The 11+ is one of the first major academic challenges many children face — and the parental anxiety that surrounds it can be as damaging as inadequate preparation. Children are acutely sensitive to the stress of the adults around them, and a parent who is visibly anxious about the outcome communicates that the stakes are very high — which increases the child’s anxiety, which reduces their performance. Here’s how to stay involved and supportive without inadvertently making things worse.
Separate Your Anxiety From Their Preparation
This is the hardest thing and the most important. Your hopes for your child’s secondary school experience are real and understandable — but they’re yours, not theirs. Children who feel they are carrying their parents’ hopes as well as their own work don’t perform better under that weight; they perform worse. The most useful thing you can do is maintain a calm, matter-of-fact attitude to preparation: “This is practice. We’re getting ready. It’ll be fine whatever happens.”
Make Practice Regular and Brief
Short, regular practice sessions — 20 to 30 minutes, three to four times a week — are more effective than infrequent long ones and far less exhausting for a 10-year-old. Children who do marathon study sessions in the months before the 11+ often arrive at the exam burned out. Children who’ve maintained a calm, consistent practice routine arrive fresh.
Praise Effort, Not Outcome
A child who gets eight out of ten on a practice paper should be praised for the work they put in, not for the score. A child who gets five out of ten having tried hard deserves the same response. Praise that attaches to scores teaches children that their value depends on outcomes they can’t fully control. Praise that attaches to effort teaches them that preparation and persistence are within their control — which they are.
Have a Plan B — and Mean It
Know what you’ll do if the 11+ doesn’t go as hoped, and be genuinely at peace with it. Children who know their parents have a real plan B — not just a polite backup they clearly don’t want — experience the 11+ as one option among several rather than an all-or-nothing test of their worth. That psychological safety makes a difference to how they perform on the day.
Thorogood English’s 11+ English preparation is structured to build genuine skills and confidence — not to cram or to create pressure. Join the waiting list for January 2027.
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