Reply to when to start studying for 8th grade PSAT

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How are you treating the anxiety? 
I don't know when your ds is taking the PSAT so I can't say when he should start studying. My 9th grader took the PSAT in the fall - the whole 9th grade took it - and the school said not to study.

When he was taking the ISEE a few years ago we started him with prepping for it maybe 2-3 months ahead of time.

My ds just started prozac and I think it is helping the anxiety. [/quote]

What is the ISEE? Is it similar? 
This is the first answer that points me toward a direction, rather than just criticizing the question. 2-3 months sounds about right, I think.  That was the question, how far in advance of the test. It's taken in the 8th grade for those interested in this high school program.

We've tried a couple of medications, but it's not a generalized anxiety, which makes it more difficult to find the right one, I think. It's more of a performance anxiety. He's fine on a day-to-day basis. So it's hard to find something that you need once every couple of months, if that. Plus, would he get sleepy or have some other side effect from the medication during the test? It seems risky, when what he really needs is practice taking the test, so he can be thinking, oh, yeah, I recognize this type of question, or, even if I don't know this one, I might know the next one, etc. And test taking techniques, like how to pace yourself through it. It took him forever for me to convince him that if he doesn't know the answer on a test, just skip it and come back. He was convinced you were supposed to answer the questions in order, so he would sit and spend forever trying to figure out one answer, wasting all his time, instead of moving on to easier ones.

To answer pp, I think he'd be fine in the program as opposed to the test because during the test he's got all this negative self-talk (I'm going to fail, I can't do this, I suck, I'm stupid, etc) that is paralyzing, but it's not something that comes up for regular homework and tests in school.  We are working on it, but I don't want everything to rest on his being to apply his techniques successfully on the day of the test.  [/quote]

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