Do not let the stress you are feeling for the board exams of your children reach them, several schools are telling parents in the run-up to the examinations.
The Class X and XII board examinations for both ICSE (Class X) and ISC (Class XII), and CBSE will begin in February.
Schools insist that parents should not attach too much importance to one such exam.
Some schools have already held sessions with parents, some others will be organising them soon.
“To be conscious is good but over-consciousness of parents becomes detrimental to a child’s performance. We have seen that under too much stress, even a child who has the potential fails to perform. We tell parents they have to positively motivate and counsel the child rather than make it a ‘you have to do it’ situation,” said Terence John, director of education and development, Julien Day Schools.
John said there are many parents who take leave from work for a month before their child’s board exam and sit with them throughout the
period.
“Most of the parents have one child and it can become claustrophobic for children if they are being continuously monitored,” said John.
“As if marks provide a numeric value to their skills for some parents. If a child they know gets high marks and their child does not, then some people see it as their parental failure. Their own parenting is put under review,” said Damayanti Mukherjee, principal, Modern High School for
Girls.
“In their aspiration to be better, a section of parents unconsciously turns it into an aggressive competition,” said Mukherjee.
Testing and assessment have to be seen as parts of life instead of “creating a furore” over the first public exam, said Mukherjee.
“In fact, we tell this to our parents at the time when the children go to Classes X and XII because the pressure starts building on them from that time,” said Mukherjee.
Anjana Saha, principal, Mahadevi Birla World Academy, said that parents should try to alleviate the stress for their children. The school has scheduled a meeting with parents and they will be told to not force their children to follow a conventional pattern.
“Parents have some expectations from their children and they expect them to follow a set pattern like waking up at dawn to study. Every child has his or her own rhythm,” said Saha.
There are schools who organise individualised sessions for parents and their children. “When we identify students who are under pressure and are panicking before the board examinations, we call the parents for a joint counselling session. There are instances when we see that parents set unrealistic targets for their children,” said Gargi Banerjee, principal, Sri Sri Academy.