How to Help a Family Member Get Their GED: Practical Tips From a Texas Caregiver
It was 8pm on a Sunday at my kitchen table in San Antonio, my 19-year-old brother Javi crumpled a GED practice math sheet into a ball and threw it against the fridge. The table was sticky from spilled sweet tea, the AC was clicking on and off because it’s July in Texas, and Javi had gotten fired from his landscaping job that morning for showing up late twice after his car broke down. “What’s the point?” he said. “I can’t do fractions, I don’t have time for classes, no one cares anyway.”
I’m his older sister, work as a paraprofessional at a nearby elementary school, and our family’s been piecing things back together since our mom finished chemo two years ago. Javi dropped out in 10th grade, when he picked up extra shifts to help pay rent and missed so much school he couldn’t catch up once things stabilized. I’d been bugging him for six months to look into a GED, so when he finally agreed to try, I jumped in ready to fix everything. I messed it up bad at first.
I called the local community college, signed him up for their free 9am three-day-a-week in-person class, paid the $10 registration fee myself, and mapped out his bus route. He went once. Never went back. I got frustrated at first, assumed he just didn’t want it bad enough. Then I sat down and actually asked him what happened. He said the class was on the other side of town, the bus only comes once an hour, so it took 45 minutes each way. That meant missing out on the cash day labor jobs he relies on for rent. Also, the teacher moved too fast, and he didn’t want to raise his hand and ask basic questions in front of a room full of strangers. That’s when I realized I’d built the whole plan around what I thought he needed, not what his actual life looked like.
I started over, slow. First, I looked up Texas-specific free resources, and found the official Texas Education Agency GED practice app, aligned exactly to the state test, totally free. I downloaded it on his phone, so he could do a few questions while he waited for a friend to pick him up for work, instead of scrolling TikTok. Then we set a hard rule: 20 minutes of practice, two nights a week after dinner. No more, no less. If he had to work late, we skipped it, no guilt, no lectures. That’s the first concrete thing I’d tell anyone: short, consistent sessions that fit around their schedule work way better than long, mandatory classes that they’ll just skip. 20 minutes twice a week adds up faster than 3 hours once a week that they never show up to.
Next, I called the adult education department at the community college myself, instead of making Javi do it. I hate making awkward phone calls too, so I get why a 19-year-old who’s already overwhelmed would put it off. I asked what options they had for people with irregular work schedules, and turned out I’d picked the wrong program the first time. They have fully free online classes you can do any time of day, free drop-in tutoring on Saturdays, and they’ll waive the full $120 testing fee if your monthly income is under $2,000, which it was for Javi. I sorted through all the paperwork, wrote down the login info in big handwriting, and handed it to him. All he had to do was click the link to make his account. The second thing I learned: most people don’t quit because they can’t do the work. They quit because the administrative work is confusing and overwhelming. If your family member struggles with that stuff, do the legwork for them. It’s not coddling, it’s removing a barrier that would’ve stopped them before they started.
Some nights were still rough. A few months in, we were working through slope problems, Javi got every single one wrong for 20 minutes, threw his pencil across the table, and knocked over my full glass of sweet tea. It soaked half my stack of first-grade handwriting worksheets I had to grade the next day. I didn’t give him a speech about perseverance or tell him to calm down. I just grabbed paper towels, wiped up the mess, ordered a pepperoni pizza from the place down the street, and we watched 20 minutes of old Texas Rangers highlights while we ate. By the time we finished, he said “let’s try three more” and we did. That’s the third thing: frustration isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong. You don’t have to fix it or talk them out of it. Just pause, do something normal, and let them decide when they want to come back. I used to think I had to keep him on track every single day, but skipping a week doesn’t erase all the progress they’ve made.
When Javi finally said he felt ready to test, he picked the date six weeks out, on his own. I drove him to the testing center the day before so we could find the building, the parking lot, and the front entrance. He has bad anxiety about being late to new places, so that small step took a huge weight off. Test day, I picked him up, stopped at our favorite taco truck for a breakfast taco with extra guac, dropped him off, and waited in my car in the parking lot reading a book. I didn’t hover, I just was there if he needed me.
He passed all four sections on the first try. He hung the certificate on the fridge next to mom’s chemo completion card. It’s not a perfect ending, though. He’s applied to three electrician apprenticeships, all of which require a GED, and he hasn’t gotten an acceptance yet. He still does landscaping odd jobs most weeks, and he still complains about how stupid math is every time we talk about it.
But that’s how this goes, right? Helping someone get their GED isn’t about checking a box and getting a perfect new job a week later. It’s about chipping away at the small barriers that stand between them and what they want. You don’t need to be a teacher or have extra money to help. You just need to make the phone call, keep the sessions short, let them set the pace, and bring their favorite snack on test day. It’s still a work in progress, and that’s okay.
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