Mind Moves: The Leaving Cert results are out tomorrow. There is probably only one result: your child's results. There is one reaction that matters to your child: your response. Whether you are pleased, proud, disappointed, delighted, angry, resigned or relieved will be evident. And your reaction will be remembered.
There is but one moment to show your first reaction. The image of that reaction can last a lifetime. If you are contacted by phone, you will hear the excitement, flatness, delight, uncertainty or despair in the voice. There are seconds to tune in. Your first words will go straight to the student's heart.
That means that today is an opportunity to prepare mentally for tomorrow, for whatever the exam results might be. It is a day to be clear about what you will say, about what is important to you as a parent. It is a time to consider your views about education, young adulthood, your child and whether your expectations are optimistic, pessimistic or realistic or whether there is lingering annoyance, anger or disappointment already towards your child's application last year.
Parents often hold different views about exam results. What pleases one is a disappointment to another. How will you ensure that you will not give contradictory messages tomorrow? For who can cope with delight on the face of one parent and disappointment visible on another?
All the research on exam results shows that the parental reaction is the most important reaction to Leaving Cert students. This is the moment when the young adult essentially says: "Look what I've done, see where I'm going, what do you think of me now? Are you pleased? Will you help me? Will you stick by me? Will I be okay?"
For students waiting for the results tomorrow, there is anticipation, excitement, terror and vacillation from belief in brilliance to fear of failure.
There is the question of how to cope with disappointment or with success; how to respond to peers who are ecstatic or in despair; how to be generous, sympathetic, magnanimous and from whom to get appropriate support if results are upsetting.
Students who studied hard will hope their work has paid off; those who did not will be praying that the last-minute cramming came through. There will be the high point-seekers holding their breaths that the coveted places will be theirs and the repeats hoping that this time they have what they need.
There will be those young people who have learnt the art of ease in a stressful world, who will remind themselves that with all the options available there will be plenty of opportunities to do what they wish in life and many routes to those options.
Each year there are some students who hug the hope that they can prove their sceptics wrong, and students who will be grateful to a supportive teacher all their lives for the encouragement that saw them through.
Each year there are students who struggled during the exams because they were ill, there were family difficulties, bereavements or situations that took all their courage. There are students for whom circumstances did not allow them to sit the exams at all. Each year there are students who are no longer here to get their results. This is also a day to remember those young lives, remember their parents and also remind ourselves that exam results are but a moment in the momentousness of life.
Because at the end of the day this exam is not just about acquiring a credential but about the life skills, perspectives and relationships that accompany it: the disposition, empathy and ethics students have, whether they have a sense of entitlement or an awareness of the privilege of education compared with others their age in the world.
This is the students' chance to acknowledge the support of parents and the chance for parents to mention their appreciation of the personal talents, gifts, qualities and values their students have, regardless of their exam results.
Leaving Cert results are more than exam results. They are the time when family relationships are tested at this transitional life- cycle stage for students and their parents.
Results give the opportunity to be creative about future choices: to look forward rather than back. What's done is done, but new decisions can be made arising out of what parents and students learn from the exam results.
Tomorrow shows how parents and students manage celebration or setback together. It is the time for parents who are fortunate to have a responsible, ethical, kind young adult son or daughter to say how they value that as much as exam results, so that students will know that they are loved for the young people that they are, not just for their academic capacity to achieve.
Tomorrow is the time for students to learn that the most important accomplishments in life are rarely ones that can be measured. That wouldn't be a bad Leaving Cert result.
Best wishes to all tomorrow.
The Irish Times will publish a 14-page special supplement on going to college tomorrow.
•Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital in Fairview, Dublin and author of Surviving The Leaving Cert: Points for parents, published by Veritas..