Alice is feeling sheepish.

“Tom has been absent from school” she began dolefully, when I saw her yesterday.             “Oh yes, I heard he was away – is he better?” I asked,                                                               “He wasn’t ill. We told Matron he had a tummy bug, but we actually took him to London for a couple of days. We thought he deserved a treat after his exams. Steve got time off work and we all went together.”                                                                                                      “It sounds lovely”                                                                                                                            “Yes it was. But Tom told his teacher when he got back. We told him to pretend he’d been ill, but he forgot and now we’ve had a nasty letter from the Head.” Alice looked embarrassed. She is not a natural rule breaker.                                                                             “He implied that by lying to Matron and telling her that Tom was sick, we’ve undermined the school – but the only reason I didn’t ask permission was because he would’ve said no and then Steve would have insisted on going anyway.”

It is embarrassing for Alice. She knows that it was unfair to expect Tom to keep such clandestine activities to himself – but it is the lying aspect that really troubles her .      “How can we tell Tom to be truthful with us, when he sees that we have lied? And we even told him to lie too! ”

Of course she is right and it is foolish to hope our children will obey the rules if they see us breaking them. In my book “Prepare your Daughter for Boarding” I discuss how important it is that parents try to work within school regulations, so as to not to give mixed messages to their children.  However, it is also worth remembering that if your child is at an independent school, you are the paying customer and your views should be taken into account.

On this occasion, for instance, I think Alice might have informed the school courteously that she was taking Tom to London, as the trip was educational (Tom visited the Globe theatre and several museums while he was away). It is also worth noting that Tom had finished all his exams and had already been awarded a scholarship to his next school.  If he had gone into class he would merely have attended lessons as usual with all the Common Entrance candidates, as the scholarship exams are held earlier. In these circumstances, it is hard to understand why any teacher would demand his presence.

While researching my first book I visited approximately twenty five independent schools and found that policies on absence varied.  Most teachers would agree that arriving late at the start of term is disruptive for the individual child and unfair on the rest of the class. However, the period post examination is a different matter and some Heads positively encourage children to explore other activities at this time. Others are more inflexible.

Whatever the style of your school, it is never a good idea to lie – not least because you will almost certainly be found out. However, there maybe be the odd occasion when you INFORM the school of your plans, without asking for permission and giving them the chance to say no.

Sibling neglect – keeping everyone happy at exam time

“Why don’t you ever read to me anymore?” Patrick said as he climbed out of the bath last night “and have you remembered to sew on my cub badge? Or have you lost it like last time?”
I thought back to the frantic search through pockets of various coats I may have worn when picking him up. Paddy’s cub uniform is in constant disarray. We used to have a “woggle panic” on Thursday mornings – until we realised that threading his scarf through lego window frames (the purple kind) is quite a convincing alternative.

The truth is that currently Paddy is neglected. Not because we don’t love him as dearly as his sisters, but because Isabel (the middle one) is doing her Common Entrance next week and requires a lot of attention. Their older sister is away at school and so Paddy has been left to his own devices. Take the morning run, for instance: Isabel sits in the front of the car and we speak French to each other. The sentences are learnt off pat and there is no deviation: School, Home; Leisure time. Once we get to the Crossroads (about five miles into our journey) Isabel does mental maths – I fire off questions but have no idea if she answers them correctly as the roads are quite winding by that point and I have to concentrate.

So, poor Paddy sits quietly by himself. And metaphorically, he is not alone. Younger siblings often have to take a back seat at this time of year – the exam season – but it can work to their advantage: Paddy is getting used to sorting himself out without as much supervision, a valuable life skill.

In my book “Prepare your Daughter for Boarding” I write about teaching your child to be responsible for him or herself without needing to be constantly nagged. This is a lesson which Paddy is now learning from necessity. Being the youngest child, with two older sisters, means that he has always been rather spoilt. Suddenly he is beginning to take more responsibility for himself and his kit.

And, what is more, I couldn’t help noticing the other day as I glanced in the rear view mirror that he mouths the answers to Isabel’s French oral questions.

