Exam Stress Management Crash Course: Helping Your Child to Stay Calm in the Exam Room

Over the past three months, we’ve spoken to over 15,000 parents in our fortnightly webinar series. Unsurprisingly, one of the most common questions we hear is: How can I help my child deal with exam stress and anxiety? 

Think back to your own exam days—you might remember butterflies, a knot in your stomach, or that nerve-wracking moment outside the exam room, almost like waiting for a rollercoaster to start. For many, exams bring more than just nerves; they bring fear and anxiety. 

Exams don’t have to be this way. In this 5-minute crash course, we’ll explore six practical strategies to help your child reduce exam stress, boost their confidence, and walk into their exams ready to succeed. 

How to Tackle 80% of Exam Stress 

Most exam stress comes down to two key fears: 

1. What if I don’t know something on the exam? 

2. What if I can’t answer the question? 

The good news is that addressing these fears can eliminate a significant portion of stress. The even better news is that the solutions to these two are simple.

1. What If I Don’t Know Something on the Exam? 

This fear is easier to overcome than you might think. The beauty of the final years of schools is that the curriculum for senior school exams in Australia is well-defined, no matter what state you’re in. And not only is it well-defined, the entire curriculum is given to you in a document on Day 1. Each student receives a syllabus (or study design) outlining exactly what can appear on their exams. 

So the solution here is simple: if your child creates their study notes based on their syllabus, then there’s not a single topic that will come up that they haven’t seen before. You can reassure them: If it’s on the syllabus, they’ve got it covered. 

You can learn more about using the syllabus effectively through our article here.

2. What If I Can’t Answer the Question? 

   
   

Practice makes perfect. This fear is easily dealt with by doing practice exams. Encourage your child to complete at least three practice exams for each subject—ideally, as many as possible, but let’s start there. Practice exams offer two major benefits: 

1. They reveal that exams often repeat similar types of questions, building familiarity. Why? Because there are only so many questions that can be asked, and only so many different ways in which to ask it. If your child completes at least three practice exams, they’ll start to recognise that they’ve seen that question – or a variant of it – before. 

2. They teach problem-solving techniques for unfamiliar or challenging questions. As your child does more practice exams, even the hard questions that they have never seen before get easier to answer as they develop processes for thinking through and answering questions. 

   
   

As your child works through practice exams, their confidence will grow, and this fear will diminish. 

Quick Tips to Reduce Stress on the Day

Even with the best preparation, exams can still feel stressful. Here are four quick strategies to calm pre-exam nerves. 

1. Breathing Exercises 

When we experience stress we alter our breathing, which can increase anxiety. Here’s a simple exercise to reset and relax: 

1. Exhale completely. 

2. Inhale through the nose for a count of four. 

3. Hold your breath for a count of four, keeping your body relaxed. 

4. Exhale slowly for a count of four. 

Repeat this process for five minutes to feel calm and focused. 

You can follow our guided breathing tutorial below:

Step 1: Watch the Intro Video Below

 Step 2: Try the Meditation

Step 3. Watch the Debrief Video

2. Positive Visualisation 

Stress often comes from imagining worst-case scenarios. Next time your child is experiencing stress, ask them what they are thinking about. Most of the time they will be thinking about everything that could go wrong. Even more precisely they aren’t just thinking about it, they are effectively creating a mental movie and watching it happen. Naturally, the more we watch ourselves struggle or fail to deal with problems, the more we experience that emotion.  

So instead of creating a mental movie of failure, help your child create a mental “success movie” instead. For example, if your child is feeling stressed about an upcoming exam, ask them to close their eyes, and picture this instead: 

1. They’re standing outside the exam room, calm and confident. All preparation has been done and there’s nothing on the paper that can come up that they haven’t seen. 

2. They’re opening the exam paper, feeling relief as they recognise the questions. 

3. They’re writing quickly and fluently, finishing the exam with a smile. 

4. They’re walking out of the exam hall, celebrating having just aced their test. 

   
   

Encourage them to replay this “mental movie” before bed and just before their exams to help bring those stress levels back down. 

3. Stick to a Routine 

Routine provides stability and reduces stress. The main stumbling block for students is that when exams start, all routine goes out the window. Encourage your child to keep their daily schedule consistent—wake up, eat, and go to bed at the same times, even during exams. 

 

4. Avoid Studying Outside the Exam Room 

Encourage your child not to study or revise their notes outside of the exam room. This will feel counterintuitive as most students tend to be doing this, but nothing good can ever come from it. If your child finds something in their textbook they’d never seen before, information they didn’t know, or a fact they’d completely forgotten, stress levels will increase drastically. Put frankly, if they don’t know it 30-minutes before an exam, they’re never going to know it. Instead, use this time for calming breathing exercises and visualisation. 

 

Need More Help? 

At Elevate, we specialise in helping students build effective study habits and stress-management techniques. If your child needs extra support to thrive during exams, contact us today.