School anxiety and the fear of grades: what parents can do

“I have learnt it. But when she calls me up to the board, I won’t know anything.”

Sunday evening, nearly eleven o’clock. A fifteen-year-old sits on her bed with her chemistry notebook, which she has already read through three times today. Tomorrow she has an announced oral test. Her mum brings her a cup of tea and says what most parents say: “You know it. Don’t worry.” Her daughter bursts into tears. Her mum doesn’t understand what she said wrong.

She didn’t say anything wrong. She said something true — her daughter does know the material. But school anxiety isn’t about knowledge. It is a fear that happens despite knowledge, and that often wipes the knowledge out at exactly the moment it is needed. This piece is written mainly for parents: what is going on inside your child, what we parents unintentionally reinforce, and what we can say instead of “don’t worry”.

What school anxiety is

“School anxiety” is not a diagnosis but an umbrella for several related difficulties. Under it we find:

• Fear of assessment — anxiety before tests, oral examinations, presentations. A child can prepare well and then “freeze” in the situation itself.
• Fear of what others think — of being made a fool of in front of classmates, of the teacher seeing that he isn’t good enough. Here school anxiety overlaps with social anxiety.
• Avoiding school — morning headaches and stomach aches, pleas to stay at home, in extreme cases weeks of absence.

All three share the same core: school becomes a place where a child expects to be exposed, judged and found wanting. You can also find a short explanation of the concept in the knowledge base under school anxiety.

It is important to distinguish between ordinary nerves and anxiety that takes over a child’s life. A few nerves before a test are normal and even useful — they sharpen attention. But when the fear lasts for days before a test, when a child can’t sleep or eat, when the anxiety spreads to every subject and to everything to do with school, we are talking about something else.

How common it is

Anxiety among children and adolescents is more common than we think. A meta-analysis by Guilherme Polanczyk and colleagues, which pooled studies from many countries, estimated that around 6.5 per cent of children and adolescents worldwide have an anxiety disorder — which means one or two in every class. School anxiety that doesn’t reach the threshold of a disorder is far more common still.

Researchers long wondered whether test anxiety really lowers results, or whether anxious pupils are simply those who know less. A review of thirty years of research by Nathaniel von der Embse and colleagues found that test anxiety is linked to poorer results — not very strongly, but consistently, at every stage of schooling. In other words, fear really does take away part of the knowledge a child has.

Why knowledge gets wiped out

Parents often say: “At home she knew everything, at school nothing.” This is not an excuse. It is a description of what happens in the brain.

In their attentional control theory, Michael Eysenck and colleagues described a mechanism many of us know from our own experience. When we are anxious, part of our attention is taken up by worries — “I won’t know it”, “everyone will see”, “Mum will be disappointed”. This inner voice uses up working memory, the part of the mind we need to solve the task. Less of it is left for chemistry. At the same time, attention sticks to signs of danger: the teacher’s face, whispering from the back row, one’s own pounding heart.

The body responds as if it were in danger: the heart beats faster, hands sweat, the stomach clenches. I wrote about what happens in the brain during anxiety, and why the body reacts before we even think, in What happens in the brain during anxiety — and why the body reacts before you think.

When your child is ill every morning

The most wearing form of school anxiety is the one that shows itself in the body. A child wakes up on Monday morning with a stomach ache that is real — he hasn’t made it up. At eight, when he should be at school, it is worse. Around ten, when it is clear he is staying at home, it eases. In the afternoon he looks perfectly healthy.

The first step is always a check-up with your GP or paediatrician. Physical symptoms need to be taken seriously and physical causes ruled out. Only then does it make sense to think about anxiety.

The American psychologist Christopher Kearney, who spent decades researching school avoidance, suggested that we ask not only whether a child is avoiding school, but what purpose the avoidance serves. Some children avoid the feelings school triggers — anxiety, fear, nausea. Others avoid particular situations where they are assessed or exposed to others. Others want their parents’ attention or closeness. Others find something at home that is more pleasant than school. Each of these reasons needs a different response.

For all of them, though, the same holds: the longer a child stays at home, the harder it is to go back. Avoidance brings instant relief, which the brain remembers as proof that school really was dangerous. I wrote about this mechanism in more detail in Anxiety and avoidance: why avoiding helps you today and harms you tomorrow, and you can find a short explanation in the knowledge base under avoidance.

What we parents unintentionally reinforce

When a child is suffering, we want to protect him. That is a good instinct. But with anxiety, protection can become part of the problem.

Eli Lebowitz of Yale University called this family accommodation: everything parents change in their own behaviour to spare their child anxiety. They write a note to get out of a test. They go over the material every evening until midnight. They ring the teacher to ask her to postpone an oral test. They answer the same question — “Will I know it?” — twenty times an evening. Each of these is understandable and helps in the short term. In the long term, though, it tells the child something parents don’t want to tell him: that he can’t manage on his own.

Lebowitz developed an approach in which therapists don’t work directly with the child at all, only with the parents. Parents learn to reduce accommodation gradually and replace it with support — a message that combines acceptance of the child’s fear with confidence in his strength. In a study published in 2020, this approach was as effective for anxious children as cognitive behavioural therapy with the child himself. That is important news for parents whose child refuses to see anyone: even when the child won’t take part, parents can change a great deal.

What to say instead of “don’t worry”

Let’s go back to that Sunday evening. “Don’t worry” is something we say out of love, but a child hears it as “your fear is exaggerated”. If she could stop worrying, she would have stopped already. Being told she shouldn’t feel what she feels doesn’t reduce the fear — it only adds the sense that something is wrong with her.

