How To Support Your Teen After Final Exams

Exam time is full of stress and anxiety.

All parents and carers of teens are aware of this and many implement stress-busting habits and supportive nutrition to minimise the suffering (for both the teen and the adult!).

But what happens post-exam, after the hype, when the hoopla is over?

The End of Exams Can Leave A Teen Aimless

For some lucky (or organised) kids, there is a structured plan such as a sporting commitment, schoolies (needs a whole other article), work or other pastime to keep them busy.

For others, exams were such a focus that they forgot about life beyond the final test. What’s the plan when school finishes? Some students can find themselves in an amorphous, often barren, decision-laden blank canvas of a life.

Sounds like bliss?

Well, it might to those of us who have already, somewhat successfully, navigated our adult paths (and changed those paths, and survived).

But to the emerging adult that is a teen, what you call freedom can be a place of too little structure and responsibility – especially after the experience of school, which, depending on the institution, may have been a highly structured place.

It can be overwhelming for young people to have such vast, unchartered (to them) territory ahead. It’s important to know how to support your teen after final exams so that they have something to transition into at this time.

 

Support Your Teen After Final Exams With Structured Activities

You can support your exam-finisher by helping them to create some structure.

Ideas for structured activities for teenagers:

• Perhaps they neglected a fitness regime in the past few weeks? Encourage your teen to revisit their sport or exercise routine.
• Maybe you can plan a family holiday once exams are over, or just the two of you could take a weekend away somewhere close by.
• You could ask your young person to take on some extra household duties (they’ll love that, I’m sure) which are daily, to give them more reason to get out of bed each day.
• Do the pets need walking? Maybe you can go together in the evenings and enjoy just being outside in the nighttime spring air.

 

Humans Thrive With Structure

Research shows that most humans do better in terms of mental health when they have some structure. The challenge is to create some healthy ways for your teen to be engaged in their life, which has possibly been narrowly focused to only studying for some time.  For some students this has been for months or even years.

It’s hard to emerge from such a time and have a balanced life. You providing some structure can help with this.

 

Can you remember a time when your life was a wide open plain? Did it feel comforting or scary, or a mixture of both? What helped?

 

Does your teen need counselling? We offer adolescent therapy in Bondi. Contact us today to book your teenager for counselling.