11 Plus Exams Forum

My son has mild anexity. He has got no diagnosis and does not take any medication. He is doing fine in studies. My question is shall we go for 11 plus or not. I am not sure if he can handle the pressure of 11 plus. Please suggest. Thanks

raa wrote:My son has mild anexity. He has got no diagnosis and does not take any medication. He is doing fine in studies. My question is shall we go for 11 plus or not. I am not sure if he can handle the pressure of 11 plus. Please suggest. Thanks

Anxiety?

Why would you cause him to suffer anxiety? If he's successful, he gets a slightly wider range of schools to pick his secondary preferences from. If he doesn't do well enoigh, he still has exactly the same range of schools available to him as he did before sitting the exam.

Mild anxiety not requiring medication and not interfering with his progress at school (and without an actual diagnosis - have you asked your GP to see him at all about it?) would seem to be the ideal candidate for being managed by parents not making a fuss about such things as an exam which he can either take or not take.

It might be worth considering what kind of things trigger his anxiety? My DS can get anxious in certain situations but he has never had a problem with "intelligence" (for want of a better word) tests, e.g. CATs, SATs, 11+. Some of the subject tests he hasn't revised for on the other hand...

I think how he handles the exam will be very much down to how you frame it.

If you make a big deal of it, he is likely to pick up on that and it will probably make him anxious.

If you keep things low key, it’s justt a test, results aren’t such a big deal, just that a good result means he has a slightly bigger choice of schools to put on th CAF, then maybe he won’t feel as pressurised and won’t be as anxious.

Hi

My DD is sometimes prone to anxiety - notably when we have family events she's made herself 'bothered'. We didn't tell her when the last one was until the day itself! My sister thought I was completely nuts when I mentioned we were considering the 11+.

We managed it by not making too much out of it. We were very happy with all the schools we took her to look around. A grammar school wasn't the end of the world. It was also helped by the regular preparation & by doing mocks so she knew what to expect. How does your child get on at school - in a test for example? What makes him bothered? What are the triggers?

You know your child best.

As others say it depends on the trigger and also think it requires you to monitor hi and see how he goes. My dd can be anxious about some things so I said if she seemed too stressed we’d stop doing the 11 plus entirely. She wasn’t stressed by exams or prep for them though in fact it turned out she liked them. We also made sure we painted our non grammar alternative in a v positive light saying it’d be great to go there so not to worry if she didn’t get grammar.

Anxiety is another person’s challenge. Lack of anxiety is another person’s lack of opportunity.

DD would have felt anxious not having had the opportunity to try. She always knew it was a chance but wanted to try. Another friend's DS did want to do the test but the mother wasn’t happy him doing it as she was ideologically opposed, that caused him upset. It is very much about your family dynamics, what your other options are and how you will treat and approach trying vs not getting the required score / failing.

As parents we can avoid making them anxious, but we have no control over how other children make them feel. Our DC was fine, relaxed and confident. But when schools went back in September there was a lot of hype about the test, and in particular at the practice test, where DC reported there were children actually fighting. This made my DC really anxious when he'd never been anxious about anything! In hindsight, I would have prepared him better for exam stress, including sitting him for mock exams.

raa wrote:My son has mild anexity. He has got no diagnosis and does not take any medication. He is doing fine in studies. My question is shall we go for 11 plus or not. I am not sure if he can handle the pressure of 11 plus. Please suggest. Thanks

Mild anxiety is a normal, part of growing up. A child who is NEVER anxious is more worrying.

PettswoodFiona wrote:she was ideologically opposed, that caused him upset.

I do wonder why a 10 year old child would be upset about not sitting an exam to gain a place at a school they know nothing about?

PettswoodFiona wrote:It is very much about ... what your other options are

I found it quite eye opening listening to parents who clearly knew nothing about the non selective schools, other than they didn't want their DC to go there. I was also quite surprised about how little they seemed to know about the selective school that, as far as they were concerned, was the school that best suited their DC.