Test anxiety can make a person miserable. Photo Credit: nenetus via freedigitalphotos.net
Test Anxiety in Adolescents
You remember the feeling. You’re staring at an exam you studied for, but now matter how hard you think about it, you cannot remember the information. Your body tenses up. You feel panic rise. You are dealing with test anxiety.
I have several clients who do very well in school, but feel like they blank out on tests. This affects their confidence and even their relationships at school.
The worst part for many teens is that they don’t know what to do once this starts. It can get bad enough that a teen starts feeling the anxiety as soon as a test is announced. A couple of bad test-taking incidents, and your child is now phobic of test taking.
A Tool for Test Anxiety
A really simple tool for test anxiety is called “priming.” This is a phenomenon psychologists use to influence how someone does on something in the immediate future. Let’s have you try it out in order to understand how it’s done.
Steps for Priming Before A Test
Step 1: Get out a pen and paper.
Step 2: Set a timer for 60 seconds.
Step 3: For the next 60 seconds write down as many words as you can think of to describe a Harvard professor. Don’t overthink this. Just write down ANYTHING that comes to mind. If you immediately think of glasses and tweed coats, then write those down. If you think of the word, ‘smart,’ then write that down. Just let your mind free-flow.
Step 4: Attempt an intellectually difficult task such as a math problem.
What Happens When You Use Priming
The point of priming is that when we think of words and images related to what we’re about to do, we do better or worse based on how we think. Sounds obvious right? Yet, most people are not intentional when they prime.
In fact, we prime all the time. Do you ever find yourself “prepping” before you do something or talk to someone? You are priming for the task. Unfortunately, we often prime in a negative way. But for test anxiety, we can using priming in a positive way.
My Personal Example
Sometimes when I surf I am excited, energized, and eager. In these times I picture the surfing feats of highly talented professionals and slightly less highly talented friends. I am priming. In those cases, I surf pretty well.
At other times, I feel nervous and stiff. In those cases, I picture wipe-outs. I say things to myself such as, “You’ve been doing this for 3 decades and you’re still not very good.” My surfing starts out almost like having test anxiety. It’s as though I can’t even quite remember how to do it.
Back to Priming for Test Anxiety
If I had you imagined a high school drop-out instead of a Harvard professor, you would have performed worse on the task instead of better. This phenomenon has been repeated in psychological experiments many times.
It has worked well for my clients with test anxiety too. Here’s how: Instead of immediately beginning their exam in school, they take the first 60 seconds and prime with the Harvard professor example. They have told me they performed about 10% higher on their test than expected. By the way, this is exactly what we’d expect based on the research.
Priming for Athletics
Also, if you’re nervous before a sporting event, you can do a priming exercise imagining a top notch athlete. If your adolescent has a swim meet, have him or her imagine Michael Phelps. Your teen can either write down or just tell you descriptors of his abilities before his or her race. The research says your teen should go a bit faster.
Final Thoughts on Adolescent Test Anxiety
Anxiety is a hard thing. When you have test anxiety, it can make school miserable. It can bleed over into your friendships and even how you get along with your parents. It’s awful.
Instead of letting the test anxiety overwhelm and consume your teen, help them systematically tackle it. Start with priming. Try a few other techniques. If nothing is effective enough, reach out. I’m happy to chat with you about it.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Teaching teens about money is very important. Image courtesy of sscreations at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Teaching Teens About Money
Teens and Money: How should you handle money with your teenagers (Keep in mind this is coming from the perspective of a therapist)?
How Do Bad Money Habits Start In Teens?
I have seen the inappropriate use of money with children and teenagers cause enormous behavioral problems in teenagers. Unfortunately, you might be the one modeling the money behaviors you don’t want them copying. At other times, you have excellent habits with money, but your teens aren’t forced to learn about how to handle their money.
A Typical Scenario
Here’s one scenario I have seen: Mom and dad have the finest of everything. They drive brand name cars, carry brand name purses, wear brand name clothes, and shop at high-end stores. Most likely mom and/or dad worked very, very hard to get there and have earned what they have.
