The most testing time

ONE MOTHER makes sure to stock up on little treats her exam children like - favourite foods, maybe a magazine. Another simply sticks to routine: "If I started getting up to make breakfast for her after all these years, she'd get worried."

Every family has to cope with the stress the Leaving Cert creates in its own way. But there are a few basic rules for parents as their students face the eleventh hour. They could be summed up as the three Ss: shut up, smile and be supportive.

Do keep household routine as normal as possible. Do encourage your child to plan regular breaks from the study schedule to relax. Do try to make sure they're eating healthy food, and get at least one hour's fresh air a day.

Don't nag, even subtly - "Here's-a-nice-cup-of-tea-love-why-don't-you-go-up-now-and-I'll-bring- you-some-more-in-a-while". Don't say, "How's the study going?" Don't say, "Shouldn't you be working?" the minute you spot them near the TV.

Don't waste time being cross if they appear to be throwing it all away; at this stage, there's not much you can do about it, and all you'll do is damage your relationship with your child. Don't indulge prima-donna behaviour, but do keep the house reasonably quiet.

Above all - and this seems to me to be the most difficult of all - don't let them know you're anxious, because that's just an extra burden they don't need to carry.

These rules were valid all year long, of course, but take on an extra significance in this, the home stretch. Father John Dunne, former president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, says the two weeks between the time school ends for sixth-years and the start of the exams are very difficult for students: "They're cut off from their class-mates, they've lost that cameraderie; the two weeks can be very isolating. They can lose any sense of how much work they have covered, or how much they haven't."

For that reason, he says, it's important that students shouldn't forget their friends, and should spend a certain amount of time socialising.

Doing the exams "isn't so much of a problem. There's the relief at meeting friends, a momentum that carries them forward." Dunne recommends that, just before the exams starts, students should take a day off, go up the mountains or somewhere similar, get a breath of fresh air and empty their heads. "They can get mentally and physically exhausted without realising it."

Bernadette Fagan Gleeson, public relations officer of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, agrees that the next two weeks can be difficult and advises parents to encourage their children to maintain school-like routine at home: get up in the morning, have breakfast, do a couple of hours work, have lunch, a couple more hours' study, then at least one hour's physical activity, whether that's a walk or kicking a football around between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. every evening - and then relax.

SOME PARENTS might be surprised at her advice when she says that six serious, concentrated hours of study a day is enough, but she asserts that this is definitely the case. "Six hours of serious learning, of revision, is an awful lot of work."

Whatever number of hours a day they put in during these weeks, it is important that work and relaxation are clearly defined, that the students must feel that they are free to relax when they're free. "The worst possible thing is for a student to have no schedule, to feel he or she should be working 18 hours a day (even if he's not), without time off."

The parent's role here is to avoid saying - well, anything about study when they're relaxing. Fagan, who is guidance counsellor in Scoil Mhuire, Athy, Co Kildare, says her daughter, who is doing the Leaving this year, has made it a rule that no one mentions study during her break times. "She'd regard it as an act of treachery."

Like Dunne, she says the exam weeks themselves are less of a worry: "The routine of exams will take over, and the students don't have to create their own routine. Then there's an adrenalin flow, a high when they start their first exam that's the opposite side of stress. It can buoy them up, and whether they feel they've done the first exam well or badly, there's a sense of achievement that they've done it, and can put all those books away."

John Dunne adds that if a student has a four-day break between exams, it's quite legitimate to take one full day off.

Bernadette Fagan Gleeson suggests that parents might remind their children of some of the simple relaxation techniques that most will have been taught at some point - taking a few minutes out at the beginning of each exam to relax, take a deep breath, calm themselves and remember the exam techniques they've learned.

And whether you think your children have done their best or blown their chances by not studying, give a positive message. "You could say, `I know you've done your best in your own way, go in and do the exam well for the next few hours'."

On the practical side, she also suggests you make sure your child has the right exam schedule - see the centre spreads of this supplement for the exam timetables.

At the end of the day, you have to remind yourself, as well as your student, that it is only an exam, it's not life or death. The problem for parents in the final weeks before the Leaving (as for the whole year) is to cope positively, whatever your own student is like - without burdening the child with your anxiety.

Mary, a mother and teacher who has put four children through the Leaving in the last decade, says it is definitely hard to find that balance "between making sure they're studying but not pressurising them and worrying that they're working too hard and might crack up".

She agrees with Bernadette Fagan Gleeson: parents must not burden their children with their own worries, so her recipe "is to keep good. meals going, stuff in the fridge for them to nibble on, plenty of bread for toast. Know when to get out of the way rather say something you'll regret, and know how to apologise if you have nagged and gone overboard."

And remember - in a month, it will all be over.