Coping With Parental Expectations: Effective Strategies to Reduce Exam Anxiety in Students

Dealing with parental expectations can be a significant source of stress for students, particularly during examinations. The pressure to meet or exceed these expectations can lead to heightened anxiety, impacting both mental health and academic performance. Understanding and managing this anxiety is extremely important for students to perform effectively and maintain their well-being.
Being a good parent is not only one of the most responsible tasks but also one of the most challenging. In their high regard for academic excellence, parents often impose the pressure of unrealistic perfectionism on themselves and their children. Tests, homework, extracurricular activities, grades, college applications, and course selections become how parents push their children to their limits in the face of cut-throat competition. It is absolute that parents in their drive to maximise their children’s potential set high and unrealistic goals. Which leads to heightened anxiety levels and hinders children’s ability to perform well. Ms.Kesha.P.Bhavsar. Psychologist, at Mpower, Helpline Mumbai offers valuable tips for students to manage and reduce exam anxiety amidst high parental expectations.

Standing up to the parental expectation- Here, the child with given choice is accumulated to align with the parents set of ideas for performance and pushes himself in all given sorts to live up to the same. Not only this escalates his fears of accomplishing the same but also loses the opportunity to develop individual take on success and excellence. To bring out the best in oneself is masked over by what parents see/imagine the best.
Fear to fail- As hyped up as academic performance is, unless it is not met with a standard set the child is limited to setting his point of success to be unnecessarily aligned with that of his parents. When seeing these unmet, the kid tends to consider himself as a failure and not just an event. For further risks or other competitive challenges, there is lost will to thrive because of the failure perceived prior.
Internalizing the fear- Parents who consistently emphasis on academic performance successes many times leaves children unexposed to several other opportunities. Parents and children collaboratively define self-worth based on academic success and conclude the overall potential of the child. Also, these beliefs might internalise the child for life and put into the challenges of self-doubt in places outside the academics.
Anxiety for life- Furthermore, behaviour often initiated and/or not corrected at the beginning, leaves it prints for life. Criticizing children’s constant demand for betterment might not particularly make them stronger and better, but rather make them feel perceived as weak and feel anxious before they can perform . They may be excessive worry for being disapproved or unacceptable.
Perhaps, this parental behaviour is very crucial to be corrected and provided with a needed multi-faceted approach so that it does not hinder children’s mental health.
Transparent communication- It is essential to provide a safe space for the child to share his short-comings and be accepted for feeling vulnerable at times. Meanwhile, before sharing
their expectations, parents should rather first give the child a chance to express his thoughts and feelings openly. There should be a common mutual ground decision for the academic goals where the child feels comfortable and is coherent with his calibre.
Coping mechanisms – Often at times, the child assumes failing an exam is failing their parents. These ideas should be replaced with feeling disappointed for the moment and also should be encouraged by the parents to try. Several instances are witnessed when, under anxiety, a child is not able to perform well though prepared well. Here, the parents could play a key role in being a motivating aspect to not worry much about the outcome and just focus on the participation. Various breathing techniques and meditation and relaxing exercise are important to practise before exams.
Widely used 3-3-3 technique- : Name three things you can see, three voices you can identify, three body movements you can do, is found to be helpful in managing anxious situations. Setting up realistic goals- One pupil can be first-parent should be open and accepting that each kid is different and special. The desire to be best in everything is not pressurising and too ambitious, but certainly unrealistic. Parents should be well aware of the child’s interest and be flexible in incorporating goals which are attainable with time and skills of the child. Provide the required support – Rather than guilt and shame the child with unmet goals, parents should look forward to identifying the type of personal or professional support they need, which could be teaching, tutoring mental health professionals etc. If not going to therapy, there are mental health helplines available for such instances including parenting as well as anxiety among children. Mpower mental health helpline (no. 1800120820050) has team of Psychologist available 24*7 to cater the concerns.