, I understand there are a lot of parents out there who are a little bit confused. Like, you know, there are tutoring centres who don’t really teach my kid anything. Yeah, that’s true. A lot of tutoring centres don’t teach anything. But that’s not an excuse for why your child is not good. In terms of the maths fundamentals. It’s not an excuse why your child is not competent at reading, right? A lot of that is still done by the parents. So the number one thing that I want to say to all parents out there right now is take more responsibility. Instead of blaming other people, instead of blaming your child, like I get a lot of parents who are like you, my child, just want to concentrate, make them concentrate? Oh, you know, my tutor is not teaching them anything. They’re not learning anything? Well, why don’t you teach them stuff at home, you’re not amazed. So the solution is never to be like, blame the tutor or blame. You know, the child, even though the child might be culpable, even though the tutor might be culpable. That’s not the point.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY!
The point is you need to take more responsibility yourself, so that your child can actually get better. And that’s just the harsh reality, the best parents that I made parents who come in, and they have very low expectations for the child, they have extremely high expectations for themselves. And that’s when parents when that’s where the children that the kid does really well. So I’ll give you guys examples. There are some parents who come in, and they’re like saving, I know, my child’s weak in inference, they cannot infer they weaken vocab, they cannot do vocab, right? They’re weak, and they’re not Spanish. And so we got ratios, and we got this. And I’m like, Yep, I know exactly what you mean, I can help you. I know, you’re on point. I know, if I told you to do this, you’re gonna do it. And there are other parents that come to me. And they’re like, I’m like, can you try to do two hours of work today? And they’re like, I don’t know, like, you know, they’ve got all these different activities, they got ballet, they got like sports, they got music, they got all of these different things, I don’t know. And I’m like, Well, I can’t help you. And they’re like, What do you mean, you can’t tell me tell me does your programme work? I’m like, yeah, it does work. But if you’re not willing to put in even two hours a day, and you’re not willing to put in all that work, then it’s not gonna work. And so that’s a really important thing that I want, all parents understand whether or not you choose to go with Sculley or whether or not you choose to go anywhere. And trust me, there are a lot of really bad coaching centres out there. I’m not saying that, but that’s not the point. The point is, as a parent, you need to hold yourself to a higher court, it’s not, hey, my child is really, you know, lazy, my child doesn’t want to do the sign and excuse that is a reflection of you.
Let me kind of backtrack a little bit, because then all parents gonna get angry, a lot of parents gonna be like, what’s going on? So let me let me kind of backtrack and talk about this a little bit. So to give you a little bit of context, let’s say for example, you’re a parent. And you’ve only just recently started coaching for selective school, let’s say you’re in your child’s currently in year five, and you’ve got selective tests coming up soon. And prior to you five, year four, year three, year two, you never sent them to any selective test coaching, right. So when you five, you magically decided that you want to go for selective schools test, because everybody else is going for selective schools test. And you’re like, you know, what, I want to send my kid for selective schools tests, and I want to do some preparation. So you saw don’t some preparation, you start going here, you start going there, and your child is getting like 40% 50%, and the selective test or oc test trial test and you’re like, it’s not working. You start blaming everybody, you saw blaming the tutoring centre, you saw blaming your child for not being conscious, just not doing the work you saw blaming this person you saw blame that person, you blame everybody.
The Real Problem
Now, what’s the real problem? Do you want to know what the real problem The real problem is you! Okay, now, that might be harsh, but think about that for a second. From year two, all the way to year four, when you’re meant to be doing the preparation, you had your child play around, you didn’t really care about them too much. And then you five immediately you expect them to change. They expect them to do like three, four hours, five hours, six hours of work every single day. How’s that going to be possible? How’s that feasible? How can you make that leap? That quickly? Is it possible? No, it’s obviously not right, you need to acclimate, you need to train up for it. And yet, oftentimes, what I see is parents expectations of kids are that high. And parents expectations for themselves are this high. And when that happens, nothing, nothing goes well. And so what’s the solution to that problem? Well, the solution to that problem is, number one, have realistic expectations. And number two, start earlier, right?
