The year is ending. Very soon, school children will be sitting for their end-of-year promotional exams.
Irrespective of how many exams one sits for, you can never get accustomed to them. This explains why an impending exam never calls for celebration. Yet, we need the same exams to assess our understanding of concepts and put in perspective what we have studied.
In a few weeks, children will again go through this ritual. This definitely is a tough season because exams determine whether the child gets promoted to the next class or not.
Children need parental support during this period. This is the time to help them focus on revision to avoid last-minute panics. Some children have not mastered the skill of using time resourcefully. They keep postponing their school assignments. Reminding them that time wasted is never gained, is a worthwhile lesson.
As the preparation pressure builds up, this is not the time to issue threats and counter threats of your expectations from your child’s performance.
“I hope you see how I struggle to keep you in school… Just dare bring home a bad report card and see,” is a threat some parents will issue to their children.
The truth is that working under fear has never facilitated excellent results. Help the child appreciate the fact that good grades are not about you, the parent.
Rather, it should be about the child. The child needs to be motivated to excel because they are the primary beneficiaries of this success.
“I am reading hard because my mother wants nothing less than an A,” a friend’s child recently whispered to me.
This left me wondering where the child’s aspiration is. The days of children going to school, working for good grades and doing their parents’ ‘dream’ courses are long gone. Our responsibility is to involve, motivate and prepare our children for their future.
As the season draws nigh to put on paper what they have learnt, let your child know that it is another step into their future. Help them look at exams positively. They are already under tension that naturally comes with exams.
Therefore, do not be an additional burden demanding for unrealistic expectations. Your ease and positivity towards exams will help them appreciate that indeed exams are not to fail them, but a mere test of what they have studied.
Children are cognitively-gifted differently. There are those who will end up with average or poor grades even after lots of effort and long hours of study. It is incumbent upon each parent to take time and know the abilities of each child and attend to their needs individually.
It is so disheartening for a child to be ridiculed for poor performance. They lose the confidence to try again. Encourage the poor performers, appreciate their effort and give them hope. It can be so traumatizing to think about an exam if you have failed in the past.
Naturally, the fear of the reoccurrence of the past keeps lurking in your memory. In moments like these, children need encouragement to understand that their past failures can be overcome. Success to all school children that will be sitting for end-of-year exams!
