Battling the Waves of Test Anxiety
By Deanna Hurn, Founder and Executive Director of Miracle Math Coaching
What if you could magically prepare your child for a test? Thanks to a magic wand, your young one’s brain absorbs all the knowledge needed to ace the exam. She or he knows the material cold. You send your smiling kid off to school.
But your child comes home in near tears. What happened?
Probably “test anxiety” happened.
When children are anxious before a test, their memory shuts down, their reasoning skills fade away and their mistakes increase.
Between 16 and 20 percent of children suffer from high test anxiety and 18 percent more are plagued by moderate to high test anxiety. There’s even a professional organization that studies the concept – the American Test Anxieties Association, which provided the statistics.
And you personally probably know how awful anxiety feels in general. Sweating of the brow. Shortness of breath. Clenching of the stomach. Weakness of the knees.
But you might not know what anxiety does to your brain.
It’s like you’re at the beach wading ankle deep, into calm, warm water. The waves lap gently at your legs. But then they grow stronger, rougher. They thrash against your thighs and higher until you’re completely overwhelmed. (In real life, you’d have turned around and run back to the palm trees before then, but humor me 😉
When it comes to anxiety, those waves are stress hormones. Try remembering that 12 x 3 = 36 when you’re being swept out to sea.
The main stress hormone associated with performance anxiety is Cortisol. Surprisingly, it can be a good thing in the right amount, like the gentle lapping of the waves early on. Test-takers actually do better when low levels of Cortisol course through their brains.
But too much Cortisol inhibits recall; students can’t remember material they’ve mastered.
As if that’s not bad enough, as much as 40 percent of your child’s brain can be focused on negative self-talk and worry instead of on the test material. The anxiety “crowds out” the information children need to do well on the exam, according to Dr. Jed Applerouth, an Educational Psychology who has studied cognition and memory.
So what can you do?
One easy solution is teaching your child how to relax. Meditation is a great tool for relaxation, and it’s easy to perform. A google search of “children and meditation” can get you started.
In addition, Miracle Math Coaching’s programs include a workshop called “Beat Test Anxiety.” It guarantees that your child will feel more relaxed and prepared for exams, which leads to higher test scores. We teach students how to let go of the anxiety and perform at their best.
For more information on our workshops and coaching services, please call me at 707-398-3474, ext. 2700. And definitely contact us for a FREE Learning Discovery Evaluation to see where your child stands academically and how we might help: Click here to sign up now. Miracle Math Coaching is an award-winning, student-focused service with a track record of boosting academic achievement.
