 When I was looking for inspiration for what to record about today I asked my Twitter followers if they had any questions that I could answer in today's video and The question I've chosen to answer I may well come back to many of the others but like question I've chosen to answer Really stood out for me and it was this From Ms. Quintz How can we support older neurodivergent teens who are very anxious about not being able to sit exams to prepare for life beyond school? How can we support them through feelings of helplessness and lack of purpose? That's a big question First of all, so she's talking about neurodivergent teens and actually I think that the ideas I'm going to share in this video are applicable for everyone The feelings might be more intense for neurodivergent teens But I think that all teens who are due to be sitting exams around this time who haven't been able to Are likely to be somewhat dealing with some of the things we're going to think about in this video So if you are an adult who works with or cares for a young person who is in this category Should have been doing exams. They've been cancelled due to a pandemic then hopefully some ideas in here So I've got sort of three. There's always three things to share here One is around identifying What they want to be doing next so exams are only ever a stepping stone to what comes next whether that is further study or Whether that is employment or whether that is developing new skills for whatever reason exams You don't do them for fun. They're certainly not fun in my book But you do them because you want to be able to do a thing or access something or go somewhere or what have you? So think back to why were we doing the exams in the first place? What were they a stepping stone to and? therefore What are the skills the understanding the knowledge that they can perhaps be developing in order to Continue to make sure that they are made able to make that progress So they might have been awarded the grades without having to sit the exam and they might feel a bit kind of rudderless because of that But they can still use this time if they wish to to put themselves in a better position to take those next steps Whatever they might be Secondly, I wanted to address this idea of purpose wider purpose and that kids who were due to be doing exams and on might have This kind of sense of like helplessness and lack of purpose and that's definitely true And it's really interesting how the world has flipped on its head and normally at this time of year I'd have been doing loads of work around exam stress and test anxiety and supporting kids to Realize that there is a world beyond exams and then suddenly when the exams are taken away Then that is a stressor in and of its own right because it's like a rite of passage And it's the thing that we've been really focused on and suddenly we can't do it And there's this real sense of kind of anti-climax and yeah, it's it's difficult for other reasons And when you've been really focused and that's been your goal And you've been told this really matters and you've worked really hard to suddenly be told oh, no, it's fine. It's fine That's really tricky. It's a bit like you know when you think you're going to go into a confrontational situation You you want something and you're really ready to argue Like maybe you want to return something to a shop and you know, you're slightly outside of the returns window For example, um, and you've got your argument ready And you know exactly how you're going to make the best case ever for why you should be able to Return this thing and you've got it in your head. You've got it nailed. You've got the argument You get to the front of the queue In that life when we used to go shopping and you're ready. You're ready to make your case You're about to launch into it and they go. Yeah, that's fine and give you the money and you're like I'm sorry I came here with an argument is kind of like that but bigger I'm not trying to say that shop return is like exams not happening But it's that kind of feeling anti-climax basically but on a big scale here So what we need to do and I think arguably we need to do this Always whether or not exams are happening is to help kids to find their purpose beyond exams So we can get this like really narrow tunnel vision and our entire sort of self-esteem and self-identity is built on this one pillar Which is our success in exams because that's our laser focus for some time And actually self-esteem should always be built on multiple pillars because and you'll have heard me talk about this before I'm sure when we have multiple pillars of self-esteem if one of them gets shaken or broken The other pillars will mean that our self-esteem temple keeps on standing right now for a lot of kids If everything was basically hanging on academics and that is their whole self worth self identity self-esteem That's been shaken and they're like wow. What's left of me? Who am I? What's going on here? What's my purpose? So we need to try and look Beyond the exams and try to identify Kids wider sense of purpose answering that question. Why am I here? What am I doing? What matters to me? And that can be hard when you've been kind of in a system That's working you towards a certain point and you might not have ever even really stopped to think Why am I doing these exams? It might have been almost kind of treadmill-ish And now suddenly there's all this space and time to think and you find yourself reflecting I mean whatever stage right in life loads of us have had the chance to do that recently and It's great sometimes but it can be a bit uncomfortable because just being busy doing the things because that's what you do next is Easier, right? So suddenly all this space for reflection no exams to do lost our sense of identity and purpose. Let's find new purpose That's not easy. How do you do that? So if you're supporting a young person who is looking for their purpose Whatever age they are and whether they're doing exams or not If you're helping a young person to identify their sense of purpose or any person A really good question to ask is how do you want the world to see you? So if you're going to do it in a morbid way, you might be like What would you want to be remembered for if you were kind of going to your own funeral? What would you want people to talk about about you? Like what would your achievements be? What kind of person would they be saying you were but you know in a less morbid way? How would you like friends or colleagues to refer to you? What would you like them to be saying about you thinking about you? Are there particular kind of skills or passions or attributes that matter to you that you want people to think of first when they think of you? Do you want them to think of you as kind? Do they want them to do you want them to know your like amazing mathematical prowess? Do you want to be known for having invented something or achieved something or You know, there's all sorts of different things that we might want other people to value about us And when we stop and we reflect on when people think of me I'd like them to think of Okay, so we've thought about how we can try and make sure that we take appropriate steps So that the stepping stone of exams is gone and we've done something else instead We've thought about our wider sense of purpose and how we want other people to view us and then begin thinking about And how might we make that happen? But my third point because there's always three is that Actually, it's also fine just to have a break So young people who've been working towards exams at whatever point they are in in their academic career It's likely there's been quite a lot of stress and a lot going on for them It is fine. Just to have a break. This has been quite a Challenging time for everyone all told and I think there is some feeling amongst people that this should be a time when you know One would write that first novel or learn a new skill or whatever and for some people It has provided the space and the time to do that For other people, we're just managing a lot of uncertainty and difficulty and loads of different challenges And just making it through Relatively unscathed is as much as we can kind of aim for and hope for and that's okay too so it's okay to take this as a time of kind of respite and break And trying to do what we can to look after our kind of physical and mental well-being Such that when things begin to kind of open out again and we are able to return To education or work or life more widely that we're in as good a possible as a starting point And that doesn't mean that we've necessarily moved forward in terms of our skills knowledge Understanding or anything else, but rather that we haven't kind of gone backwards or really retreated into ourselves So the question originally was around neurodivergent teams And here I think it's particularly important and relevant to think about the skills That they will have developed particularly social skills that they will have developed over a lifetime Which might be at risk at the moment because while we're in that kind of phase of sort of lockdown and minimal interaction And there are lots of things that we would have been doing kind of every day that we would not be doing so much now And so thinking about how to make sure those skills don't get forgotten Or at least that they get kind of revisited and redeveloped prior to Them beginning to access the world in a wider way later on will be really important