How we dealt with exam stress

My daughter has struggled with her mental health for years. She was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder when she was around 14, which for her looks like panic attacks, mornings where she couldn’t face school, and weeks where small things would leave her not able to cope at all.

From when my daughter was a young age, me and my husband always tried to stress that her wellbeing was the most important thing to us, and that we didn’t have any expectations for her in terms of exams, but that didn’t really stop her feeling the strain of it.

There was so much pressure from school to do well, even though they knew that she struggled with her mental health. She would also hear about how her friends were doing and couldn’t stop comparing herself. And there is always so much media coverage of exam periods that focuses heavily on results.

This meant that revision was always difficult because it felt overwhelming. We tried to not pressure her so rather than focusing on how much material she was ‘getting through’, focused on making sure she was eating well, getting enough sleep, and managing her mental health. 

Sometimes the ways she chose to revise were not how we would do them! But we learned quite quickly that nagging her just added to her stress (and ours). After a few arguments, we realised we had to let go of it. We found it was better to focus on making sure home felt safe and she was able to talk to us about how she was feeling.

Her A-Level results were not what she had hoped for, which was hard. She did really well in some subjects and less well on others. It was difficult to see her so disappointed. At first she blamed herself and repeatedly said she felt her mental health had ‘held her back’ compared to her friends and classmates. 

I didn't always know what to say to her as often reassurance didn't sink in. But in the end we found a few things that worked. Firstly we gave her space to process her feelings about her results rather than immediately trying to fix them. We also tried to give her lots of support and validation and were really clear that her results don’t define her (which again sometimes sunk in and other times didn’t).

After she had got through the initial disappointment we also sat down together and thought practically about what her next steps would be and what it was that she wanted to do. In the end she chose to do a foundation year in public health, which really grew her confidence. 

We looked for resources on how to manage her mental health during exam periods and found quite a lot of helpful things (including on the YoungMinds website). What I read less about was how exams can have a knock-on effect on the whole family, so one thing I’d like other parents to take away from this blog is that they need to look after themselves too. 

You spend lots of time worrying about their mental health, taking them to appointments, making sure they eat and drink enough water and are getting out of the house, that it can be really easy to forget you also need to do those things! 

It took me and my husband quite a while to realise the effect that our daughter’s experiences were having on us as well, and it did add strain to our relationship. Our advice to other parents would be that you need to do small things for yourself as well, keep talking about how you’re feeling, and seek additional help if your mental health is really affected too.