Keeping Stress Levels Steady…!

As exams creep ever closer, your teen’s stress levels are likely to increase…

For some teenagers, the stress will be small and manageable. For others, the stress might be overwhelming. There’ll also be moments where the stress ‘peaks and troughs.’ All of this is normal…and inevitable.

To a certain extent, some stress surrounding exams is healthy. Manageable amounts of stress leading up to examinations can help give your child drive and determination!

However, what we don’t want is teenagers whose stress levels become unhealthy- or whose stress levels impact negatively on their success. Therefore, here we offer some tips to help your child keep their cool during exam season and keep their stress levels steady.

‘Proper Preparation’

‘Proper preparation’ really is crucial to your teen’s confidence- and confidence is key to reducing excessive exam stress! There’s nothing worse than last-minute panicking about exams, so ensuring your child is readily prepared is the best way forward!

Our revision courses are an ideal way of helping your child become fully prepared. In addition to this, our revision provider offers your child the opportunity to be guided by subject specialists, who deliver the material your child needs to revise. The Easter holidays are when our next intensive courses take place, and this is perfectly timed to give your child a ‘final boost’ before the exams begin. Signing up to a revision course this close to the exams is a great way to reduce stress- we cover the key aspects your child needs to know for the days and weeks that follow.

Study at Home, Too

Our second tip is to make sure your teenager is prepared at home, also. Continuing with their revision timetable will help keep stress at bay if the commit to it. Sometimes, students feel stressed when they feel like they’ve fallen behind… so sticking to their plans is important.

Health and Well-Being

In terms of home life, ensuring your teen eats well, sleeps well and rests well is crucial. Being as healthy as possible will be conducive to managing stress better: healthy body, healthy mind- as they say!
Spending time outdoors and enjoying some leisure time will help keep your teen’s zen!

The average amount of sleep that teenagers get is between 7 and 7 ¼ hours. However, they need between 9 and 9 ½ hours (studies show that most teenagers need exactly 9 ¼ hours of sleep). Sleep deprivation will impact on many aspects of your teenager’s functioning:

Sleep deprivation will cause your teenager to be moody, irritable, and cranky. In addition, she will have a difficult time regulating her mood, such as by getting frustrated or upset more easily.
Teenagers who are sleep deprived are also more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours, such as drinking, driving fast, and engaging in other dangerous activities.
Cognitive ability. Inadequate sleep will result in problems with attention, memory, decision making, reaction time, and creativity, all of which are important in school.
Academic performance. Studies show that teenagers who get less sleep are more apt to get poor grades in school, fall asleep in school, and have school tardiness/absences.

Seek Support

Finally, it’s important that your teen knows they can seek support. There is a whole wealth of support out there for your teen to access, whether that be in school, at our revision courses, at afterschool revision classes or through tutors.

No teen should be struggling alone during exam time.

Whether it be emotional or academic support, there will be individuals or services who can jump to your teen’s aid when it comes to managing stress.

With regards to academics, it might be that your teen gets in a ‘tizz’ when they think there’s a topic they’ve missed, or there’s an area of a subject they feel completely confused by. Perhaps exam technique is bothering your teen? This is where it can be wise to sign your child up to revision courses, whereby subject specialists provide both reassuring and knowledgeable input. Our intensive (yet friendly!) approach will help keep your teen’s stress at bay! There are also opportunities to ask questions and rehearse exam technique.

Feeling confident and ‘less stressed’ about exams is largely down to having prepared and practised for what’s ahead!