By Jim Carlson

Is it all-of-a-sudden crunch time for your rising junior!?

Your child made it through the first two years of high school! Sophomore year was harder than you thought it would be and maybe harder than it should have been. But now, things are starting to feel very real! Junior year is supposed to be the hardest. This is where it matters for college. This is the year they might make their varsity sports team for the first time. They may now have a lead role in the school play, and the rehearsals and preparation take up so much time! This is the year when all the extracurricular activities demand more time and energy.

How then, do you help your student balance all of this? The pressure is immense. In fact, on a 10-point scale, American teens rate their stress at a 5.8, which is higher than the average for adults.¹ It’s no wonder, with 61% of teenagers reporting that they feel stress due to school-related pressures.²

Even the most successful students find this year the most challenging, and perhaps the most important of their academic and social lives yet. What about students who might have struggled a bit, or a lot, so far? What about neurodiverse students who learn differently or might need different support to find their own path to college and independence?

For many families, the start of 11th grade is when the realization hits: It’s getting real. The pressure of college applications, standardized tests, and academic rigor ramps up dramatically. The easy rhythms of 9th and 10th grade give way to a new reality filled with deadlines, stress, and expectations. For students who have managed so far with parental help and the occasional tutor, this moment can feel overwhelming. And for parents, it often marks a breaking point.

As parents, we might have had systems in place: weekly planning sessions, backpack checks, nightly homework reminders. These strategies may have worked before, but by 11th grade, they often begin to crumble. The student is older, more independent (or at least wants to be), and the stakes are higher. That support structure that once held everything together now feels more like a source of tension.

The Situation: Rising Demands and Shifting Roles

Junior year isn’t just another grade level. It’s when the college conversation becomes urgent, transcripts matter most, and the real weight of the future begins to bear down. This is the last full year of high school that colleges will see when reviewing applications, making it a critical time for academic performance.³ Parents may find themselves thinking: My student isn’t ready. We’re not ready.

Triggers come in many forms: a tough conversation with a teacher, a meltdown over test prep, or a comparison to the high-achieving neighbor’s kid. Often, it’s the realization that what worked before (nagging, micromanaging, doing it for them) isn’t sustainable. The relationship starts to suffer, and both student and parent are stuck in a loop of stress and unmet expectations.

The Complication: Support Strategies That No Longer Work

Parents often try to adapt by doing more. They pull back on extracurriculars to focus on academics. They double down on structure. But these approaches can backfire. The student resents the loss of autonomy and the increase in pressure. Motivation wanes. Assignments are missed. Time management slips. And worst of all, the parent-child relationship starts to fracture.

The team approach can often be helpful. Other common solutions may offer critical help, but can have their limits:

Tutors can help with subject-specific content but don’t address the root problem: the inability to plan, organize, and follow through.
Therapists can support mental health but don’t typically teach practical academic skills.
College counselors can chart the course but can’t ensure the student has the tools to walk it.

None of these interventions address the foundational skills needed to manage increasing demands.

The Solution: Executive Function Coaching

What students often lack is not intelligence or ambition, but executive function (EF) skills: the ability to manage time, set goals, plan ahead, and stay organized. These skills, which include inhibition, working memory, and shifting, continue to develop significantly throughout adolescence.⁴ They are not innate. They are teachable.

Support can take many forms. Students learn individually, and help needs to be personalized to their level, their style, and to how they need to learn. Many schools fall short in providing the right support at the right time in the way that students and families might need it. For an increasing number of students, executive function coaching has been proven to help! Fundamentally, these are skills that help a person manage life as they mature. At this critical academic stage, learning the skills to be successful in school is paramount, and having those same skills help them as they go onto college and independence is mandatory.

I often wish I could go back in time. What would I do differently? I learned so much from the mistakes I made along my path, but what if I could learn the lessons and avoid some of the pain? What if I could have the accountability and support that I needed but didn’t know I needed at the time? I’d take that time machine right away. Let’s help kids learn to live life on life’s terms, to understand their own learning style, to hold themselves accountable and grow their independence as they step into this most important year yet!

Footnotes:

¹ The American Institute of Stress, “Teens & Young Adults”

² Cross River Therapy, “47 Student Stress Statistics (High School/College)”

³ CollegeData, “Do’s and Don’ts for High School Juniors”

⁴ National Center for Biotechnology Information, “A Developmental Perspective on Executive Function”