They also dress their children in these brands, maybe buy their children private sports lessons, and send their kids on elaborate school trips. The children have not worked hard for these things, and assume it’s standard. Even though these parents mean well, the result is often an attitude of entitlement among their teenagers- consequently their teens learn poor money management habits.
Another Common Scenario for Teens and Money
Here’s another scenario I have seen between parents and teens regarding money: The parents cannot really afford to buy their children the nicest of everything. However, because we all live in a county where there are many people who can, the parents feel guilt.
Parents overextend themselves to keep their teenager outfitted with all the nicest things. The kids do learn something about hard work because they know it doesn’t come easily to mom and dad. However, these kids are learning appearance is more importanct than being a teen with good money habits. They learn it’s worthwhile to go into debt to look like things are going really well.
Sadly, it can be very hard for them to just accept their position in life with grace and gratitude. Instead, they look to things for happiness.
A Better Financial Option
A third scenario I have seen, and one I hope to emulate with my own children, is this: Regardless of financial means, the parents force their children to live at or below their means. The teens are required to earn their belongings, and are taught to take good care of their things.
For example, if a teen drops their smart phone and the screen breaks, mom and dad don’t pay to fix it. Their child goes without until the child saves enough to fix it. As hard as this is, these kids learn to delay gratification.
When it comes to driving, since they never expected a car in the first place, they are extremely grateful for whatever they drive. While it can be very difficult to see their friends get things without trying, most of these teens ultimately say they’re thankful they have cultivated the abilities to work, save, and give.
Teenagers with good money habits are usually better at thinking outside the box too. They’ll find ways to wear the same formal dress to a few dances, but dress it up differently so nobody knows. When it’s time to go to college, they tend to choose a major that leads into a career because they really enjoy productivity. This saves a lot of headache later in life.
What Should You Do To Help Your Teens with Money?
Basically the point of this post is the way you use and discuss money has an enormous impact on your child’s future. For those of you who had to scrap for everything you have, it’s very tempting to want to provide your child all the opportunities you never had. You think, ‘If I’d had that chance…wow!’ However, you developed your toughness and grit because of how hard you had to work.
It’s best if you come alongside your children as they show the ability to work. For example, it’s much, much better to match their savings for a car purchase than to just buy them one. It does wonders for their work ethic, self-esteem, gratitude and happiness.
A good resource for teaching teens about money can be found at Dave Ramsey’s website.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Having a good parent-child relationship with a teenager isn’t impossible. Image courtesy of photostock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Strengthen Your Relationship with Your Teen
It is extremely important to actively work on your relationship with your teenager. It is such a big deal to your teenager that in their own way, they will let you know if it’s not being done properly. Teens want you to strengthen your relationship with them.
How Teens Show You They Want a Better Relationship
They don’t often sit you down to have a chat about how you should spend more time together. Instead teenagers act out by getting poor grades, experimenting with drugs or alcohol, becoming sexually active, or being rude towards you at home, etc. (There are other reasons teens might behave this way too; it’s not one size fits all).
Steps You Can Take to Strengthen Your Relationship with Your Teen
In order to build a stronger relationship with your teenager, there are some things you can do. Start with obvious common ground.
Start with Common Ground
I worked with one teenage boy that hadn’t spoken a word to his father in two years, and they lived in the same house. His father knew the boy liked certain music from the seventies. The father had some of the music on vinyl, so he set up his old record player. He started playing his old albums and didn’t say a word. That got the teenage boy to come out of his room at look at what was going on. His father simply asked him if he’d like to see what other records there were. The teenage boy said he would, and looked through them with his father standing there.
They didn’t say anything to one another, but they were spending time together. The dad stregthened his relationship with his teen through music. The father bought concert tickets and invited the boy. When they went to the concert, the father was very careful not to say anything judgmental about his son, any of the concert-goers, or on any topic for that matter. Over time the boy began to trust his father not to be critical (a past problem between these two). After a year of very slow progress, there is now a real relationship between father and son.
Mark, a therapist on our team, has already raised his teens. He worked very hard to find common ground with both kids. Although hard at the time, it has paid dividends now that they are fully grown.
