Exams are obviously an important part of anyone’s education. They provide a chance to show what has been learned, and they are usually indicative of what kind of prospects the child has for the future – at least in that academic sense. If you have a child who has some exams upcoming, however, it might be causing a great deal of stress in the home.
Most people find exams at least partly stressful, and for some it can be even more extreme than that. If you are keen to help your child, and ensure that they do as well as possible on those exams, there are a lot of steps that you might want to take. In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the most important of these.
Ask Them What They Need
One simple thing you can do, but which can be difficult to do, is to ask your child if they need any help. They may or may not be honest with their answer, and some children find it easier than others to ask for help. But as long as you have asked, you can ensure that you are doing all you can to help them when they need it most, which is all that matters.
You will probably need to choose your moment wisely here. If you ask them when they are too stressed out, you might not get a helpful response. As long as you ask them at the right moment, you should get an indication of what kind of position they are in psychologically, and you can use that information to the advantage of both of you.
Help Them Understand Their Stress
If they are particularly stressed, you can do many things to try and help them overcome it. But first and foremost, you should try to encourage them to understand their stress better, as that is going to help a lot as well. A simple way to do this is to encourage them to be more mindful, which is a skill that everyone can benefit from learning at a young age for a variety of reasons.
To do that, all you need to do is explain to them the process of watching their own thoughts and feelings. Do this enough, and you should find that they are going to feel able to be separate from those stressful thoughts and feelings, which will help them gain space to understand it better and make better and wiser decisions in the long run.
By helping them to understand their stress, you are actually empowering them to overcome its effects in a really powerful way, so this is something that you are certainly going to want to think about doing for them. Those mindfulness skills will also come in handy when they are trying to focus on their exam itself.
Developing Habits Of Studying
The main thing is that your child is developing the necessary habits of studying that they will need in order to revise for their exams properly. Habits take time to build up, so the important thing is to make sure that they know this, and encourage them to be patient as they get into the flow of things. This is also one of the reasons that you will want to start them revising early, months before the exam if possible.
Before they can do this, they are going to need to have a good degree of independence, as it is only with a lot of independence that they are going to study well by themselves. Then it’s all about encouraging them to build up those habits so that they become stronger over time. That means setting apart a time of the day to revise and study, doing it in the same place each day, and doing it with diligence every time. If you can encourage them to do this, their brain will switch on much more easily when they sit down to revise, and the results will be a lot better.
Remember that developing habits takes time, and there is usually a lot of back and forth before it ultimately becomes ingrained. But eventually, it will be one of those things that your child just does automatically, and that will really help them to revise well.
Gain Extra Help With A Tutor
It is often wise to find a tutor for your child. You might think that tutors are only necessary when a child is particularly struggling, but this is not really true. Of course, that is one situation when this is absolutely going to be a good idea, but you should also consider getting your child a tutor just because – it is going to help them to improve their skills in any given topic so much more powerfully, after all.
If your child is struggling with any specific topic, then you should definitely consider finding them a tutor online. You can find Maths and English tutors online easily, as well as Science and any other common subject that they might be studying. This will help them to really cement some of the ideas more fully, and that is going to mean more confidence and better results from the exam itself.
Staying Organised
Being organised is helpful in so many ways, so you should aim to encourage your child to focus on this. For one thing, good organisation skills are central to studying well, as it means that the actual study session is always going to be a lot more successful and easier to do. Good organisation skills also makes it more likely that your child will approach the actual exams in the right way, too. Encourage them to stay organised, and it will really help in so many important ways. Your child will feel a lot more prepared for their exams and more likely to succeed in them, which is of course exactly what you are going for here.
Enforce A Bedtime
No matter their age, exam time is one period of time when you should really make a point of enforcing a bedtime on your child. That’s because sleep is just hugely important for your child in order to be able to concentrate properly during exams and study sessions. If they are getting enough sleep, they will be in a much better position on the whole. Sleep is especially important the night before the exam, but also during the whole exam period in general as well. Be sure to get them to sleep on time every night, as far as you can do so.
The Emotional Side
It’s not just stress that can be a problem here. There are actually many emotions that can crop up during exam time. Part of that is because exams tend to come at a time in life when your child is probably experiencing a lot of emotions already. Part of it is that all the stress can lead to extremes of emotion. If you suspect that your child’s feelings are getting in the way of their ability to study, you need to try and encourage them to remain calm. That can often feel impossible, for both you and them, but it’s something you need to aim for regardless.
If you can do all that, your child is going to be much more likely to get through their exams intact and to do well on them too. That’s good news for their overall wellbeing, their education, and their future, so it’s important to focus on this.
