Managing Performance Anxiety
There are so many things about life that can make us feel anxious. If your child seems to be experiencing anxiety, they are not alone – there could be numerous stressors in their life, including tests and much more. Remind them that, in spite of the worry they might be feeling about an upcoming test, they are capable of coping with that anxiety and they have your support.
The more you realize what’s happening when test anxiety hits, the better able you’ll be able to help your anxious child get through it and the less ominous those scary standardized exams or homework challenges will be.
The Caretaker’s Guide to Helping Children Cope with Test Anxiety
FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
Help your child prepare. Teaching your child effective study techniques and test-taking skills can take care of anxiety that comes from being ill-prepared. It can also help boost your child’s confidence, as it’s typically much easier to meet a challenge when you know you’ve done all you can do to be ready for it.
Study techniques that can be helpful include regular reviews of the material, flash cards and practice tests. Starting regular study sessions a week or two in advance can prevent the high-stress need to cram last minute.
Work on maintaining focus. Since one of the effects of test anxiety is the habit of looking around at other students and thinking everyone is smarter, reviewing focus techniques with your child may help nip that habit in the bud. Reinforce that the only thing that should grab your child’s focus is the test in front of him or her, not the boy in the next seat, the girl in the next aisle or the bird sitting on the window sill.
Purge anxieties on paper. All that anxiety packed in your anxious child’s brain has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is usually the part of the brain that controls a person’s working memory. Letting the anxiety stay in the brain and fester tends to crowd out other thoughts and decrease the working memory’s effectiveness.
Instead of keeping the anxieties harbored inside, students may do well to purge them by writing them out on paper shortly before the exam.
Go for relaxation exercises. Visualization exercises are great for little kids because they tend to have active imaginations. Practice these when your child is calm. Ask him to close his eyes and identify a place he feels happy, confident, and relaxed. Encourage him to share details about the sights, sounds and scents in his calming place. As he shares, cue him to take deep breaths. Then on test day, remind your child to close his eyes and visualize his calming place when he feels anxious.
- Watch how Arthur and his friends practice relaxation techniques in advance of a school-wide test.
Change your child’s mindset about stress. Cognitive reframing is a great way to help young children cope with their anxious thoughts. We can teach kids to “boss back” anxious thoughts by replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. So when their brain signals that something is too hard, they can say, “You don’t worry me! I know how to do this!” Remind your child that, no matter what happens with any test, he or she is a wonderful, beautiful, worthwhile individual who is deeply cherished and loved.