Surviving Year 12 for Parents

So, it’s coming up to crunch time. Year 12 exams.

To your teenage student this is it; the culmination of 13 years of education. One set of tests to set up the rest of their life. It is demanding and can be overwhelming. There is plenty of advice on-line to help your child. Surviving Year 12 on the Beyond Blue website is representative of a lot of good advice that is available on-line. Surviving Year 12 is also the name of a great book co-authored by leading child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg. It delves into all the same issues in more depth and has oodles of great practical tips to minimise the pain and maximise the outcomes for everybody. It is also light-hearted and an easy read.

But what about you, the parent? What about the rest of the family? How do you all survive when one member of the family is experiencing such difficulties over such a period of time?

The first thing is to take as much of the pressure off as possible. This is not the be all and end all for your child. Yes, it’s wonderful to get great marks but not at the expense of everybody’s mental health.

A little bit of stress is actually a good thing, but people don’t tend to learn well under extreme stress. So, help your child take a chill pill. One way to do that is to realise that these exams are not the be all and end all. If you want to get into a certain course at university and don’t get the marks required, there are ways to get in other than direct entry. Doing well in a similar course will often give you the means to transfer into your preferred course at a later date, and regularly you will have lost no time at all. If you are looking to use your marks to get a job rather than continue your schooling, then good marks are great, but your dedication, perseverance and ingenuity in chasing that job will count for much more, and to be fair, once you have that first job, how you perform in the workplace will be all-important and your Year 12 results will count for little. So everybody ……..  stress less!

The other key thing is to understand that whether your Year 12 student is working really hard or not working at all, and whether they are aware of the reasons to stress less and the benefits of that approach, they are still likely to be stressed. What they need is to be surrounded by as many calming influences as possible. The teenage student is likely to ‘flip their lid’ on numerous occasions. If those around them do the same, it will just make the whole situation much more difficult. I know that may be a huge ask when your child is yelling at you at the top of their lungs, but it is possible and you will be so glad you did in the long run.

To find out how to keep your cool when those around you are losing theirs, feel free to book a free 15 minute, no-obligation phone call within which I am happy to give you the very best of advice I can for your situation.

It may be that is all you need to make a huge difference