After a more and more extreme reaction from dd age 7 after doing the last 3 SATS papers I'm really worried about her. It's the year 2, key stage 1 SATS she's doing and the school are known to be pushy and are used to getting good results, so there is definitely a level of expectation to meet the expected standard there, and so I suppose inadvertently some pressure. At home we've reassured her over and over that it doesn't matter and to just do her best then forget about it. She's finding this impossible and came home yesterday after doing a maths and English paper that afternoon sobbing and almost hyperventilating, I've never seen her like this til now and I'm so worried about her. Hugging her I could feel her heart racing and it was almost like a panic attack.
She came home like this after the last 2 papers as well but yesterday was the worst yet. I don't know whether I should have kept her at home today for a day just to re-group, or look into withdrawing her from doing the rest of the papers if that's even possible? Dh is worried about her too but thinks she is better off carrying on like her peers are, which I do agree with, and that she has to get used to doing tests for the future, but the other children don't seem to be reacting to them in such an extreme way. That's what worries me, the extreme reaction. Talking to other mums at school there have been some tears from e some of the other girls and them saying they're hard tests and that they're nervous, the boys seem pretty unphased from what their parents said. Some of the children are still 6 and not 7 til August and several have to have a scribe. Seeing them come out of school though and chatting to other parents on the school run, they don't seem that effected in comparison to my dd, so why is she finding it so much harder to cope with?
I'm wondering why my usually happy, bouncy dd with a zest for life and who is usually happy and confident at school, seems to be falling apart since the SATS started a couple of weeks ago. She's done 3 papers so I think has another 2 left. Is it normal for a just turned 7 year old to come out of school sobbing the minute she sees me, each time she has a sats paper, then when we get indoors everything comes out and she tells me round and round for an hour how hard it was, that she's stupid, she's rubbish, she was scared and didn't know what to do, she doesn't want to go to school etc.
I eventually calmed her down yesterday, but she kept getting upset on and off all evening and took ages to go to sleep because she said she felt sick, which I'm guessing is anxiety.
I know they're not allowed help obviously, and it's formal exam conditions sitting at individual desks in a big room in silence which she says she finds scary. They're not allowed to drink from their water bottles much, parents are noticing at the moment they're almost full still from the morning, and they're complaining they're not allowed to go to the toilet unless absolutely desperate and she says they have to keep on asking til they get a yes. I have to say it's not normally that bad, it's just during the sats for some reason. Nothing like this had happened before, she's always loved school til recently when they started gearing up for the sats. Is this a really extreme reaction for a 7 year old, and how would you deal with the situation? Any advice please would really be appreciated x