There is plenty of evidence out there that shows that mindfulness has special effects on many aspects of our health, and you can bet that it would also help the health of your children. Exam stress – especially during GCSE year – is actually one of the hardest things for a child to go through.
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The only other transitioning from being a more carefree child and individual, they are transitioning into the person they hope to become. It’s a lot of pressure to put on a 14 or 15-year-old, and by the time they sit the GCSE exams when they are 16, they can be going through a lot of stress and a lot of feelings about it.
As a parent, you’re going to witness your child go through a lot of stress while they try to balance all of their subjects, their revision, and exams to come. They will have to choose options, and they will have to decide who they want to be for their level years.
You can invest in great GCSE online tuition, but you need to understand how to help them to relieve exam stress so that they are not feeling too overwhelmed. Compassion has to play a part here because while you may have some exams at one stage in your life, you should remember just how panicky and stressful you may have felt. Here are some of the things that you could do to help with relieving the exam stress.
Tips on how to relieve exam stress
- Teach them guided meditation. Meditation can inspire students to concentrate on their senses and their breathing. It enables them to clear the headspace to allow them to think and regulate their emotions better. There are plenty of YouTube guided meditations that you can use to help students like yours to deal with stress, and students may find these are challenging. As with anything though, they will find it much easier with some practice. Implementing nightly meditation throughout exam study will really help.
- Drill the five senses. Similarly to guided meditations, A three minute breathing exercise can help your/child’s to re-focus their attention and restore calm. During the five senses is a simple breathing exercise that you can find on YouTube. What they need to do is silently think of the three things that they can see, hear, feel, smell and taste. They finish the exercise with two more deep breaths and centre themselves before studying.
- Introducing relaxation apps. There are plenty of apps out there that generate individual meditations, and your child will be able to feel less anxious well in the mental, physical and emotional state. Some of the apps can also be personalised meditation based on the results and the Headspace app is actually fantastic for that.
- Lock away technology. Taking a step back from their mobile phones while they are studying will help them in the long run. Encourage your child to avoid sleeping with the phone beside the bed and advise them to cut down on their usage so that they don’t feel compelled to open their phones while trying to study. It’s a lot less stressful to study when they have less distractions and can stop for a moment and take a breather without staring at Facebook.
- Make it fun. Studying is not easy, and especially if there are GCSE exams that can tell them whether they are going to study in the next few years. Making it fun will help to relieve that stress and take their mind off the fact that they are actually studying something.
- Work on self belief. It’s always easier to relieve that exam stress if your child knows that they’re going to do well. Encourage them, and help them to feel like they’re going to do a great job with their exams. Remember to tell them that their best is good enough and that no matter what their results, you will forever be proud of them.
Exams may only last a couple of weeks, but the results last forever. Some people will tell you that exam results are not important, but if your child has ambitions to go to university, the GCSE exams will unlock their A levels, which will unlock the university course of choice.
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