Steve Xu 09:18
So if you’re gonna go for an exam, like the selective test or scholarship exam or oc test, if you’re gonna go for an exam that difficult, then you need to make sure that you start earlier, right? You don’t want to start in the five you don’t want to start in the six if you’re gonna go for OSI don’t start a new four doesn’t make sense. Right? Have your expectations sorted, and also be willing to acclimate for it because a lot of parents come in and they’re like, you know, Mike, my kids a genius. And they do my trial too. And I’m like, No, you’re not. Right. And then they start complaining. They’re like, Oh, yeah, but my kids, you know, my kids, you know, my kid doesn’t concentrate very well. My kid can’t do this, but you can’t do that. And I’m like, Okay, well, that’s because you haven’t trained them to do that yet. And so again, who’s the who’s the problem with it’s you? Now I get it. Like I know a lot of you guys are like, yes, even this is a bit It is a bit harsh, and I understand. But again, at the end of the day if your child is 12 years old and under their your responsibility. And what you need to do from a very, very early age is determine exactly what kind of future you want for them, whether you want them to take the OC test, or selective schools tests and do them seriously. Or if you just want to kind of hop to it, you need to make that decision early, you cannot make that decision. Half a year before the exam, like right now I get a lot of parents calling me who are currently in the five who have the selective schools test coming in three months time. And they’re like, Sam, can you can you do coaching? And I’m like, Yeah, I can, but I’m not going to take you on. And they’re like, why? And I’m like, well, because I can’t help you, I can’t make an improvement in three months. It’s impossible. Right? Even if I make an improvement, you know, it’s gonna put the kid on too much pressure, so it’s not worth it. And the parents get angry. They’re like, yes, even how can you be so irresponsible? What are you doing? And I’m like, well, that’s just how I want to do it, take it or leave it.

A lot of parents. And again, I want to kind of preface this by by talking about my personal experience, because some parents saying, Yeah, well, it’s not completely my fault, my kids, not my kid, you know, doesn’t concentrate very well, my kid, my kids get really, really distracted very easily. Now, one thing I want you guys to think about like this, if you started coaching a kid, or if you started kind of mentoring your kid from a very, very young age, let’s say like four or five years old. When I say coaching and mentoring, I mean doing it at home, right, making them do the time samples, making them read, making them memorise vocab, from a very, very young age, and building them up that way, then the transition to OSI and selective test is not going to be that hot. But if they’re doing no work at all, if they have no foundations, if they’re doing nothing, right, and when I mean, nothing, like most of you guys are doing nothing, right. And then you suddenly put them in like a very rigorous program and expect them to get results, it’s not going to happen, right? It’s just not going to happen. Because unless you’re ready, they’re not going to be ready. And let me kind of kind of talk about this a little bit more and kind of give you the ideal parenting strategy and and what’s gonna happen. So, whenever you go for an exam, like the OC test, the selective test, you need to understand that those exams are at least two to three years beyond the school curriculum. So immediately, you know, whatever they’re doing at school, like, that’s fine, but it’s not going to pick them up very well for those exams. Alright, so for OSI e4, you’re probably looking at us 67 level, you know, state government level, material. Selective school is probably like a year, right, you know, and level kind of standard, right? So if that’s the case, you need to make sure that you train them beyond the school curriculum. Again, I get a lot of parents calling me up. They’re like, yeah, Steven, you know, I’ve I’ve done this. You know, I’ve just started doing preparation, and they’re getting like, 30%. And they’re like, What do I do? And I’m like, Well, you need to do more work. You need to build your foundations, and you need to do childhoods. And you need to do this, you need to do that. Like, oh, that sounds too much. Like, well, there’s no other way. And so one of the first questions that you need to ask yourself, when you’re going to do the OC test and selective test is, are you serious? Do you seriously want to do this? That’s not an easy process, not like, you just enroll them in a WG enroll them in a selective test or oc test trial test, or whatever? And they’ll be fine. It doesn’t work like that. It’s like, are you serious? Do you really want them to go through all that pain? Do you really want them to go through all that hardship to do the exam? If not, if you’re not willing to go through pain, don’t do it. It’s a waste of money, it’s waste of your time, don’t do it
Steve Xu 13:20
There’s no point. Only do it. If you’re sure that number one, you’re willing to go through the kind of pain, the agile, especially if you haven’t been trained before. And number two, set your expectations realistically be like, okay, you know what, I’m starting at 50%. Let’s try to make a 10% improvement every time. Hey, let’s look at this right, I’m going currently going to a selective test or oc test trial test. I’m not learning anything at the selective test or oc test trial test, maybe I should start to teach my kid more at home. So all the good parents know this, all the kids who come all the really, really good kids, all the very intelligent kids who come to me at scholarly, have parents who are extremely diligent and know everything that’s going on at home. Again, I understand that not every single parent has the ability to do that. Some parents are both working right, I often get calls from parents who are both working, they’re like, seven, have no time I work from nine to five every single day, I have no time to look after my kids, I have no time to kind of sit down and coach my kids. I’m like, Well, I understand your situation. But you you need to understand that if you’re gonna go for something like OC test or selective test. You’ve done no professional preparation before. And you’re expecting a tutor in college to teach you everything. That’s not going to happen, right? It’s simply not going to happen.
