Should children make time to unwind with a book even during exams? or is it a Danger Zone for those who love books and find it hard to tear away to study for exams?
While we speak of pressure of exams, the need to perform, this pressure comes from different directions and is at some level inevitable. It is bound to cause stress. Teaching children to deal with stress by making time for activities that they enjoy is the key. Taking our minds off something that stresses us, relieves the stress and we go back feeling more calm. We get into a better state of mind and hence in the process, do a better job of dealing with the stress.
Unwinding can be in different ways:
While some like to unwind with the T.V others with music, some like to unwind with an absorbing book. Ensuring a steady supply of reading material, easily accessible helps avid readers cope with stress better. For starters when one is reading something that is absorbing, one cannot be worried at the same time. If that's the case, the mind gets to focus on something else than one's own and the break helps to rejuvenate the mind and hence it is far more ready to receive a challenge.
Worried that your child may spend more time reading than studying?
This is a valid concern that could be addressed by having honest conversations with the child and enabling to realize that they need to balance their schedules making time for all that is important to them- reading for pleasure and of course studying as well. Acknowledging their need/desire to spend time reading and helping them to navigate through their daily schedules to ensure balance is the key. This may not happen overnight. However, allowing children to process the concept of balance and how it could help them could pave the way for a healthy mix of studies and pleasure reading.
Avid readers tend to have better comprehension skills and possibly be able to grasp better thus resulting in more time left for pleasure reading. Studies indicate that those who started reading for pleasure early on tend to perform better. Knowing this might just soothe your worries and encourage the reading habit to continue.
Establishing a reading habit or inculcating the interest in reading is difficult. If you have managed to achieve this feat, don't reverse it by denying books in pressure times. It might actually help.
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