By Ravi Singh Negi
Board exams are round the corner. This is the time when most children as well as their parents are confused about their performance in examinations. In India, board exams are often treated as a family event rather than just a student’s milestone.
Parents in India play a crucial, multifaceted role before and during board exams by acting as mentors, friends, support systems and, sometimes strict disciplinarians. Their primary responsibilities include maintaining a calm home, fostering a positive, stress-free environment, ensuring nutritious diets and adequate sleep, encouraging realistic routines, and providing emotional encouragement without comparisons. Discuss Exam Strategy, how to write answers, how to make answers presentable, which questions to attempt first, how to divide time between various sections, etc.
You, as a parent or guardian, may not be able to help children in academics but, your physical presence and emotional support will work like magic in their performance. Your presence can have extremely positive effects on the child. Knowing that someone is always there for her can make a huge difference to child’s mental well-being. Your physical presence does not mean any sort of interruption in child’s studies but your role is to supervise the child from a distance and take care of his comfort, health, diet and peaceful environment also. You also have to take care of overexertion and mental fatigue. Never use sentences like – “You have to do well for your bright future.” Instead you can say – “Take it easy, it is just an exam, your future depends upon your hard work and not just on marks.”
The time right after an exam is very crucial. This is a period where your child needs someone to share their feelings, fears and anxieties about the paper and the impending result. Give him time and listen to him discuss the paper without any judgments. Never scrutinise the paper at length to point out the mistakes they committed.
No doubt, Exams have been a constant source of stress in the lives of students who feel anxiety when preparing for and writing an exam. The additional pressure from peers, parents and society increase the anxiety. No matter how well prepared a student is, they tend to feel anxious during exams and are worried about their results. A little bit of anxiety is good but when it starts showing its effect in the form of general fatigue, sleeplessness, headaches, backache, shoulder aches and stomach upsets it is alarming. The results are the behavioural changes in the child, like irritability, loss of concentration and patience, depression, change in appetite and signs of panic. Different thoughts like loss of memory, shortage of time, non-coverage of syllabus, many doubts on the subject matter, etc., occur in the mind of the child and s/he is unable to cope with the situation.
You, as a parent or guardian have to look after the child so that s/he is able to concentrate more on studies. Parents should not exert more pressure on the child. Every child has his or her own limitations. Parents must understand it and should not expect too much out from them. The Parent/Guardian should offer help to the child but should not insist on helping. Monitor the child’s schedule but do not spy. A child is an individual, and should never be compared with others. Observe the activities of the child, if you find something unusual or change in the behaviour of the child which seems out of your control, consult a counselor without delay.
(Ravi Singh Negi is an Advocate, Social Worker and Marriage/Academic Counsellor.)
