'My daughter has zero motivation and no interest in the Leaving. What should I do?'

It is the question that preoccupies the modern parent - how can I get my relaxed, lazy teenage son or daughter to motivate themselves for the Junior and Leaving Cert? And how can we give them a reality check? Guidance counsellor Brian Mooneyoffers this advice.

• My son is very bright. He is capable of 500 points, but knows 350 will be enough for his preferred courses and is bone lazy, what should I do?

I have been a teacher for over 30 years, and my concern for students in my care is that they will emerge from the education system as well-balanced individuals. I don't see the acquisition of CAO points as a particular goal of a broad-based education, but I firmly believe that every human being should strive to reach his or her potential in whatever they are doing. I am a firm believer in the principal of "if it is worth doing, it is worth doing well".

If your son is fortunate enough to have decided what direction he wishes to take after the Leaving and is working to ensure that he more than meets the expected entry requirements for this programme, I would suggest that he has attained a high degree of maturity.

If he is also using his time and resources to develop his skills in sport, music, or simply socially among his peer group, without engaging in unhealthy, destructive behaviour and while maintaining a steady work ethic, I would step back and leave him to chart his own course forward.

If, on the other hand, his laziness is causing concern among his teachers and is generating complaints that he is hugely underperforming in his day-to-day work, than you need to give him a reality check. Get him to contemplate where he is at now, what he hopes to achieve, and the gap that he must fill, subject by subject, between now and the examinations in June.

• My daughter has zero motivation and no interest whatever in the Leaving Certificate. What should I do?

Let's be frank here. There is nothing intrinsically interesting or motivating about the Leaving Certificate itself. It is simply a method of evaluating a student's ability to process information, mainly through a written format over a limited time period. Most of us, if we were being honest, would have avoided the experience, but we persevered because we saw the relationship between exam results and our future hopes.

My advice? Use the expertise of the guidance counsellor in your child's school. They use all of the information to hand from school reports, aptitude and interest test results and an open discussion with the student in an effort to help the student clarify their possible interests.

Only when this process is completed can a student see the logic of putting in the time and effort to prepare successfully for the Leaving as it opens up the possibility of gaining entry into an area of interest to them.

• How much study should a Leaving/Junior Certificate student be doing?

Every student needs to become familiar with the full range of questions that can be asked on each paper, and prepare answers for each question that may arise.

They are helped today by having access to the exam marking schemes, which are prepared annually for the team of teachers who have to correct that year's Junior and Leaving Certificate exams. These are available on www.examinations.ie

Students should always check their answer to any question against the marking scheme. This will help them see clearly where they have gained and failed to gain marks.

By carrying out this process every time, they will very quickly begin to fine tune their answering to get the maximum marks possible from each question.

Once a student has mapped out a plan of work to cover the broad range of questions he or she may face, the student does not need to measure their work in terms of hours per day or week. Having said that, the curriculum in each subject is designed as a two-year programme of work.

My experience suggests that students taking the Junior Cert need an average of two hours per day over the seven days of the week to successfully complete this task, whereas Leaving Certificate students generally require three hours per day on average.

• My husband says the main thing is to get them upstairs and get them studying. Is that right?

Your husband is wrong. It may calm your nerves to know that your son or daughter is now safely set up in their room, sitting at their desk, looking at a book. They are also probably counting down the minutes to the time when they can safely leave the room without world war three breaking out.

In other words, they are achieving very little. Motivation is provided by a sense of purpose and reinforced by indications of success in achieving those goals.

Many students have no idea how to study properly, simply being confined in a room for a number of hours every evening does nothing to improve their skills in this area.

Only when a student knows how to process information effectively can they benefit from time spent doing so.

• Do they need grinds? Is this a way to step up their motivation?

If having drawn up a study plan and set out a programme of work, you find that your son or daughter is struggling to make progress in a particular subject, they should certainly consider the possibility of additional one-to-one tuition.

Ideally, this should be done following consultation with the relevant class teacher, who can indicate whether one-to-one support for a short or protracted period might be useful for a particular student.

I am not in favour of providing grinds across the board for students as some sort of insurance policy against gaps that may occur in their day-to-day schoolwork. If students know that a grind is always available later down the track, what motivation is there to put in the effort on a daily basis in class? The answer is none.

A culture of ongoing regular grinds simply undermines the work of the classroom teacher. Worse, it can send the message to children that there is a short cut down the road which somehow bypasses the requirement to pay attention in class, do their work as it is given and pace their study over the full two years of their respective programmes.

• How can I work with the school and the teachers to improve my children's motivation?

It is important for all parents to be aware of the progress their son or daughter is achieving in school and to reinforce the messages that the school is giving.

Students who know that their parents are mindful of comments written by teachers in the student's homework journal are more likely to be motivated to ensure that these comments remain generally positive.

Parents do not need to be overbearing in this matter. The last thing any student wants is to have one or both of their parents's constantly visiting the school.

On the other hand, letting attendance at parent-teacher meetings slip or consigning this function to one parent because the other parent is far too busy to attend these events sends out all the wrong signals to students and can be very undermining and de-motivating.

• Should I monitor his work and get him to report to me or his mother?

Any student who is serious about preparing properly for an exam will have a plan or programme of work to achieve that goal.

The key to fulfilling any plan of work is ongoing review. Parents can play a hugely helpful role in helping their children to review those aspects of their plans that have been achieved, to identify the aspects that have not and to devise revised plans to overcome the deficiencies.

If a parent's support is offered in this way, it is likely to be seen by a child as supportive. On the other hand, a monitoring regime that is based on a perceived lack of trust by the parent in the child's integrity is likely to engender resentment and act as a de-motivator to genuine effort on the student's part.

• How involved should we as parents be?

The key to successful parenting from an educational perspective is steady ongoing interest, reflected in attention to the day-to-day communication between school, student and parent.

Sadly, some parents become completely absorbed in their own working or social lives, ignoring the routine of attending to their children's daily lives.

Then when the inevitable slide in performance sets in they charge in full of indignation and bluster, demanding action on all fronts only to withdraw back into their own worlds once the immediate problem seems to have been resolved - in the short term.

Children expect their parents to be interested in how they are progressing and to support the school through normal school/parent interaction.

Given the pressures many parents operate under today, that is not an easy task, but then again, who ever said that parenting was easy?

• The problem with my son and daughter seems to be their peer group, who only want to enjoy sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Should I cut them off from their friends and or talk to their parents and work together?

Exploring life on the edge is an essential part of teenage life and growing up. The wonder is that most young people navigate successfully through the process and go on to live very normal, balanced and happy lives.

Survey after survey finds that we are one of the most content societies in Europe and have relatively few major social problems.

Having worked with young people all my life, I have generally found them to be well-balanced, level-headed, socially concerned, proud of themselves and their peer group - and ultimately very responsible.

My advice is to show trust in your children, but to monitor them gently as a normal part of daily family life.

• Brian Mooneyis the former president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors. He writes a weekly column on this page.