The LGS is not only the child's marathon — the whole family takes it. When your child enters 8th grade with Turkey's high school entrance exam (LGS, held each June) ahead of them, how parents behave often matters more than courses or books. The right kind of support raises motivation; the wrong kind, made with the best intentions, quietly feeds anxiety.
This LGS parents' guide walks you through your role during the exam year, the mistakes to avoid when supporting your child, and how to guide resource selection and practice exams. The goal is simple: to get through this year as a family with the least wear and the most progress.
A family that stands beside a child during exam preparation gives that child its strongest source of motivation.
What Should a Parent's Role Be in the LGS Year?
During the exam year parents play three roles: structure builder, supporter and observer. As structure builder, you help regular sleep, meals and study hours fall into place — starting in September, not in the spring. As supporter, you make your child feel you are on their side even after a poor practice-exam result. As observer, you notice early signs of anxiety, burnout or falling motivation and step in before they grow. Families that balance these three roles raise children who carry exam pressure far more healthily.
What Actually Helps: Supportive Parent Behaviors
Practical behaviours that work well during the LGS year include:
- Set up the study environment together: A quiet desk, good light and a phone that stays outside the study area. Decide this with your child; do not impose it.
- Plan the practice-exam calendar together: Mark the weekly mock exam on the family calendar and treat that day with respect. Follow the results, but focus on the trend of scores over time, not on any single exam.
- Guide, don't hoard, resources: Before buying a new book, check whether the current ones are finished. Three completed books beat ten half-finished ones on the LGS.
- Help with questions without solving them: When your child brings you a problem, think through it together instead of giving the answer, and point them to their teacher or an AI solver. They need to feel you are "with them", not that you are the one who knows.
- Manage your own anxiety: Children sense parental worry before they hear a word of it. Replace "What score did you get?" and comparisons with other children by "How was your day?" — that question is the key to trust-building communication.
5 Common Mistakes Parents Make in the LGS Year
Some well-meant behaviours quietly backfire:
- Reminding the child about the exam constantly: Repeated three times a day, "the LGS is coming" produces anxiety, not motivation.
- Comparing with other children: Comparison may push in the short term, but it destroys self-confidence and intrinsic motivation in the long term.
- Turning study into rewards and punishments: "Get this score and you get a phone" removes the inner value of learning.
- Overreacting to one exam result: Panicking after a single poor mock makes your child enter the next one in fear.
- Making everything revolve around the exam: When family life, conversations and weekend plans become fully exam-centred, the child feels like a hostage of the test.
The Right Steps for Motivation and Anxiety Support
If you see low motivation or signs of exam anxiety, listen first, then guide. Short walks, shared meals and conversations that have nothing to do with the exam are among the most effective anxiety reducers. If anxiety seriously affects sleep, appetite or school performance, do not hesitate to ask the school counsellor for professional support — early intervention is always easier.
Family Tracking on Real Data with BenimRobot
Knowing exactly where your child stands makes your support sharper. With BenimRobot's optical answer-sheet reader, you can analyze your child's practice exams within minutes and review the topic-by-topic gap report together, so resource and study decisions rest on clear evidence instead of arguments. Generating extra practice for weak topics with the AI question generator is only a few clicks away — you guide, BenimRobot handles the practice material, and your child stays the owner of the process.
LGS Parents' Guide FAQ
Should parents study together with their child?
No — the goal is to be present, not to sit at the desk. Doing your own quiet work in the same room while your child studies gives a feeling of companionship without stealing ownership. When your child asks for help with a question, think through it together and guide them to the answer instead of solving it for them.
My child scores low on practice exams. How should I react?
Look at the line of the last three or four exams, not at a single result. Stay calm after a poor mock, ask "what happened?" and analyze together — that is what mocks are for. Replace emotional reactions with forward-looking questions such as "which gap should we focus on this week?".
My child spends hours on the phone. What should I do?
Instead of banning the phone outright, set family rules together: the phone stays in another room during study hours, and screens close after a fixed evening time. Apply the same rules to yourself — children accept limits far more easily when they see the rules apply to everyone.
Conclusion: Together, Step by Step, Through This Year
Supporting a child through the LGS means building structure, motivating, observing and knowing when to step back. Let your goal include a healthy family year, not only an exam score. Sit down together today and answer three questions: How will the study environment work? When will practice exams happen? How will we support each other on hard days? The answers to these three questions will carry the rest.