Eleven Plus Fears

What would your eleven plus child worry about during the eleven plus year? Towards `Results day’ the candidate’s fear would possibly turn to concerns about possible failure – but during the year?

Friends

Keeping and maintaining school friends.

Worrying if the friends are true friends.

How to make friends

Popularity stakes.

Life at Home

Arguments with brothers and sisters

Arguments with parents – and between parents

Too much work

Not enough attention

Too little T.V. and computer games

School

Homework

Liking the teachers

Tests

Amount of work

Eleven Plus

Difficulty of the work

Challenge of Eleven Plus papers

Completing exercises on time

Concerns of parents

Pressure from outside

Passing the examination

Not passing the examination

Next school

Naturally some eleven plus children will be able to devise strategies to circumvent most of the fears mentioned above. There will even be some eleven plus children who have none of the above fears. These are the children who are able to view life with equanimity and confidence.

There may be some children who are doing remarkably well at school, with happy and stable backgrounds, who feel a little twinge of concern at the idea of not being successful and living up to expectations. We can’t ask children to banish all fears – after all we would still like our eleven plus child to be fearful of the consequences of crossing a busy road but we may not want a child to feel fearful about not achieving 80% on an eleven plus paper - as is a totally different type of fear.

Of course parents of eleven plus children will treat their child’s fears in many different ways. Some parents and children will be able to talk about everything. Other parent-child relationships may be a little more complex. Some children may find it difficult to communicate their fears to their parents. It does seem likely that talk and discussion may help. Perhaps a starting point could be to ask the eleven plus child to place each of the above lists into a `Fear Order. Then ask for an overall ranking. Both sides may, possibly, learn a little about each other.