DS1 about to hit his exams. (He did just one before half term and the rest are stacked up over the next two and a half weeks.) He's really bright. His predicted grades are, I think, A*, A, A/B in two sciences and a humanities subject and he has an offer of ABB from a really good university to do an Earth Sci MSci programme. He ought to be able to manage that even if grades slip. His work over the last two years has been excellent. He's also been revising in various ways for most of this year. He's a sponge and absorbs the content, even of the content-crazy Biology, very well. He's astute and analytically minded, he's pretty good at looking at a question and knowing how he should be responding. He's been working away on practice past papers for ages and ages. His two sets of mocks went, for the most part, really well and they informed his predicted UCAS form grades. His teachers are supportive and encouraging and have been marking practice essay questions for the humanities subject and sending them back with feedback, they're great.
He panics.
He's never been the most confident of people. His peer group all seem to be aiming at Oxbridge or medicine (or both!) and have had to do all these entrance exams/interviews etc - they've been through a baptism of fire in the application process and he's not. He feels this makes him 'less' in some way and I struggle to get through to him that he's not! His peers are mostly predicted higher grades than he is and he lets that get to him, too. (his peers aren't doing this, btw, my son just feels inadequate beside them.)
He did his first exam (and it was a humanities paper, so essay writing answers) and it sunk whatever self-esteem he was carrying into the exam. He panicked, he doubted himself, he started crossing out sections and apparently felt like bursting into tears. I think the momentousness of it all got to him and suddenly, nothing he wrote down felt adequate. He wasn't like this in mocks!
How do I help him?? I'm desperate for him. He's lost his revision momentum (the fucking heatwave hasn't helped) and this week the dam broke and he had such a wobble - not just about the way he lost his head in his first exam but about his future, his university choice, the career he's been aiming at since he was about 4 (as in, is this not just self-indulgent, does the world really need professions like this - I think this is probably set against the backdrop of many of his friends wanting to be medics)... it's been awful for him and horrible for us, as we try to shore up his eroding self-esteem and make him realise how talented and worthwhile he is. It's like a whole house of cards has collapsed. He was so fired up a few weeks ago and now he's 'meh'. 
(This is coupled with a perfect storm of emotions - he's upset at the idea of 'everything ending' when the end of the academic year comes and his friends all go in separate directions, he feels like it's the end of it all and doesn't think his friends will want to keep in touch with him. And a very close friend (whom he also loves...) had a horrendous health emergency a few weeks ago and while they are now better and ready to sit exams, he was eaten up with fear for their wellbeing and that they might not pull through. Yes, he's a drama-llama, but this was a huge thing and it really distracted him. I felt terrible for his friend, and for him.)
And the heat this week has been almost unendurable - we're in the S and it's been 34/35 here, the house is superheated. We do all the sensible things to keep it as cool as we can and I'm getting him 'treat' cold drinks every day, cooking things I think he'll be tempted by, etc. But jeez, the heatwave has really NOT helped and I know that there, he's in the same boat as so many of his fellow A-level sitters. It's been such bad timing! Thank god next week is back to normal cool rainy weather.