EXAM season is just around the corner and our children are no doubt by now feeling the pressure and stress.
My middle son is in his final year of school and will sit his A-levels before the summer. The pressure has been mounting on this year group for a while now, and added to the daunting task of potentially moving away to university or into the working world, it can be a lot to handle at this young age.
Students can at times feel overwhelmed by the enormity of revision and exams and how they feel that the results will define their future. They are often told by school, by parents and society that exams are a hugely important factor in their future success in life. Children can struggle with the weight of this burden, and parents who know the realities of how the world works often worry that their child won’t do well and it’ll be the end of the world.
In houses up and down the country, kids are preparing for their GCSEs and A-levels. Many schools are putting on extra revision classes, encouraging their students to knuckle down and get focused, many teachers are dusting off their Braveheart-esque pep-talks to fire up, motivate and prepare their students for what lays ahead.
I’ve been doing the same with my boy. I’ve been encouraging him to work, but also to take breaks, not overthink things, not get bogged down with the pressure of ace-ing these exams, not to imagine that they will make or break him. I’ve told him I believe in him, that he is amazing, and that his best is good enough.
I think that this kind of encouragement will serve students best at this juncture – you are amazing, you can do this. And if we see them get stressed, we need to give them space to recharge and regroup and get back at it again.
I remember the feeling of exam stress only too well. Eight or nine years ago, I went back to university to do a degree and found myself back in a sweaty sports hall lined with chairs, that sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach, thinking that I couldn’t remember what I had learned in the last six months and that I just couldn’t do this. As the clock rolled slowly towards exam time, I genuinely thought "What on Earth am I doing here?".
When the exam invigilator told us we could start I had two choices - puke or do my best. I chose to relax and try my best. If I didn’t pass, no one would die, the sky wouldn’t fall.
Because of this fairly recent experience, I know the weeks before exams can be terribly stressful, trying to revise and make information stay inside your brain while your brain is in survival mode with all the stress. I know that there will be times when they’ll want to give up, that this is too hard and they can’t do it. And that is when they will need their parents to be their cheerleaders, to be their safe haven, their shelter in the storm. They need us to tell them they can do this and that we will be with them every step of the way. They need to hear us say "you’ve got this, don’t give up".
My Dad was a school teacher. He taught history in Strabane and was no stranger to exam stress because it came around once a year, every year, for 40 years.
From when I was young, whatever challenges that arose, from exam stress to work stress to family stress to whatever, he would tell me "keep going". Those were his words of encouragement for me and they meant so much, because he was someone cheering me on, believing 100 per cent that I could do it.
I’ll try and help my boy navigate this stressful chapter in his life. I’ll follow the usual advice about making sure he is sleeping well, eating well, taking plenty of breaks, making sure he has somewhere comfortable to study, encouraging exercise and working out ways to stay calm about the whole thing.
And I’ll be there so he can share any worries he has about his work or exams and keep things in perspective, reminding him it’s completely OK to feel anxious about it all, remaining positive and reassuring and reminding him that everything, no matter what, will be OK.
And no doubt I’ll borrow my father’s words and tell him to "keep going".
