Expert view: 10 exam-time tips for parents
Teacher (and mum) Louise Farnell offers advice on what you can do to ease your teenager’s exam-time blues.
Exam time for any child is no fun and it can take its toll on the whole family. But how can we help our teenager through it? Here Louise Farnell offers some useful advice. She is an assistant headteacher at a mixed comprehensive school for children aged 11 to 16 in County Durham and she has two daughters of her own. You’ll also find more useful advice from Louise in Getting through exam time and Preparing for the exam years ahead.
10 tips for valuable parent-support through exam time
1. Encourage your child to get together with other friends on the same course so they can work as a revision group.
2. Or establish a revision partner – not necessarily a best friend, but someone else to share some of the preparation work with, instead of slugging through it on their own.
3. Make sure your child has a specific space to revise – a desk, or a room where they can organise work and leave it without having to spend time getting it all back out again every time they want to return to it.
4. Do what you can to keep noise at a low level and to minimise disruption from the rest of the family.
5. Keep your child supplied with snacks and drinks.
6. Remind your child that exercise is important for general wellbeing, the energy to get through the coming weeks, and to feed that brain!
7. Help your child maintain a healthy diet through revision and exam time. A good breakfast for a morning exam, and a light lunch for an afternoon exam. Stodgy food, high in carbohydrate, takes a lot of energy to digest and can leave a pupil tired and less alert.
8. Make sure your child isn’t overdoing it – taking a break is important so help him or her visit friends, book their seat on the sofa for a favourite TV show, or offer some extra pocket money or allowance for the occasional trip out.
9. It’s important that the home dynamic is not disrupted by upheavals like having building work done or having people to stay. However, having said that, it’s likely that the person revising will cause the most change to the home dynamic and you’ll all get to hear about it!
10. Always encourage. When your child says, ‘It’s not worth it, I’m not learning anything,’ let them know it IS worth it. Be positive.
SUPERSAVVY TIP:
Don’t be put off by your stroppy teenager – they may be anxious, hormonal and despite their initial disinterest in your interest, they do value it. It’s just not cool to show it.