Stress is normal!
<strong>Stress is normal!</strong>
On Thursday, Year 11 boys sat their first examination – IGCSE Geography. The exam period is an intense experience, particularly for GCSE pupils who may sit more than twenty different papers (once oral exams and coursework are taken into account) over a period of six weeks. We are very conscious of boys’ stress at this time and I hope that many will take advantage of the Mindfulness sessions that we are laying on to help them relax. However, we must be careful not to over-dramatise stress, as the adrenaline produced by the body in response to boys’ desire to do well can actually aid their performance. To paraphrase author Lucy Nichol, ‘anxiety is a dry mouth and racing heart as you enter the exam hall; an anxiety disorder is thinking that a dry mouth will kill you.’ Therefore, we must not worry if our son is feeling anxious. Our job is to reassure him and to help him gain perspective. We should worry if we see an extreme reaction from him over a period of time.
As the Easter holiday drew to a close, the Times Educational Supplement (every teacher’s favourite read) featured an excellent article by Mental Health campaigner, Natasha Devon. In 2015, Ms Devon was appointed Children’s Mental Health Champion by the Department for Education. However, she only lasted 9 months in the job after criticising the Government that its fixation on testing and exams was causing a mental health crisis among the young. She is nevertheless an extremely sensible voice and she pointed out that ‘anxiety is a normal and, in many cases, useful emotion. The aim shouldn’t be to avoid stress altogether but to minimise its impact’ and I summarise her three core pieces of advice below.
Firstly, identify what exactly is causing the stress. Some things are within a boy’s control, others less so. If the problem is insufficient revision, only he can fix it! However, it might well be that it’s a topic that he doesn’t understand, in which case he must seek urgent support from a teacher. A third category is things that he has no control over whatsoever – ‘what happens if I don’t get the grade I need to do A Level Maths?’ Get your son to write down everything that is worrying him and divide them into three lists. There are clear actions required for the first two categories. With the third, Ms Devon suggests that the best stress-busting response is to screw up the list of ‘uncontrollables’ in a symbolic act!
Secondly, try to help your son to understand that focusing on his grades or on what might happen afterward will actually hinder his exam performance. Psychological studies have shown that if you use extrinsic incentives (like money) to improve performance, thinking about the reward actually stops people from focusing on the actual task. This might seem paradoxical, but it has been found that you can’t extrinsically motivate someone into a better performance unless the task is fairly mundane (which obviously excludes exams). It, therefore, follows that, as counterintuitive as it might seem, encouraging boys to relax and just try their best will pay off.
Finally, Ms Devon repeats advice that I have given previously – the importance of downtime. Taking regular breaks and building time for recreation into boys’ revision plans are both advantageous for their mental health and help them to learn more effectively. She informs us that sleep and relaxation are when the conscious mind ‘downloads’ information into the unconscious, where it can be stored in long-term memory. During revision and exam time, it’s more important than ever to keep up hobbies like sport or music. They represent an important outlet for stress and a way to maintain good mental health. Please therefore do not be tempted to extricate your son from school sport – this goes against all the research on the subject. He will benefit from the opportunity to switch off from revision mode.
I actually prefer the word pressure to stress and I can think of countless times when the adrenaline of pressure has helped me to improve my performance, whether academically, or in my hobbies of sport and singing. All pupils must expect to be under pressure during their lives, professionally or indeed personally as they learn how to juggle the demands of job, partner and family. Ultimately, the only way to avoid this sort of stress is never to sit an exam, never to challenge oneself. Let’s focus our attention on helping our boys by listening, showing empathy and giving them a sense of perspective.