Supporting teens with exam stress

Hi, I’m Gemma Arnold from Toddlers, Teens, and Between. I’m the between and toddler expert. And I’m Sophie Ziff, our teen expert. And we’re really excited to share our top tips to help equip you as parents for your toddlers, your teens, and between.

Lots of parents ask us what to do about the stress that their teens go through, especially to do with big moments like exams, revision, etc.

So we love to remind parents that when you’re talking about exams or tests focused on the character skill of their young person, whether that be that they are hardworking or courageous or resilient rather than the academic skills. So we’re not focusing on the outcome, you’re focusing on the efforts.

And another really important thing to do is to ensure that, you know, when their best work time is. Maybe they’re a night owl and they work best at night. Maybe they love waking up early and the total early bird. And that’s the best time to work. You try your best, not to impose your experience of stress and work onto them, they’re different.

Another thing you can do is you can sit with them and mark out what the important dates of that exams are so that they can tick them off when they get there. Also sounds great that you can like ask them whether they want that.

Teens, at this point in a sort of 16 or 18, they are able to create their own time. But also you, as a parent can say, can I help you with this?

Also as a parent, model working and playing, you should encourage their hobbies, make sure they see friends and family on the weekends, making sure they’re getting a proper break because we need to know where they are on that burnout thermometer, so they don’t get burned out. Hope that helps.