Richard Hogan: How to talk to your children about their Leaving Cert results

Students have a terrible knack for viewing their progress and future in a myopic way.

The Leaving Certificate results are coming out late this year, they will be issued on September 3. This is the perfect time to prepare the student in your house how to manage their reaction if the results do not go their way.

Students have a terrible knack for viewing their progress and future in a myopic way. They tend to choose the university where all their friends are going rather than what course would best move them towards their desired goal. 

This is understandable, but plenty of new friends are waiting for them as they move off into this next exciting phase of their life. And being able to strategise so as to make the most out of the results they achieve is an important life skill to develop.

They will need this going forward in life. Not everything goes our way all the time. In fact, if things went exactly how we planned it, we would have lived a very dull life. Some of the most exciting and rewarding moments in my life have been those moments that arrived completely unexpectedly, often on the back of what you could easily view as rejection or falling short.

Reframing

Reframing life experiences is a very important skill to develop within your child. How they view obstacles will be the difference between thriving or struggling in life. Teaching them that every setback is an opportunity to grow and learn something incredibly valuable will help them to speak positively to themselves when things inevitably, from time to time, do not go their way. 

When they have not developed this skill, obstacles can annihilate their spirit. I have seen this so often in my clinic, young adults in their early 20s unable to manage not meeting a target. I have seen a huge increase in perfectionism in teenagers over the years, and it is something parents should help their children with because it will lead to a very unhappy adult life. 

We all know there is no perfect, and striving for something that doesn’t exist will only end in failure and disappointment.

These students have been through a remarkable couple of years. They have had to experience the monster of Irish exams, the Leaving Certificate examination, all while dealing with a global health crisis. I work with students in The Institute of Education, and I’ve been very impressed with their resilience and good spirits over these long, difficult months. They have had to deal with an incredible amount of uncertainty. 

And now that the exam was changed, made a lot easier in many regards, there are more uncertainties for these students to live with. How will this new exam be corrected? Will the issues that plagued last year’s results be present in September’s results? Will the points system be inflated as a residual from the number of repeats from last year’s debacle? All very good questions, but they will only ensure the student in your house remains distracted from what should now be their focus — what are the
avenues available should I not get my first choice?

How you approach this often difficult topic will make the difference between your child becoming defensive and annoyed with you, or positively engaging in a productive and good-spirited conversation about their future.

Changing frames

Teenagers are often looking for confirmation that their parents view them in a negative way. I have had so many conversations with teenagers in my clinic about how angry they are because their mother or father suggested they need options with regards to college courses. They translated this request as confirmation that their parents don’t believe in them. 

So, if you notice your teenager has a tendency to do this, this might be a good opportunity to change this destructive frame of viewing the world. How you approach the topic is crucial. If it comes out of nowhere and they feel blindsided, they will shut you down. 

Often I hear teenagers tell me that they told their parents that they ‘don’t care about college’ when they felt undermined by a conversation. 

They said this to provoke a reaction because they believe their parents’ view them as not having intelligence or potential. So, avoid this dynamic, because it leads to conflict.

Discussing the future with your teenager is important over these next three weeks. Help them to view it as an exciting opportunity, as well as strategising for all eventualities so that they are prepared should they need a backup plan. Try to allow the conversation to happen organically — if you do decide to open up the conversation, the car is often a good choice for such a talk. 

Show your child that you believe in them while also understanding the importance of planning. It certainly isn’t always a conversation a teenager wants to have as they attempt to assert their independence, but it might just be the conversation that moves them towards their bright future.