Reactions of parents to Leaving Cert results are psychologically complex and crucial for students' wellbeing, writes MARIE MURRAY
TODAY IS Leaving Certificate results day. If you are one of the 57,000 families of a Leaving Cert student you know this, for it has been etched on your mind and imagination since your child began school. It has been imprinted since the exams began last June. Today has been much anticipated - ambivalently imagined, cautiously welcomed and held in secret hope that the outcome of the input over the past 12 school years will not disappoint your child.
Today will decide whether your son or daughter has achieved all that you hoped for when you first held their hands for their first day at school. It is a significant day because the Leaving Cert has acquired such significance in Irish society. Perceived to be the gateway to success in life, it is the pinnacle of secondary school accomplishment.
It is the ultimate marker of achievement and admittance to the next academic stage in an Ireland in which educational qualifications have become a very important currency in society with high local value and easy foreign exchange: the ultimate gift that parents can bestow upon their children.
Of course as more and more qualifications are acquired by more and more people, further credentials are required to keep apace in this educational race. Many students will have exhausted themselves in the sprint for points for the Leaving Cert. They will have had to abandon the warmth of the "lit fire" of learning for the competitive "bucketful of facts" that would secure them precious points.
Many will see success today as heralding the next arduous educational phase. They will be aware that the Leaving Cert, once a high aspirational academic goal, has become a starting point. They will be aware of the expectations on them and how extended their educational odyssey has become. They will be conscious of the importance of their exam results. This is the context in which many students will receive their results today.
Yet there are some things that do not change in relation to the Leaving Cert results. They are immutable, fixed and secure from one generation of Leaving Cert students to the next, probably since the exam began.
There is one result that is essentially and finally the result that matters most to your child. That is your response, your reaction, your respect, your perception, your belief in them, your reaction if they did not achieve as they wished, your heartfelt pride if they did and your promise of support if they did not.
From the psychological perspective parental approbation continues to be the primary affirmation and support students seek. What you think is what matters most to your child. The result may be theirs but the response is yours. It is a response that will be remembered forever.
Parents' response to results is coloured by many often unconscious factors. These include parents' own experiences of school and of exams and how optimistic, pessimistic, realistic, unrealistic and practical are their expectations of their child.
The parent who worked hard and succeeded well in school may find it difficult to relate to the student who, despite every assistance, did not study and has not achieved. The parent who had to struggle academically may find it hard to cope with the student who succeeds brilliantly on little apparent effort.
Parents who have watched their child struggle academically and courageously may be overwhelmed by the pain of their child's disappointment in a low result. Parents who did not have the chance to sit the Leaving, for whom the possibility of university was unimaginable, may have ambivalent emotions.
Parents' response to their children's Leaving Cert results are also shaped by relationship during the Leaving Cert year, particularly if communication was contentious and if they warned their child that study was being left too late, that socialising was too frequent and commitment too sparse. If the student rejected offers of parental advice, if unrealistic assurances were given to parents that everything was under control when no work was visibly taking place, the response to the exam results will be tinged by that history.
The reception of exam results also depends on the meaning of the results: to whom they are most important, in what way, for what purpose and why, to achieve whose goals, how they will be communicated in the family, extended family, to friends, and what family beliefs are held about the consequences and implication of these exam results.
Responses to results are always psychologically complex.
Today and in the days that follow there will be intense media analysis of the results, whether standards are exacting or low, the numbers entering the various third-level institutions, points required for entry into traditionally high-point faculties such as medicine and psychology, the gender- distribution of achievement, the impact of immigrant graduates and the options available this year. There will be personality profiles of those who achieved maximum points and the alternatives open to those whose points were low.
But behind the public discourse there is a more important private one. It is about parent-child relationship, communication, compassion and realism, what is most valued in family terms, and how celebration or setback are managed in the family, all of which will be remembered vividly long after exam results have faded from memory.
• Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist. Her book Surviving The Leaving Cert: Points for Parentsis published by Veritas