So perhaps a little bit of “positive neglect” isn’t such a bad thing!

An opportunity to enjoy a week of rehearsal and theatre skills training in the magical setting of the Old Rectory at Folkington, leading to a performance of a specially adapted version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to be staged in the gardens at twilight on the final evening. Each student will take part in workshops in acting, movement, character work, voice projection and prop making. And then immediately apply their new found skills to our rehearsals and full production.

We have a couple places left on the workshop. Please contact Victoria on 01323 483367 for details.

Related articles

• Midsummer Drama Workshop (prep4online.com)

“If you’re trying to be miserable, it’s important you don’t have any goals. No school goals, personal goals, family goals. Your only objective each day should be to inhale and exhale for sixteen hours before you go to bed again. Don’t read anything informative, don’t listen to anything useful, don’t do anything productive. If you start achieving goals, you might start to feel a sense of excitement, then you might want to set another goal, and then your miserable mornings are through. To maintain your misery, the idea of crossing off your goals should never cross your mind.”
― John Bytheway, How to Be Totally Miserable

It was raining this morning as I dropped the children off at school and the pavement is steep and gets really slippery.  My daughter has never forgiven me for falling over dramatically in front of her Headmaster and I was so busy concentrating on my feet that I almost bumped into my friend Wendy.  I knew at once that something was wrong.  She was hunched over and grimacing – not her usual bouncy self.

“It’s this time of year” she explained, “It really gets me down – the exam season! Amy’s got her French oral next week and so we’ve banned English speaking at home. The children can’t understand what I’m saying to them – it took ages to get ready this morning. I’m exhausted.”

She did look shattered.

“Amy hasn’t been sleeping and neither have I. I really don’t know who is more nervous. If she doesn’t pass her Common Entrance I don’t know what we’ll do. We haven’t got a second choice school.”

Amy is one of the brighter girls in my daughter’s year. It seems inconceivable that she will not get into her next school, but Wendy’s predicament is a familiar one. Most of the parents I know are very tense at the moment – and people with older children have told me it only gets worse once you arrive at GCSE and A’levels.

Of course it is natural for everyone to be a little nervous, but I have met so many families where the parents and children have got each into a state of extreme anxiety. Children often take their cues from the grown ups looking after them and can be very sensitive to the concerns of adults. This can end up having a negative effect on them and the entire family. Conversely, the more worried the child becomes, the less likely he or she is to study effectively.

When my colleague Graham Lee and I are mentoring students, we sometimes use a system for both parents and children, to help keep everyone calm. We find using Coping Card before exams is very effective at helping to control nerves in students. Once the child is calm, we often find the parents are more relaxed too.

• We begin by brainstorming a list of the areas that might present a problem or possible issues that may arise.  We let the child decide what these are – and they vary from worry about forgetting topics for the exam, to interview nerves, fear of panic attacks or forgetting some vital piece of exam equipment.

• When the child has listed everything that could possibly go wrong and all the potential problems they can think of, we write the worries in boxes on each card.

• Underneath each box we list in a different colour the actions we would need to take if we were confronted by that problem – our coping strategy.  For example a child might write:

So underneath we would deal with this potential problem by listing all the different actions she could take.

• On the other side of the card the student will draw something which provides a goal – some sort of representation of what s/he is aiming at. It could be a happy face or a picture of the school s/he wants to go to.
• 

• The card can then be tucked away in her bag and is available for a quick glance if s/he finds herself panicking.

When I first tried this method, I was sceptical that it would work, but again, I have found it has a transformative effect on most of my students and their families.  One girl I was helping was almost making herself ill with nerves and had never slept properly the night before an exam.  Graham and I did some coping cards with her just before her “mocks”. On the night before the first exam, she took the cards to bed – read them before she turned out the light – and slept straight through. Of course she was still nervous on the following morning, but it was nothing she couldn’t cope with. She was beaming the next time I saw her.

We are currently thinking how best to use Martin Millard’s wonderful illustrations.