Eleven Plus Stress

I was asked recently about how to help a child maintain a calm perspective before the 11+ examinations. Naturally my mind turned to dolphins.

As far as we know we think that dolphins are probably the most intelligent mammal living in the sea. Dolphins also have the ability to be developed and trained. Imagine the impact on your children if you take them swimming with dolphins. We have a lot to learn from dolphins too.

Dolphins love, for example, to leap out of the water. We have all seen pictures of this exciting event. There are some scientists who think dolphins jump out of the water to look for fish. Our eleven plus child could learn to leap out of a chair to look for inspiration. Imagine the scene in the examination room where a selected child suddenly leaps onto a chair to find the answer.

Dolphins also speak with small and delicate sounds. They seem to smile a lot too. Our eleven plus children could learn from them too by only speaking quietly in soft respectful tones.

Dolphins have an acute sense of hearing. Our eleven plus child could learn to listen even when he or she is hearing something that is not palatable.

Dolphins love to play and have been observed surfing. Take any ten year to a beach with waves and you will see surfing too. Our ten year olds can even be taught to surf the net to look for eleven plus solutions.

There is one final and conclusive link for our ten year olds to explore. Dolphins have never been involved, as far as we know, in acts of cannibalism. It looks, therefore, as if it would be quite safe to let our stressed out child swim with the dolphins.