5 ways Christian parents can help their children with exam stress

Exams bring real pressure, but Rachael Newham shows parents that with honest listening, healthy routines, and faith-filled reassurances they can help young people find calm and confidence in exam season

May is synonymous for many with bank holidays and BBQs, but for young people, it’s the climax of school life and exams. Whether it be Year 6 SATS, GCSEs or A-Levels, many young people are approaching the month with something akin to dread.

Exams are, in some ways, a rite of passage. They come to us all and we can probably remember our own exam times with a mixture of dread and nostalgia, but for an increasing number of young people the stress can be overwhelming and begin to negatively impact, perhaps already fragile mental health.

Just because, in retrospect, the stress of exams can pale in comparison to other pressures doesn’t mean that it’s easy to manage

Childline reports that over 1500 calls last year were related exam stress, with these numbers peaking in May and accounting for 21% of calls in May last year. So whilst exam stress may be normal - that doesn’t make it easy for either young people or parents to navigate.

The calls revealed that exam stress is acute, particularly when it’s compounded by things such as housing and caring pressures, and not helped when parents and teachers dismiss exam stress. For whilst it’s common - and we may have experienced it ourselves - that doesn’t diminish what our young people are facing, particularly against the omnipresent cost of living crisis, which young people are all too aware of.

So how can we respond?

Perhaps the most important thing we can do is ……