At this time of year parents may be understandably becoming anxious regarding their child’s impending 11+ examinations, it’s also a concern that you may worry about transmitting your own worries onto your child. This type of anxiousness only adds pressure and stress to everyone concerned.
I’ve also taken time to suggest some strategies to help keep both yourself and your child calm at this pressurised time of year.
Don’t Time Your Childs Work Until They are Ready
Both parents and tutors occasionally think it’s best to time children to complete a task, this however is likely to exaggerate any weakness the child may have and may make children work slower having a detrimental effect to their work.
I prefer to suggest that encouragement to work carefully and at a slower pace to obtain accuracy. Once the child’s confidence is increasing I prefer to add some fairly relaxed time limits, then advancing these to increased time limits as the exam looms closer when it is a matter of months away.
Setting A Childs Goals
An impending examination which is months away is portrayed as a lifetime away to a child. Therefore trying to explain a test is ten months away is not going to startle our children into a wildness of study. The learning process for adults and children alike is never a smooth upward curve, it is actually often making the learner occasionally feel as though they are advancing two steps forward and one step back. We therefore must ensure we are not making our children feel a failure but praise what they have covered and have achieved and plan to work on the areas which they have lost marks and presents the increased results to your child.
Remember To Have Fun Days
There are so many learning opportunities around us which are not always geared to sitting working on paper. Remember to enjoy and have fun with your children, sometimes , especially if the work is starting to create a mental block, the best way of moving forwards is to walk away and revisit the problem at a later time. You only have 1 year of your child at this age, so whilst as parents we want the best and to offer everything we can to our children, please remember to have fun with them also.