Exam night fever: Parents get the chills

MUMBAI: In urban middle-class India today, examinations are no longer a test of knowledge.
They''re a test of the entire family''s ability to withstand stress. For, behind every student who sets out to write an exam with sweaty palms, there are the parents standing outside the hall with cold feet (and hypertension and acidity).
Students alone don''t grapple with question papers any more.When exam fever mounts, parents also get the chills—almost as if they''re taking the exam themselves.
Talking to a cross-section of parents whose children are appearing for Board exams reveals that they take pride in cutting down on sleep, cutting off visitors, putting their social life on hold and shutting down the television set for a year to provide "moral support" to their children.
"If parents are not around, children are tempted to take a break from studying. So, it''s essential for me to be in the house," says a mother whose daughter is appearing for CBSE this year.
"I ensured that my son didn''t eat spicy food which would excite him, or sugar-based food which would make him hyperactive in the tenth standard," says another.
Discussions at home are monitored too, to prevent any momentary diversion from themarks goal—which has now touched 98 per cent.
(Even to that, the response usually is, "Why did you lose those two marks?") "We didn''t reveal any news about family or friends that would disturb or excitemy son all through the tenth standard," says a mother whose son appeared last year.
According to psychologists, the flip side of this "moral support", with parents cast in the roles of jailors and dieticians, is the obsession with "full marks".
They want their children to fulfil all their expectations through the exams. "Parents today offer money to their children for scoring more marks," says Maya Kripalani, consultant psychologist, Jaslok Hospital.
In a recent case referred to Ms Kripalani, the effect of this near-explosive stress was evident in a girl who, although a good student, stopped studying a month before her exam.
"Investigations showed that the girl''s mother had developed severe hysteria about her daughter''s exam," says Ms Kripalani.
"She had fainting spells if she felt her daughter wasn''t studying hard enough. The effect on the child was a complete blanking out."
Dr Shetty says the problem is that parents today aren''t responding to the 21st century but are stuck in time.
"Parents don''t realise that if competition has increased today, the pie of opportunities has grown too," he says. "There are newer careers, but parents are stuck in ''you must get into engineering or medicine''."
He cites the case of a bank officer who decided last year that his son must get 85 per cent in the SSC exams.
So, he began giving his son earlier question papers to solve late into the night, after the boy had gone through school, coaching classes and hours of studying. Every night, he stayed up himself, egging on his son.
"Within a couple of months, he developed severe pain in the chest, which was diagnosed as a panic attack," says Dr Shetty. "When he came tomelast month, he had acute panic disorder and panic hypertension. His son, meanwhile, lost all interest in his studies."
The solution for this kind of disaster, he adds, cannot be minor interventions by a few mental health professionals.
"There should be a macro movement from all sections of society," he says. "Only then can this trend be checked."
Psychologists also say that the education system needs an overhaul. "Academic heads have to devise a way of lowering the pressure on students and parents," says Ms Kripalani.
"They''ve built up the pressure to the level it is today. They need to take us back to safer pressure limits."