Exam time is approaching fast. Across the State students - and their families - are gearing up to face another challenge. So what can you do now to maximise your exam performance - and how can your family help?

For tens of thousands of students throughout the State, the next six weeks will be taken up with major examinations. Almost 100,000 students will sit the Junior and Leaving Certificate and similar numbers will sit examinations in post-Leaving Certificate colleges, institutes of technology and universities. Large numbers of students will also sit end-of-year examinations in schools up and down the country.

What is the rationale behind putting students through this deeply stressful process? The answer is certification. In societies throughout the world, capability and capacity to perform roles in society are assessed using an examination process. The success or failure of a candidate plays a major role in determining his or her career development, earning power and social status. It is for this reason that we have recently witnessed the annual stampede as thousands of students descend on the State's private crammer colleges to hone their skills in a range of Leaving and Junior Certificate subjects.

So, as a parent, what can you do to support your child through this process over the coming weeks?

From ancient times, parents have looked on anxiously as their children were put through various rites of initiation into adult life. We can at least be thankful that the modern version of initiation - the written examination system - is less physically demanding than some of the more primitive initiation processes that our ancestors endured.

The first thing parents can do is make a clear distinction for their child between their hopes and expectations regarding performance in the examination process and their unconditional love for them.

Many parents will be horrified that I would even raise this question, but having worked with students for over a quarter of a century, I can assure parents that the biggest stress most students experience is the fear that they will disappoint their parents. This fear is very often hidden and almost never verbalised, but underlines most students' deepest fears. Therefore I would encourage parents to take time out to sit down with any of their children who are facing exams of any nature and assure them that they are loved and cared for, no matter how they perform in any examination. Tell them that you wish to support them and guide them to perform to the best of their ability. Such an action is, in my opinion, the greatest gift any parent can give a child facing the stress of examinations at this time.

Having made this distinction between the unconditional love of a parent for their child and a parent's hopes for their child to succeed in the examination process, what can a parent do to help those hopes come to fruition?

The most important thing to remember is that in stressful situations unsolicited advice usually only adds to stress and does not add greatly to performance. Some parents may see this advice as so much mumbo jumbo, and stand by the tried and tested "Get up to your room and open those books, and don't let me see you for four hours" approach. Do you remember what you did when your parents did that to you? Exactly, you went up all right, and counted down the minutes until it was safe to come down again. The quality of the study during those hours probably left a lot to be desired.

A more successful approach might be to ask your child, be they at school or college, how they are doing. The discipline to listen, rather than jump in with advice the minute your child starts speaking, will allow him or her to express what he or she is feeling. If a child feels her parents are genuinely supportive she will have the courage to outline her fears and anxieties. This will allow parents to ask questions such as: do you find the method you are using to revise questions is working for you? Are there any topics you are finding more difficult than others to comprehend? Are you happy with the manner in which you are using time to prepare for the exams? How can I as a parent help you to be more effective in these preparations? Imagine your approach to your studies, after such a conversation. Resentment would be replaced with a determination to build on the positive feelings emanating from such a stress-relieving encounter.

Having put the whole examination process in context within family life, let me now move on to the more practical aspects of support that students sitting examinations require.

As I have said many times in the past, examinations are a highly artificial method of judging ability, that assess a specific skill, i.e. the ability to write and present information in a highly structured manner, in 30- to 40-minute blocks, over three-hour periods, spread over two weeks. What can a student do a month before such an examination process to enhance his or her performance?

The 10 commandments of exam preparation:

1 Study previous examination questions and prepare answers - in bullet point or graphic format - that fit into the time allocation allowed.

2 Review such prepared answers regularly over the coming weeks. This can be done in less than a minute, provided the question has been well prepared and presented.

3 Ensure that all the subjects you are taking are getting a balanced amount of your time coming up to the examinations. Students can often misread their need to concentrate on specific subjects to the detriment of those subjects they feel are not in need of much work at this time.

4 Don't attempt to start reading new material over the coming weeks. You have more that enough content in your head for 10 examinations without adding more. The task now is to organise it in your head and on your revision cards in a manner conducive to presentation in 40 minutes.

5 Remember that in any race the eventual winner is very rarely the one who starts off at great speed. The ability to pace yourself over the coming weeks is crucial to how you will be able to perform in those last vital exams at the end of the second week.

6 Therefore, issues such as diet, exercise, relaxation time, sufficient sleep, are as vital to your eventual performance as time spent studying.

7 In any competitive process it is often the unexpected little things that trip you up, so prepare well. This can often be where parents can help most. Simple things such as pens, erasers, calculator batteries, rulers, markers, all tend to run out or go missing at exactly the wrong moment.

8 Over the coming weeks, the temptation to phone a friend or the frustration of constantly going to the phone to take friends' calls can be very disruptive. A simple solution can be to organise a common time out from study with friends to simply chat or go to a film etc.

9 Travelling to and from examinations and feeding yourself between exams when you have two on one day can add to examination stress. Parents can alleviate this by ensuring that transport and lunches are not stress factors and by quietly taking responsibility for these factors themselves.

10 Because stress is such a factor for all concerned, simple mistakes can easily be made. The most serious mistake possible is not turning up for an exam, because you misread the timetable. Any examination superintendent will tell you that this happens regularly. Parents should ensure that they are aware when every exam is taking place, and in the case of morning examinations, that the candidate is not left in an empty house, depending on an alarm clock when parents leave for work at an early hour. Believe me, frantic principals have woken many students from their slumber, 15 minutes after an examination has started. Now there is a recipe for stress.

Brian Mooney, president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, will be contributing to The Irish Times's exam coverage