Don’t Force It, But Don’t Do Nothing
Assess where you are in your relationship with your teen. Start right there. Don’t try and force something that doesn’t exist, and don’t try and make it happen too quickly.
Be Non-Judgemental
Take your time and be patient. Be very cognizant of how many judgments you are making. It is a great idea to keep those to yourself. Be aware of how defensive you are feeling. Remember that you don’t have to respond if your teenager says something offensive, responding is up to you. Sometimes what you don’t say to your teen helps strengthen your relationship.
Prioritize Your Teen
Make your teenager a priority. I guarantee you have some unimportant priorities that seem very big to you. I know that for a fact because we all do. My ridiculous priority that sometimes gets put in front of relationship with my kids is cleanliness. I get so worked up if the house isn’t clean, that I miss valuable time with them.
What are your unnecessary priorities? Is it work? Golf? Football? Exercise? All those things are great, and so is a clean house. They just aren’t great when they become the thing that MUST be done before having focused time with your family. Out of order priorities weaken instead of strengthen your relationship with teen children.
Stronger Relationships with Teens Mean No Blame-Game
A lot of parents come to me and blame their teens for disrupted relationships. Frequently, they tell me that it was much better a couple years ago while they still had an elementary school aged child. However, elementary school aged children usually go with the flow more and do what you say. Typically, they will take an interest in what you’re doing in order to get your attention.
Once you have teens, they think for themselves. They know what they find enjoyable. Even though that might be a little bit different than what you like to do, it doesn’t mean they prefer you not be around. They just prefer you leave if you consistently criticize what they like to do. So instead, consider taking an interest in it. Then you still have an influence on, and still get to spend time with your kid.
Wrapping Up
Developing a stronger relationship with your teenager takes intentionality and work. Unfortunately, adolescents aren’t usually the ones who will make the first step. You might feel like your efforts are falling on deaf ears (It’s even worse when that feels intentional). However, at the end of the day, strengthening your relationship with your teen is essential. You have almost finished raised your child. Don’t give up now even though it feels frustrating and hard!
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Having a sibling can be lots of fun. Photo credit: imagerymajestic via freedigitalphotos.net
Making Sibling Relationships Better
Sibling relationships among teenagers seem to vary enormously. Of all my clients, I have seen sibling relationships range from being the best of friends to the bitterest of enemies. Usually it lands somewhere in the middle.
If your children are really close, consider yourself lucky. Or, perhaps you’ve done things to help them get along. Either way, it’s so wonderful to see your kids love and enjoy one another.
If your children don’t get another with each other, it’s often just the way their personalities match up. Sometimes they will continue to struggle with each other no matter what you do. In other situations, there are a few things you can do to help.
Let Your Kids Be Different
It’s really important to try and let your kids be different. They will not likely perform equally well in school, sports, social relationships, etc. Each has his or her own set of strengths and weaknesses. Help them along to improve in their weaker areas, and continue growing in their strengths. However, sibling relationships suffer if you compare your kids to one another. They already do this to themselves, so having your confirm it doesn’t typically help.
They Need Their Own Thing
It can be very beneficial for sibling relationships to have some things the kids share and some things that are individually theirs. This starts with possessions and also includes sports, friends, time with you, and goals. Time with you is a really big one. This means individual, fun time with each parent. This isn’t just driving to a sports practice. It’s going on a hike, playing mini golf, etc.
The Oldest Sibling Is Not A Third Parent
They are not responsible for one another’s happiness. Unfortunately, this is actually something I find comes up often in therapy. It’s particularly true with the older sibling feeling responsible for the younger one’s happiness. The older sibling often sees it as their job to keep the younger sibling(s) on track. When the younger one is making bad choices, the older one will often try to parent their little brother or sister. We work hard in counseling to help the older sibling just be a big sister or big brother. That’s what the younger child usually needs anyhow. The younger one needs someone whom they can confide in and who will give them perspective.
