Talk Education: Help Your Teen Tackle Exam Anxiety
(ARTICLE FEATURED IN TALK EDUCATION’S NEWSLETTER ON 17.04.23)
If you’re feeling concerned about your teenage student’s levels of anxiety for their exams this summer, then rest assured that you’re not alone.
“More than 80% of headteachers have reported that stress and anxiety among students taking their exams this summer is higher than in pre-pandemic years,” (according to school leaders’ union ASCL).
With statistics such as these being prevalent in the media right now, and causing alarm amongst both parents and educators, the key question is:
How can we help our students feel calm, confident and to cope well with the challenges of exams?
Whilst schools will certainly focus on exam content, revision techniques - and ideally, they will cover some relaxation techniques too - the scope of teaching varies hugely from school to school. As parents therefore, you have a key role to play in supporting your teenage students in the lead-up to exams, and there are plenty of ways you can help.
Here are 10 top tips to help you support your teens during this time:
Adopt A Coaching Approach (Ask, Don’t Tell)
To avoid conflict and to give your teen an element of control over certain aspects of their lives, aim to adopt a coaching approach and ask, rather than tell them, what might help.
When coaching, three steps to bear in mind for a meaningful discussion, are:
a) Ask Open Questions - these encourage communication and avoid one-word answers, eg. “What might make you feel anxious about exams?”.
b) Be an Active Listener - demonstrate with your body language, eye contact and manner that you are fully engaged in the conversation, present, and leaving time for your teen to pause and reflect before they answer the question posed.
c) Avoid “Why” - you will no doubt know from experience that if you ask a teenager why they have done something, the answer is often “I don’t know” as this word can feel accusatory and often leads to a defensive answer. Instead, you could use the question words “what” and ‘how” as these lead to more open and neutral questions.
Our main aim with students is to let them know that we are there to support them, and by asking certain encouraging questions, we can ascertain what they feel would be most helpful to them; and that knowledge is worth its weight in gold.
2. Create A Calm Environment
Having asked your teenager what might help them, it is important to respond to this and also to instill a sense of calm at home - both in their workplace and at meal times. For example, this might mean ensuring younger siblings give them space, and everyone avoiding the topic of exams and work at mealtimes - so your teens know they can work and relax in an environment which encourages learning and promotes good wellbeing.
3. Establish Good Routines
Notice what is helping and what is hindering them in their daily routines, particularly with regards to bedtime, work and exams. Factors that will play into this are, of course, their phones/devices and other people, and how your teen is coping with these distractions. You can help them by talking about the need for boundaries and working out what motivates them - a focus on long-term goals is essential here to overcome short-term “pain” factors.
4. Facilitate Healthy Nutrition
One of the biggest factors to affect stress and energy levels is the consumption of energy drinks, sugar and caffeine. It’s all too easy to graze, binge and self-soothe with unhealthy snacks and drinks during times of stress, so ask what you can to do make good habits easy and bad habits hard, eg. fill the fridge with healthy snacks and water, and encourage more fast-food type snacks at weekends or after an exam.
5. Encourage Purposeful Work and Social Times
If your teen is turning inward, and isolating themselves from their social network, then do what you can to encourage purposeful time for work, and for socialising. There is a danger that some overzealous students come to view socialising as a waste of valuable time as it takes them away from revising. However, viewing social events as a positive healthy habit which encourages their brains to process information whilst they relax and feel connected to others, is in fact a huge bonus and strength.
6. Reassure
One of the biggest causes of teen anxiety is worry about the “what if” questions. These tend to be focused on not achieving the best grades students are hoping for, and as a consequence, not being accepted onto their desired option for higher education/ career path. Since a root cause of anxiety is often linked to the desire to please, don’t underestimate the value in explicitly letting them know that you will still love and support them, whatever the outcome.
You can also share your own experiences of when you had to choose Plan B, as by doing so, you reassure your teens that the worst case scenario in their minds may well not happen, and even if it does, they are capable of handling it as there are always equally good, and sometimes better options that open up in life.
7. Anticipate Problems
Think through the timetable of exams with a logistics brain and plan ahead for all events that might go wrong, from the minutiae of your teen not having the right equipment or running out of ink during an exam, to more day-to-day factors such as transport and ensuring a back-up lift in case of disaster.
If you have a teen who struggles with organisation, then ensure they have packed their bag with all essentials the night before and that clothes are ready and laid out for the morning. You could also encourage them to take water and snacks and double check alarms are working (and have two if needed!).
8. Champion and Build Confidence
In any household with a teen, there will be moments of crisis when lack of self-belief and a sense of overwhelm hits in. You may be the closest person in both proximity and emotional bond when this happens, and therefore you may be on the receiving end of some strong language and/ or behaviour. The key here is NOT to react in the same way!
Breathe, walk away, do whatever you need to do, to give yourself space and let them know you’ll come back to talk when things are a bit calmer.
Once this moment arises, acknowledge their feelings of frustration and ask what they need to feel better, and also how you can help to ensure they can cope well with this situation the next time it arises.
Remember too, that their Inner Critic is bound to be a loud voice in their heads at this time, so encourage them to think what advice they would give to a best friend in their situation, and also, be able to accept kind words from their own Inner Champion - ones that both boost their morale and encourage them to overcome challenges.
9. Educate
With your years of experience, you will no doubt be aware of many resources that might help, eg. from relaxation techniques and forms of mindfulness and meditation, to apps and quick tools they can use in exams. It’s useful to have these resources in mind and ready for the moment when your teen asks for help, or is suddenly in panic mode.
It is often a case of the simpler the better with techniques - one of the most popular breathing exercises, is Square Breathing, ie. imagine four sides of a square, and then breathe in for a count of 4 seconds, hold for 4, breathe out for 4, hold again for 4, and continue until your teen feels calmer and more relaxed.
10. Role-Model
We all know that it’s not our words but our actions that carry the most currency, therefore asking yourself how you manage certain scenarios, from working at home and learning new skills to taking time out to relax, will all give you a key indicator as to where your teen student might be picking up certain habits and beliefs.
There is also great value in having open and honest conversations with teenage students about how you may have struggled at school, or with later situations in life, so they know they’re not alone and that stress is a constant throughout our lives. With the right approach, we teach our teen students that whilst we cannot control external events, we can control how we respond to them. And therein lies our greatest power.
Wishing you and your teenage students a very healthy and happy exam season.