The conversation could also have gone differently (a composite, not a real person):

“When she calls me up, I won’t know anything.”
“I can hear you’re really scared. What’s the worst thing you imagine might happen?”
“That I’ll stand there and say nothing. And everyone will laugh.”
“That really would be unpleasant. Has it ever happened to you?”
“Once. In history. Then I remembered.”
“So you got stuck, and then you remembered. What helped you that time?”

In this conversation the mum didn’t say everything would be fine. She didn’t promise a top mark. She didn’t deny the fear, but helped put it into words and set it beside an experience her daughter had already come through once. This is what in relational family therapy, in which I am training, we call co-regulation: a child borrows calm from an adult before learning it for herself.

If you’d like to know more about helping a child with anxiety in general, read Anxiety in children: how to recognise it and how to help.

Grades, worth and the family

In Slovenian schools, grades are visible and frequent. Announced oral tests in front of the whole class, national knowledge assessments, points for admission to secondary school when places are limited, later the Matura exam. Many teenagers understand very early on that a grade is not just feedback on what they know, but a ticket to the next step.

Yet school anxiety rarely comes from school alone. Hidden inside it there is often a question that isn’t about chemistry: Am I worth anything if I fail? A child learns this question in the family — not necessarily because the parents put pressure on, but because the child sees what makes the parents happy and what worries them. If the delight at a top mark at home is much louder than the interest in how the child is feeling, the child may conclude that he is loved for his grades. And then every lower mark becomes a small loss of love.

It is worth parents asking themselves a few honest questions. What did I go through at school around grades? How did my parents react to a bad mark? What happens inside me when my child brings home a poor grade? We often notice that our reaction to a child’s grade carries old feelings — fear, shame, the need to prove ourselves — that aren’t the child’s, but ours. I wrote about how such experiences shape a voice that judges us all the time in The inner critic: where the voice that constantly judges you comes from.

When anxiety about grades is tied to a demand for perfection — when anything less than top marks is a defeat and the child can’t stop correcting — also read Perfectionism in teenagers: when grades are the only measure of worth.

Exercise: ten minutes before a test

The researchers Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock tested a simple exercise in a school setting: before an important test, students spent ten minutes writing about their worries. Those who were otherwise highly anxious scored better after writing than similarly anxious peers who hadn’t done so. The explanation has to do with working memory: once you write your worries down, you no longer have to carry them in your head.

From this and other findings you can put together a small pre-test ritual with your child. It is best to try it out at home first, on a less important task.

1. Write down the worries. Five to ten minutes, on a sheet of paper, without correcting anything. “I’m afraid that…” Nobody will read it.
2. Name what is happening in the body. “My heart is beating faster, my hands are sweaty. This is anxiety, not danger.”
3. Lengthen the out-breath. Breathe in through the nose a few times and breathe out more slowly through the mouth. A longer out-breath helps the body settle.
4. Start with a task you know. In a test, read everything first and solve something easy. Early success frees up working memory for the rest.
5. If you get stuck, stop for three breaths. Don’t force an answer. Look at the question as something outside yourself and find one small part you recognise.

The exercise doesn’t remove fear. It helps the fear not take up all the room.

When to seek help

If the anxiety lasts several weeks, if your child misses school more and more often, if the fear spreads to more and more areas, or if everything at home revolves around school, it is time for help. The first places to turn are your GP or paediatrician, to rule out physical causes; the school counselling service, which can agree temporary adjustments with the teachers; and a therapist who specialises in working with children and adolescents. In Slovenia young people can call the TOM helpline anonymously on 116 111.

If the anxiety becomes tied up with despair — if your child talks about not wanting to live, or is self-harming — don’t wait. Call 112 or take them to A&E. In Slovenia help is also available from the mental health crisis line 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 pm to 7 am) and the Samaritans helpline on 116 123 (24 hours a day).

School anxiety often also lays bare family patterns: who worries and who soothes, who pushes and who gives in, where the parents disagree. At such times family therapy can be a place where you look at what grades mean to each of you, and how you can support one another without fear steering the whole household. I also work with English-speaking families.

Where the limits are

I’d like to be honest about what this piece doesn’t cover.

Not every fear of school is anxiety. If a child avoids school because someone there is bullying him, encouraging him to be brave sends him back into danger. That is why it is always worth asking what is going on at school with his peers. I wrote about how to recognise this in Bullying: how to recognise it and what to do.

Sometimes the difficulty is in learning, not fear. A child with as yet unrecognised learning difficulties — for example with reading, writing or attention — will be understandably anxious before tests, because the material really won’t stick, despite all the effort. Then what is needed is a professional assessment at school, not just reassurance.

Sometimes the demands really are too high. It isn’t always that a child should manage his fear better. If he has training every day, extra lessons and three tests a week, his exhaustion may be a perfectly reasonable response to overload. Then it is the timetable that needs to change, not the child.

Some fear is part of life. The goal is not a child who is never nervous. The goal is a child who knows he can bear the nerves and go anyway.

What to remember

• School anxiety isn’t about knowledge. Fear really does take up working memory, which is why a child “forgets” at school what he knew at home.
• Physical symptoms on school days are real. Have them checked by a doctor first, then consider anxiety.
• Avoidance brings relief today and greater fear tomorrow. The longer a child stays at home, the harder it is to go back.
• Instead of “don’t worry”, try support: accept the fear and show confidence that your child can manage it.
• With despair or self-harm, don’t wait: 112, and for young people in Slovenia the TOM helpline 116 111.