Veroni: ‘Parents can also use some help’.

Veroni: ‘Parents can also use some help’.

Emotional outbursts, low motivation and especially a lot of stress. These are things parents often face with children taking final exams. How do you deal with that? Veroni Savic is a mother of four children and her oldest daughter finished her final exam year vwo last year. This year her son is up. Veroni tells about her experiences.

Realistic View

As a parent of children in their exam year, you see your children struggle. The pressure is high, but the motivation often hits a low point. How can you best help your children? According to Veroni, it is good for parents to keep offering perspective. ‘I think the most important thing is to look at the exam year realistically. You should not act like it is nothing, but it is also not the most important thing in the world. I feel I helped my children the most by doing that.’

Each Child Needs A Different Approach

Still, that perspective has two sides. With her daughter, Veroni noticed a lot of stress, while her son seems not worried at all. That requires different approaches. ‘My son skipped a grade. He is only sixteen and then you are still really a teenager. With him, I always have to handle it very carefully. If I tell him: you must plan, it makes his neck hairs stand up.’ Veroni explains that it works well to let her son think for himself. ‘Then I ask two weeks before: how will you do that, do you have a plan, for which subjects do you need more or less study? While I knew he had not thought about that yet.’ Once her son starts studying, it helps to check how it is going. ‘With him I also ask if he manages to study. And if it does not work, then I ask what he needs to be able to concentrate. Sometimes we agree on a time to study or I check his assignments afterward.’ Still, the initiative stays with her son. ‘I make it discussable more than I actively do something about it.’

Peptalks

Where Veroni’s son needed to be put to work, her daughter needed more perspective. ‘Those peptalks were very much needed for her. Otherwise, I always tried to downsize with her. She could make it very big in her head. Your exams are important, but your life does not depend on them. So, with her I really gave a lot of that perspective. And because of that, she could start working again, because if it was too big for her, she panicked and could not work anymore.’ Still, it was also necessary to be strict sometimes with her daughter. ‘Sometimes it was tough. Then I really told her to sit down and write. At that moment she did not like it, but afterward, she said she actually thought it was good.’

Guidance From School

Generally, Veroni’s children had good guidance from the school. ‘Many schedules were made with study plans. There was always space to review exams well.’ There was the option to sign up for special days with extra explanation. Besides, there was the option for more personal guidance. ‘For subjects like math, you just have to put in the hours, but my son did not focus on that much. When he got several low grades, he asked a teacher for help himself. That helped a lot. Now I trust he will pass.’

More Advice For Parents

Where it could be better was the information for parents from the school. ‘There was one information evening for the whole school year,’ says Veroni. And parents have many questions. ‘I notice many parents struggle with the best way to guide their children. In what can I support them and when should I let them figure things out themselves? I think it would be nice to get more advice on that. It also helps if parents can exchange information among themselves.’