Immunization against the adult-made virus of entry exam stress

Premeditating child anxiety the Taoist way

[This is the first article of the Tao Parenting in Practice series where I share how we deal with various issues in our household.]

Since starting this blog, people started sharing with me more problems they or their friends encounter. It’s not uncommon for kids, especially girls, to experience vomiting from stress, severe anxiety, and occasionally serious mental disorders during the prep for the 11+ exam in the UK. The 11+ is the thing that gets you into senior schools considered the best. 10-year-old children spend a year stressing and memorizing stuff to be able to join top British institutions.

My son also will likely be doing this exam in 3 years, however I don’t expect any meaningful stress about it, and he is not any kind of genius. What I am doing today is premeditation:

"What is at rest is easy to hold.

What has not yet occurred is easy to plan for.

What is fragile is easily shattered.

What is small is easily scattered.

Tackle things before they appear.

Cultivate peace and order before confusion and disorder have set in."[1]

The starting point is a happy, anxiety-free child who is not born with exam stress. When they are 8, like my son, they are still walking around singing random invented songs, blissfully unaware about the worry storm that’s going to be unleashed on them soon, by adults.

Parents and teachers might drop comments about how getting into X school is the only way to get to the best universities and jobs. They could imply in the tone of their voice, that you could do worse than your peers, that you are competing against them for a scarce resource.

Some parents might not have faith in the kid to have the discipline to persevere with the exam prep without any scare tactics. There is a lack of trust in the child and own parental fear and worry starts setting in. The result is that the child naturally starts thinking the exam is a very big deal and stressing about its ‘failure’.

Those who think not passing the entrance exam to a hot school is a big deal, infect the child with their fear-based programming, unless… the parent immunizes the child.

If we don't want our child to worry and think it's a big deal, my husband and I must make sure we don't think it's a big deal. Additionally, if he asks, we must relay to the child why others who think it's a big deal are wrong. As above, so below.

Here’s a possible future conversation:

Should the exam be done? There is no harm in doing it, it could be a fun way to test how well you know the things they are asking you.

Is this exam going to play a role in whether you are going to have a great life and profession? No.

Is being in a brand name school going to make or break your career and life quality?Absolutely not. It would be folly to think this piece of paper should give you peace of mind about becoming a ‘success’ in life.

He might ask, then: Why are all the kids and parents so fussed about it?

Not everything that they are fussed about is right. Why don’t you accumulate your own understanding, before you elevate in importance that of others to a level where it gives you stress? If you think it's useful to copy the crowd in their worries - do it. But question it first. Don’t drop the ability to ask ‘Why’. You were always such a professional in this area (even though it got annoying sometimes.. :)

If he tells me he is still stressed about the 11+ exam, for example:

‘What if I will not make it to top school and my other friends might. And that worries me.’

Why? Will they stop being your friends because of that?

‘Probably.’

In that case, they were probably not much use as friends anyway, if that's the reason they stop being your friends. Isn’t that, right?

The child might persevere with worries inherited from his conditioned surroundings:

‘But mommy, how will I get a job later if I don’t go to a top school?

You will go to an average school and become an autodidact.

‘Become what?’

Someone who doesn't depend on school to teach him things he wants to learn. Someone who doesn't depend on excess pushing by others to become the person he wants to become. There are benefits to everything, especially ‘failure’. But failure can’t be aimed for. If you get cute and aim for failure, it will have 0 benefit. The exam is part of the school process you are in, like the general classes and exams, but it is not a big deal.

Some parents might say - but what about learning to work hard? Isn’t that an important part of getting ready for adulthood? Isn’t that what exams are for - to prove to your employer you can work hard?

First, working hard happens naturally when a person is really interested in getting somewhere or practicing a craft. The better question is not how to learn to work hard, but how to know what will make you want to work hard. And even then, it will look like very hard work to others, because they don't share your passions, but for you it will be something you are just very keen on doing, akin to playing.

Secondly, why would you want to work for an employer who sees merit primarily in someone who has been working hard to show he can work hard through passing exams? Which is a completely different attribute to what actually is needed if you want to hire a problem solving, internally driven individual?

I genuinely do not care if my son passes the 11+ or not. This naturally will reduce any worry and fear of failure that could arise in him. This attitude is likely to lead him to do it and actually passing, for the fun of it.

You can’t fake it. You get to this understanding by questioning deep seated beliefs. I started to observe how life works and how it doesn't work. Newton's third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Leaning too much to one side causes a counter force. You see this truth replicated in many areas. As in physics, so in life.

You can be in the world but not of it. I nod at a lot of self-generated fears and nonsense I see created in society, I feel compassion for people being swayed by it, but I do not participate. Everyday life feels lighter and lighter.

I was wondering if there is a book that exemplifies what I have come to embody from Tao Te Ching, but with regards to parenting? A book I can endlessly quote from to show what I am talking about? It turns out there is!  It is The Parents Tao Te Ching by William Martin:

If you want your children to be generous,

You must allow them to be selfish

If you want them to be disciplined,

You must first allow them to be spontaneous.

If you want them to be hard-working,

You must first allow them to be lazy.

This is a subtle distinction,

And hard to explain to those who criticize you.

A quality cannot be learned without first understanding its opposite.

In the 11+ exam case: if you want the kid to do well in life or pass exams stress free - you have to figure out how ‘succeeding’ actually happens in life, so you are not muddied by the fear-based waters that the majority of our society is used to swimming in. It’s about not trying to get to the school the crowd fears not getting into. If you want really good stress-free results, it’s about seriously considering why not getting into that school might actually be a good thing :)

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This article is going to be part of a series of articles Tao Parenting in Practice.
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^[1] Tao Te Ching verse 64