Five Ways to support Your Child Through Exams

Exam season...

Even just reading those words might bring a flutter of anxiety into your chest — not just your child.

Whether they are in Year 6 or Year 11, navigating GCSEs, SATs or school end of year assessments, this time of year often comes wrapped in pressure, stress, and the silent fear of “what if they don’t do well enough?”, "how will they cope with their failure?" or even "How will I?!"

Let’s take a breath together... While exams matter in some ways, they never matter more than your child’s wellbeing.

The truth is, the stress of exams can stir up more than just academic worries. For many children, it awakens feelings of inadequacy, overwhelm, or perfectionism. For others, it reactivates earlier experiences of pressure, failure, or even trauma around school. It may also stir up these feelings for you too, clouding your own judgement and increasing the chance that you react to the situation emotionally, rather than responding to it.

A parent/carer helping a child with their exam revision

Here’s how we can support our children — holistically and lovingly — through the intensity of exam season.

1) Whether they are sitting end of year assessments, SATs, GCSEs or A levels, these test will matter to your child. They will feel important and so it’s important to honour that experience for them and not dismiss or diminish it.

2) Ensure your child knows that whilst these exams feel really big, the result will not change how you feel about them and shouldn’t change how they feel about themselves. Once the exams are over find a time to celebrate them and their hard work - do this before the results come out. Their worth is not their result.

3) Remind yourself that your child’s mental health is priority - speak to them about how they feel within themselves BEFORE asking how their exam went. This gives them concrete evidence that their wellbeing comes before achievements.

4) Keep it as steady and calm as possible at home. This may mean pre-empting their needs - this might look like bringing them a snack or drink before they ask, running them a bath or encouraging an early night. These actions regulate their physical basic needs which allow your child’s energy to go on their emotion regulation (despite this there may still be some big feelings emerging that’s ok - they are human!).

5) Less is more. Less activity, less fuss, less demands. Your child’s executive function will be used up on revision/ ensuring they have everything they need/ arriving on time/ doing the actual exam(s). Be quietly present and readily available, this will allow you to attune fully to your child ❤️