Many teenagers suffer from anxiety; the first thing for our tutors to find out are the causes of their pupil’s anxiety; very often it is caused by parents. For example, in many cases the parents are very anxious about their children’s scholastic performance at school and this anxiety rubs off on the child. Often our tutor has to get the parents to recognise their pressure and get them to stop worrying. When the parents stop, the child stops too. 

Until the tutor understands the cause of the anxiety, he cannot help the child. This is why it is so important to have a residential tutor, living with the family: eating all his meals with them and immersing himself in the life of the family; he has to get to the bottom of the problem and find out the chemistry of the family. Only then, by living with the family all day can he hope to be of any help to his pupil. A tutor who works with his pupil on an hourly basis has no hope of getting to the bottom of the problem. 

We find that most teenagers’ anxiety come from their parents; very few of them have self-induced anxiety. Once the parents are persuaded that their child is perfectly normal and doing well at school both academically and socially, they tend to relax; when the parents relax, the child relaxes. There are exceptions, but on the whole unstressed parents have unstressed children. Children are very influenced by their parent’s feelings.

Read more about a teen's struggle with anxiety in our Tutor Talks.