Solution
So let’s talk about a solution. I know I’ve talked about the pain enough. I know a lot of you guys kind of like, see when I get the pain, understand what’s going on. So let’s talk about solution. What do you do then? If you’re a very busy parent, let’s say you have no time to look after your kid. Let’s say kids don’t really listen to you. What do you do? Number one, the first thing that you need to do is you need to lower your expectations. So you might think if your child is getting like, I don’t know, like 250 to 60 Being an absolute genius, you maybe need a lot of that expectation a little bit because you probably your child is probably not that smart. Okay, that’s number one. Number two is you need to make sure that they have a good foundation. Again, there are a lot of parents who do selective test or oc test trial tests, and they do WMD they do whatever. And when the kids do our child to some, like, your kid doesn’t know anything in maths, the calculations are so slow, right? The fractions or whatever, they’re not fluent in anything. The English, they can barely read through reading comprehension, they can barely read through everything in enough time, their writing is just atrocious. So what’s going on? And then a lot of parents say, Oh, they’ve been doing this coaching. They’ve been doing that coaching, they’ve been doing all these different types of coaching. And I stopped blaming all the coaching centres. And yes, it’s very easy to blame coaching centres, because in general, coaching centres in Sydney are pretty rubbish, right? They’re pretty bad. Excuse my language, but they’re pretty bad. But that’s no excuse for not looking after your kid. Right? Even though I understand the situation that you’re in. That is no excuse for not installing the foundations at home with a kid you cannot simply let a kid go to a tutoring centre, and do nothing and just expect them to learn. It doesn’t work like that, unless the kid is brilliant. Unless the kid is so intelligent, they’re not going to be able to pick it up by themselves. And there is no learning that happens at shirring sense. So that’s something that a lot of you guys should understand.
