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Photo: Vipin Chandran

Exam fever A mother plays the supportive parent to the hilt

And, to calm those frayed nerves, she has found comfort in therapies. “I was constantly worried about my daughter’s studies and became anxious when I did not see the visible signs of examination stress in her. Now, with therapies, the feeling of uneasiness has gone down. I understand that if a child is composed and not stressed about exams, it is a good thing,” she says.

While schools have in place their study timetable with on-line exams, daily tests, revision and special classes, colleges follow their own mechanism. With more than half-a-dozen competitive exams including EAMCET, IITJEE, BITSAT, AIEEE to be held in another month or two along with the regular examinations, institutes and colleges are preparing their students to meet the challenges. Sophia Alex, a teacher, bemoans that the days of carefree childhood are gone. “The age of innocence is over . Youngsters are just hopping back and forth from home to college and then to tutorials. All this is done to ensure that they get a seat in a professional college.

Even their dining table conversations focus on the completion of syllabus,” she reasons and adds, “It’s the mother who gets affected ultimately. When kids do not fare well in the exam, she’s the one who’s blamed.”

Vimla Visvanath, a student is like the thousands of teenagers whose parents take a call about her future. The youngster has a busy summer ahead as she is appearing for a clutch of engineering tests “If you want your child to be a professionally qualified individual and not just a graduate, parents need to watch out ,” asserts Vimla’s mother Arundhati, a teacher. And, to give the necessary moral support, Vimla’s father has taken a month off from work and is flying from Muscat to be with her during the exams.

According to Rajeshwari Sainath, a mother of a teenage daughter, finding the right balance is the key. “As a parent, one needs to monitor to know what is happening in our children’s lives but care needs to be taken that we do not become pushy.”

Parents taking leave from work during their children’s exams has its own pitfalls, feels a city counsellor. “Generally working mothers, who feel guilty about not spending enough time with their children take time off from work. And, they expect this ‘sacrifice’ to be acknowledged by their children. On the other hand, the children who are by then used to managing their own schedules might find this as an act of intrusion by the parents into their affairs,” she says.

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