Sibling Relationships Are Healthier When…
Don’t force your children to spy on each other for you. While you do want your children to tell you if one of your other children is doing something really dangerous such as taking drugs, you don’t want to create an environment of mistrust. The reason is, you harm the sibling relationship when you ask them to tell on each other for every small transgression.
Also, while it can be nice for the older one to take the younger one along sometimes, this can’t be all the time. I grew up with a close friend who was required to bring her younger siblings everywhere. We never got to hang out without them coming. Even though we liked the two little ones, sometimes our friend group just wanted to be on our own.
Sibling Relationships in a Nutshell
Creating a loving family where siblings get along well can be a huge challenge. Sometimes it comes naturally, which is wonderful! Other times though, parents have to work really hard to help facilitate closeness in sibling relationships. For some unlucky families even the best efforts go unrewarded. Importantly, hold on to hope because even siblings who do not get along as children often develop a special closeness as adults. The sibling relationship teaches humility, frustration tolerance, cohesiveness, how to argue, boundary setting, friendship, and sharing. These life skills are invaluable and extremely important.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Anxiety can make a teen miserable. Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Why Anxiety Help for Teens?
Anxiety is awful. You know how terrible it feels when you worry about what a friend thinks of you, or whether you’re going to get in trouble with your parents for something you did last week. Sitting, waiting, hoping for the best but dreading the worst is a really uncomfortable feeling! Sadly, some people live in this feeling of dread all the time. Anxiety help for teens is specific to the worries teens have.
Typical Teen Anxiety
Sometimes our anxieties (or worries) are realistic. For example, we know we’re terrible at Spanish, and we’re having a lot of anxiety about taking the next Spanish test. Likewise, we know we did something really foolish at the party Saturday night, and we’re dreading our return to school on Monday. This kind of anxiety is realistic and common to the whole human race.
When Anxiety Goes Too Far
For some of us though, anxiety starts to pervade our thoughts. It becomes this ugly overwhelming emotion that is hard to control. Furthermore, anxiety is often based on things that aren’t very likely. It is this point where anxiety help for teens becomes necessary.
To demonstrate, here are some examples of things I’ve heard teenagers tell me they’ve worried about, but know they shouldn’t worry about: 1) “I’m going to get cancer.” 2) “Everyone in the classroom will stare at me and think I’m an idiot if I raise my hand in class.” 3) “I’m going to fail my test.” 4) “No college will accept me.” 5) “My parents are secretly disappointed in me.” 6) “What if there’s a school shooter?” The list goes on an on. The things adolescents worry about come in all shapes and sizes.
Help for the Anxious Teen
Something I’ve found helpful in the past, and you might like too, is the acronym F.E.A.R. It stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. This is really what gives us anxiety, or fear about a situation. We think there’s evidence proving what we worry about will actually happen. It makes us feel scared and nervous. Most of the time the situation turns out just fine because the evidence we used to support our fear was actually false.
A Case Study
Here’s an example of anxiety help for a teen. I once worked with a very bright client who was terrified of giving another class presentation. He felt completely certain all the other students were judging him and secretly laughing at him. When asked to provide evidence that supports his theory, he told me that everyone was looking at him.
What this teen was facing is a great example of false evidence appearing real. Everyone was looking at him, he was right about that! Where he was wrong is the reason everyone was looking at him. They were starting at him because he was in front of the class talking. Once he realized everyone started at each presenter, and stared at the teacher when she was talking, he recognized he had fallen prey to F.E.A.R.
Of course this tool isn’t strong enough to completely overcome all your anxieties. However, it is one example of the kinds of things we think about and work on to cope with adolescent anxiety in therapy. F.E.A.R. is part of a group of help for teen anxiety interventions called CBT (cogntive-behavioral therapy). It is highly effective with adolescent anxiety disorders.
When you realize that many of the things you worry about aren’t totally true, it is a freeing moment. Help for teen anxiety is possible! Help your teen get his/her life back today.
Hello, I’m Lauren! If you notice your teen struggling, you might be feeling helpless, hopeless, frustrated or concerned as a parent. Try to remember, there is hope. I want to help your adolescent feel better. My hope is for them to enjoy their life again. I want them to feel confident they can handle whatever situations arise.
