We are getting to that time of year where exams are being sat and teenagers all over the country are stressing out. If you have teenagers at home that are stressed out, you’re not alone, but it’s not all the easiest thing to deal with. It’s very hard to look at your kids when you’re a parent and see how much they are worrying and stressing out.
The best thing that you can do as a parent in this situation is to be supportive, and whether that means asking your teenager what they want so that you could help them, or it means providing them with online tuition for GCSE & A-Level, you need to do what you can to make sure that they are feeling supported and able to continue with exams. These exams can dictate their entire future, and while people will say that GCSEs and A levels don’t matter, if your teenager has aspirations of university level study, they do matter. Here are five ways that you can support your teenage education.
- Get to know their learning style. Some teenagers are visual learners, where others are audio learners or kinaesthetic learners. Kinaesthetic learners are doers, auditory learners prefer to listen and visual learners prefer to read and see. You can help them to be better and more effective in their studying if you understand the learning style they need.
- Look at a study plan. Take them to the stationery shop and let them choose bright coloured pens and a wall chart. If you work with them and create a study plan, they are more likely to stick to it because they know that they have support. One of the key reasons a teenager stresses about exams is because they don’t have a plan in place to give them enough time. This will help your teenager to break down the assessment into more manageable tasks and it looks like molehills and not mountains.
- Have a look at the additional commitments. If your teenager has a job outside school, offer them the chance to quit the job and you will support them financially while they are getting through their exams. You need your teenagers to get a good night’s sleep and if they have too many extracurriculars or a job in the real world, they won’t get as much sleep as they need to be effective in their study.
- Help them to prioritise. Your teenagers priorities right now need to be their exams, so make a list with them of the crucial tasks that they have to work on versus the things that they can let slide during exam periods.
- Check in regularly. Offering support to them personally as well as their education is going to help them to feel as if they can do this. Talk to them about what they feel they are doing well with right now, and what they are struggling with. Ask them what they need help with and how you can help them. All these things matter.