We are now 12 weeks away from Leaving Certificate and that means what your child does now will have an impact on their outcome in August. Twelve weeks is the optimal time for exam preparation, what they learn now they will remember in the exam. If the student in your house has done very little in the past year and a half, they could turn it all around in three months. Especially, now, with all the exemptions the Department for Education and Skills has made for the exam this year.

Helping the student in your home while maintaining your own sanity is no easy task. But it’s something you’ll need to master if the next 12 weeks are to be successful and drama-free. The Leaving Certificate, in its present form, is suitable for the minority and not the majority of students who undertake it. Thus, many students struggle with the rote aspect that this exam requires. The large amount of material that students are expected to learn, regurgitate, then erase and move on to the next exam is something that many students find problematic.

In my experience, they think about all the work that goes into just getting a basic understanding of the subject and it puts them off starting. Like looking at Mount Everest and thinking, “I’ll never get there.” But getting started and designing a sustainable study schedule is crucial. Building momentum is a process. Developing positive thinking about the exam is about making them see that they can do well and that they can do well. Students often think passing the exam is about being super smart, they don’t realize it’s more about application and consistency than intelligence.

If you have a student in your home who struggles to study, think about the belief system they have about themselves. Often the work I do with students helps free them from negative paradigms that hold them back or prevent them from thriving. For example, I often meet students who come to me for exam motivation, but it becomes immediately apparent that they have built up a very negative pattern of behavior to protect themselves from failure. They are stuck. They refuse to study because they fundamentally believe that they are not very smart and so when they fail they can at least say, “I didn’t study anyway, so how could I have done well ? This is such a negative example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Students often find themselves caught in a bind like this. They have such a negative view of their potential that they develop a shield to protect themselves from inevitable failure. Of course, the irony is lost on them. The irony being that they bring to life the very thing they fear; by not studying, they cannot do well and therefore prove their belief system to be true. But if they challenged it and started to study, they would begin to see that their belief is wrong and their potential is limitless. Freeing your child from a negative belief might be the most important first step for your child to pass this year’s school leaving certificate exam.

In my experience, boys often have trouble concentrating and developing a healthy study routine.

Smartphones have had such a deleterious impact on concentration and attention. It is extremely important that you help your child manage their relationship with technology over the next 12 weeks. Their study area should be free of technology, especially their phone.

Research shows that when a notification arrives and focus is disrupted, it takes a long time to bring focus back to where it was before the notification interrupted it. More than ever, students need help with their concentration. Everything in their world is instantaneous and abbreviated. But doing well in the Leaving Cert requires the ability to focus for extended periods of time. Helping your child develop a routine that allows them to study, while having free time to celebrate their teenage years is important during these 12 weeks. Downtime is as important as study time.

We all crave routine and building momentum is all about building a healthy routine so they put themselves in the optimal position to pass an exam. It is also important for our children to know that there are many roads to any destination. And if they fail, which we all do sometimes, other opportunities will arise and they will succeed.