How to support your child during exam year

OFTEN forgotten, parents can also experience the stresses, worries, ups and downs their child goes through during the run up to the Leaving Cert exams.

It can be very difficult for parents to watch their child struggle at times and face challenges in their lives that they haven’t had before. It can be challenging for parents to know what to do to help their child.

Parents can play a key role in the success of students, and their support can make the stresses of the months ahead more manageable. However, for parents this might also mean dealing with strong emotions, outbursts, or lack of motivation and refusal to revise.

These challenges can be hard to navigate but there are some things that parents can do to help make things easier for their child and for themselves.

Helping students to structure their time

The chaotic nature of the Leaving Cert year can make it difficult to keep structure and organisation in students lives. The heavy workload, trying to keep up with exercise, hobbies and friends means that life can become hectic. This can lead to students feeling overwhelmed and unable to manage their time. Very often when this happens young people can develop unhealthy coping mechanisms such as isolating themselves, spending all of their time with friends rather than studying or focusing only on revision and study which can cause burn out.

The parent’s role is to help students maintain their structure and routines in their lives by putting in place the boundaries they need. This is best achieved through discussion and compromise.

Although this can be challenging with a teenager, it’s important that although the structure needs to be put in place, young people also need to feel heard and feel they have some control over their lives. Daily routines are not something to restrict students but a plan to help them manage their time and ensure that they are doing everything they need to do.

Small acts of encouragement

Young people often find it difficult to take encouragement and praise from their parents. Sometimes when parents try to encourage their teenagers, they hear it as criticism or are dismissive of it. This is normal, however it is still important that young people hear praise to enable them to persist and remain focused.

Encouragement is best delivered when it is genuine, focused on a specific accomplishment and brief. General statements such as, “you are doing your best” or if you keep working hard you will improve”, are general statements that don’t give students something specific to focus on.

However, statements such as “you did really well getting ready this morning” or “you were really focused on study today” shows the young person that their parent is taking an interest in what they are doing and noticing when they do well.

Parenting a Leaving Cert student can be very challenging at times and there will be some setbacks along the way. Students become very focused on results naturally and very often parents do too.

However, praising effort rather than result helps the student to do the best they can. They will put effort, or pressure on themselves around results so it can be a relief to them when they feel they aren’t making the progress they would like, that their parent is noticing the effort they are putting in.

Deciphering the code – how young people communicate stress

We all know that teenagers can sometimes challenge us with their behaviour. However, it is important to notice when this behaviour is communicating something else. Outbursts are a normal part of teenage life and might increase in frequency over the coming moths as the pressure grows.

However, when a child starts behaving in ways that are subtly different than normal, they may be telling us something. When outbursts become more frequent or severe, when a student stops revising or doing the things that they normally do, or isolate themselves it can often mean that they are feeling overwhelmed and stressed.

Sometimes it is possible to talk and come up with solutions, however often the young person in not in a place to be able to do this as they feel so overwhelmed, in this case its important that parents support them to get back into healthy routines and show their support through small acts of kindness such as making their favourite food or other home comforts that shows them that they are safe, seen and supported.

The coming months

Although challenging, the next few months will pass quickly for Leaving Cert students, perhaps less so for parents who will endure similar feelings of worry and stress that their children do, yet have to stand back and allow them to do things for themselves.

It’s important that parents also share their concerns with family and friends and do the things they need to take care of their wellbeing.

To be able to support the important people in our lives we must also remember to take care of ourselves.

You can catch up on Alan’s series on EchoLive.ie