11 Plus Exams Forum

I’m not sure if this should be confined to just the students’ anxiety!

Those who have been through it, what do you think would have helped you, looking back?

Not sure what helps.

Make sure they continue any hobby they do, and plan time for it. Make sure you know what teachers to email if it starts unravelling, and do so. Offer to help with revision, but don’t be offended if refused.

I actually encouraged my dd to try out counselling....just to have a space where she coukd offload and have someone show her some relaxation skills and that it’s ok to reach out to get help. It seemed to help

Tinkers wrote:Not sure what helps.

Make sure they continue any hobby they do, and plan time for it. Make sure you know what teachers to email if it starts unravelling, and do so. Offer to help with revision, but don’t be offended if refused.

I would actually suggest, encourage them carry on with some outside activity, but let them be responsible for saying, actually , tonight this is getting in the way rather than being relaxing (or whatever). So far, we've had one who just pottered on with life as normal (mainly swimming and Explorers) and one who carried on with one activity but decided to drop another altogether. Third one is currently in year 11; sadly, he has already had to drop swimming for other reasons, leaving him with violin and being a Young Leader. He has already mentioned that he may want to drop music nearer the time; I assume he will carry on with the YL, since he rather hankers after our next International Jambree in 2020, but we shall see.

Agree that downtime is so important. This time a year ago dd1 was stressing over mocks and she's a big worrier at the best of times. TV , nice relaxed meals, that sort.of thing. Invite some of her pals over and get the pizzas in.

A SMALL amount of stress and anxiety is possibly not a bad thing though.

Encourages them to get off the phone/PS4 and do a bit of revision!

I agree Surferfish. Definitely continue with outside activities. I think exercise is particularly important and being involved in the usual family chores/activities that remind DC that life goes on, and will go on, regardless of how it goes in May/June. All this helped DD. Would appear to need a rocket to provoke DS to stress, however! Maybe receiving his mock results will do the trick

The stress could be because they feel overwhelmed with the workload of revision. One tactic is to ignore it and do other things, because while they are not thinking about it, it is not stressful. This tactic is obviously not a good one. Though, as others have said, downtime is essential, they do need to face opening the books to revise.

Encourage them to write a timetable for their revision, so they can see there is time. Be there to listen to them, without judgement. At GCSE, step in if they need help getting on with it. It is their first major exams and some need more support than others.

At A level, they should be more independent.

Make sure to include some leisure/down time on the timetable.

I feel sometimes that making a timetable and not sticking to it causes quite a lot of stress. I could see that my daughter could never stick to a timetable even though she was revising. She tended to focus more on her strengths and not her weaknesses. So I suggested that she record what she’d actually done rather than what she intended to do. It meant that she wasn’t kidding herself about having done lots of revision for her least favourite subjects. Obviously different things work for different people.