Offer tea, biscuits and plenty of TLC, not pressure: if nagging hasn't worked by now, it's not going to.
Relax: the prevalent belief that the Leaving Cert performance sets the pattern for a 17-year-old's life is incorrect.
Let it go: your child is sitting the Leaving Cert, not you. It is damaging to regard your child's performance as reflecting on you.
Provide a structured environment: negotiate access to friends and limit telephone calls to a pre-set half-hour in the evening.
Help your child learn to form an original argument: informally debate books, poems and history subjects that may come up in the exam paper. Exchange views on current events.
Provide a well-lit, warm, quiet study space: listening to music is fine if it does not hamper recall.
Flexibility about study-time is okay as long as the studying is done: quality is better than quantity. Two to three hours of intensive studying followed by a reward, is better than 10 hours, wandering down to the kitchen for snacks and phone calls every 10 minutes.
Gently help them decide how they learn best: preface your suggestions with "it might be helpful if . . ."
Note-taking can be visual, through drawings, or aural. If they absorb material best by hearing, suggest they use a dictaphone and play the notes back.
Suggest using index cards and working from revision. Reams of hand-written notes will not be helpful at this stage.
The Leaving Cert is not just about the ability to recall, it's equally about the ability to communicate ideas. Suggest they practise answering questions by setting a stop-watch for 30 minutes, then writing about a particular subject. Afterwards, the may analyse the results: did they spend too much time on the intro? Or not cover a wide range of points? You are better of covering lots of points than dealing exhaustively with one.
Colour-coding notes (green for geography, blue for English, and so on) can aid memory.
First four points 4 from Rosemary Troy, psychotherapist and other points from Marie Murray, psychologist at St Joseph's Adolescent Centre, Dublin.