Steve Xu 16:07
So let me break down each individual subject because I think a lot of parents probably wondering, you know, seven, what solution what do we need to do English vocab? Are you working on vocab at home? If we break it down to the smallest unit, the smallest rudiment of knowledge, English is completely prefaced on vocab. How many vocab words? Are you learning per week? Are you learning any words? If you’re going to a tutoring centre and just doing random reading comprehension passages, you’re wasting your time? Like, there’s no point in doing that, like, just memorise vocab, that’s it, writing, same thing, memorise vocab? Are they looking at really quality examples of writing? If they’re not, what are you doing? Again, you’re wasting your time. There’s no point in doing novel study, there’s no point in doing anything else. If you’re not working on your vocab, that’s the first most important thing, maths, a lot of kids in year five, they come to me and their calculations are atrocious. And what I mean calculations are atrocious, I mean, you know, four or five digit addition, you should be able to do that within a few seconds. Like, try this right now, if your child is currently in year four, year five, ask them just to do a four digit calculation, 4326 plus 1298. Ask them to do it. If they write that on paper, and they do it and it takes them more than 10 seconds to do that four digit calculation. That’s too slow. You not been because when you have problem solving questions, and you have so many of those calculations laid one after another, you need to be able to do it quickly. And so again, the question that I have for you is, how are you going to do that? If it’s in a group coaching environment? If they’re not practising that over and over again? Again, it’s parent’s responsibility. Number two, or sorry, number three, when we talk about some like thinking skills, or GA, again, what are you doing? Are you doing any work at home? Are you just completely relying on the cheering sound? So again, that’s kind of the level one of parenting Right? Like level one is like the parent who doesn’t do any work, since the kids tutoring expects like a big difference. And they get disappointed every single time. And they’re like, why is my kid not improving? Level tool parenting as parents who are kind of doing a little bit of work at home, sending the kids tutoring, but not breaking through that barrier. And what I mean by not breaking through that barriers, let’s say every single week that kids are getting, like 60%, on the selective test or oc test trial test 55% on the selective test or oc test trial test, so the positive 50% Mark, that kind of getting in that mid range, right? The low and mid range, which is like 55 60%. And again, the kids getting that week in week out what solution, you need to do more questions. So once they have built their foundation, what do you need to do? You need to do more questions, and you need to manage your time. Right? So what does that mean? That means don’t like 300 questions a week, right? Doing at least 50 questions a day, 15 minutes a day, a minute per question, three questions a week, if you’re not doing that, again, you’re wasting your time, you’re not going to get 300 Questions from many tutoring centres. So again, that’s the problem, right? So you need to source those questions yourself. And you need to do a minimum of 300 questions a week, if you don’t OC test prep, you need to do a minimum 500 questions a week, if you don’t select a prep, that’s the bare minimum. If you don’t do that volume of training, it’s kind of like, okay, let’s say you’re preparing for a marathon and every single day, you just walk like a kilometre. Is it gonna work? Of course not. Right. And your parents don’t think like that. Parents like, oh, yeah, my kids gone here. My kids going there, my kids going everywhere. Well, how many questions are they doing every single week? And how many of those questions are they fully understanding? If they don’t understand the question that they’re doing, then? What’s the point? You’re not? I mean, so. So if you’re at the 50 65% range, are you doing 300 to 500? Questions a week? And are you breaking down all those questions? Are you understanding all of them? Again, parents can be like, well seem that’s a lot. I can’t do it. Well, then again, you told me that you wanted to get a selective school you told me that you want to get an OC test. What do you want?
Steve Xu 19:46
Again, it depends all on what you want. And if you’re serious enough, if you’re serious enough, you’ll do it. If you’re not serious, you won’t do it. It’s like weight loss, right? If you’re not serious about weight loss, no matter what kind of diet no matter what kind of exercise regimen, you’re not gonna lose weight. But if you feel no Pain. If you can drive your kid to do it, then you’ll get the results. Right. So again, that’s pretty easy. Level three parent I don’t think we need to talk about for this fireside chat, I think we can leave it to the next one. But I hope you guys understand that the basic premise that I’m telling you guys right now, which is as a parent, you need to take on more responsibility. I understand for a lot of you guys, it might be a little bit difficult. But again, if you’re aiming for those kind of top end schools, that’s a very important thing to kind of consider, take more responsibility for your child, understand what your duty is, as a parent, a parent, a child cannot exceed the parents ability, right? So you will never ever see low quality parents with high quality kids. That never ever happens, right? You only see high quality parents with low quality kids. So in other words, you need increase your level your capacity as a parent, you improve that before you can do anything else. Thanks, guys hope, hopefully, you guys found that useful. Again, I’ll hopefully be doing more of these fireside chats in the next few. Next few weeks next few days. Now that we’re nearing the end of the term. Obviously, there is more time for me to talk to you guys on more of a personal basis. If you enjoyed the video, please comment down below. And again, if you are interested in doing any of the three, four challenges, please make sure that you check out the group right? I’m always uploading new three four day challenges. So if you’re currently in year two, or year three, all the way to year six and you’re looking for some training if you if you want to figure out what scholars about section on the Facebook page, make sure that you follow every single post. And that’s it for me today. Thanks, guys. And I’ll see you guys all very soon. Bye