Laid-back Leaving Cert: Parents whose offspring opt out of points race pressure

Leaving Cert 2022 is in full swing and with it the worries of this year’s crop of stressed-out students who know most of their hard work will come down to whether or not they have prepared adequately for the topics that appear on the particular paper of the day.

But while the focus is often on the pressures students face and place upon themselves in the battle for college places, less attention is given to the students who do not get caught up in the points race. Some are more easy-going about the whole process than their parents might like.

Kate Sharkey’s son Ben is very relaxed about the Leaving Cert, she says. It was a conscious decision Ben made, and one that she admits – having herself come from a family that placed a lot of emphasis on education – she struggled somewhat to come to terms with.

“I’m the one who seems to care most,” Sharkey says. “Ben was diagnosed with dyslexia when he was about nine and he struggled a lot in the latter part of primary school and in the first year particularly of secondary school, because it just didn’t suit.

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“And coming up to Junior Cert, he just turned around to me one day and he said, ‘I decided I don’t care. I’m just not going to care anymore because when I care I get stressed.’

“And since that day he hasn’t cared,” Sharkey says. “He has a brilliant group of friends…and he has a part-time job and he plays sport and he just realises that it’s not his world.

“He made a very mature decision which I didn’t agree with. It nearly sent me over the edge, but I’ve had to come to terms with it myself, I think, and [say to myself] ‘Well it’s just not for him. It just doesn’t suit him. Something else will be there for him.’”

Sharkey says she was aware of the need to prioritise her son’s happiness and wellbeing, but admits her initial reluctance to accept his position put pressure on their relationship as she was “trying to push”.

“It’s a strange thing to come to terms with, but it’s about your relationship with your child.”

External pressures and comments are something Sharkey is also very much aware of, talking about a time when someone asked her what her son wanted to do after his Leaving Cert. “I said, ‘Well he’s not really academic’, and then you get this answer, ‘Ah I’m sure he’ll do great’... People think you’re downplaying it or being modest, when you’re just being honest.”

Sharkey says particularly for parents who did well academically themselves as students, there is a feeling of being judged. And she finds herself “dreading” the conversations on Leaving Cert results day, when people start to talk about students who have obtained 500 or 600 points. “You do feel judged as a parent. You feel that [others are] thinking you failed, whereas I look back when Ben was in first year… he was passing out with panic attacks in secondary school. To me, the fact that he is happy, content and has a great group of friends, that’s as much as I can [ask for].

“There’s a lot of things go into being successful or to having a good life, and I think academic success has become something that not only are the kids judged on, but the parents are judged on.”

Antoinette Connolly’s daughter, Emma, is another student who is laid-back about the Leaving Cert exams. “She’s not stressed out about them,” Connolly says. “She was sitting down after the exam yesterday watching Love Island.”

Connolly says Emma has told her, “You’re more worried about these exams than I am.”

“I’m drained from it,” Connolly laughs. “Yesterday I… felt like I had done an exam and she’s looking at me like ‘What is wrong with you?’

“At Easter I was [asking] ‘Do you want to do revision courses?’ and she [said] ‘No, I’m pottering away here. I’m fine. I don’t need it’…She was just like ‘No mam, it’s grand. Will you just chill yourself out there and calm yourself down.’”

Connolly says she is glad her daughter is at ease and says she is not sure why she worries more about her daughter’s exams than Emma does herself. Looking back a generation, she notes her own mother did not behave like that when she was doing exams.

“I suppose I’m worried… if she doesn’t do as well in this, is [life] going to be harder for her? And at the same time, I’m saying to her – and I mean it when I say it – if the exams don’t go your way and you don’t get the points that you want, there’s ways and means [around it].”

“I’m very conscious that it’s tougher for them now,” Connolly says. “It’s nearly expected that you do your degree and then you do a masters and then you go and do a PhD and then you might get a job and then you might try and buy a house. I suppose that’s why I want all her ducks in the highest row they can possibly go, to make life that little bit easier.”

Connolly hopes her daughter gets the points she needs for the course she wants, but she too admits to feeling some pressure and dread about Leaving Cert results day, when messages may come in from more competitive parents asking about points. She just wants Emma to be happy and not feel in anyway disheartened by comparisons. “The average is not seen to be a good thing anymore. The average is nearly seen that you’re below average.”

Carol Phillips’ youngest son, Ben, is also sitting the Leaving Cert this year and she is conscious of the pressures that the exams place on the mental health of students. As someone who has struggled with her own mental health in the past, she is particularly careful not to put pressure on her son. That doesn’t mean, however, that she does not worry about his relaxed approach.

“I left school when I was 15 and I had my first baby exactly two months before my 18th. I wouldn’t change things now, but they weren’t easy paths. The lights weren’t always green, but we got there in the end.

“I don’t want hard roads for my four kids…but at the same time, I can’t sit the exam for them.”

Phillips has three daughters and one son and, in her family, sees a difference in the motivation and independence levels between the genders. “You only see Ben when he wants food,” she smiles. “Ben’s a gamer,” she says, noting she cannot always be sure if he is studying or distracted by playing online games with his friends.

Ben knows his mother worries because she is “very open” with him about her feelings on the subject. In spite of her concerns, Phillips consoles herself with the fact that there will be options for him as a mature student, if the Leaving Cert does not go his way: “He knows I’m here and he’s a good kid.”

Expert view

Richard Hogan, family psychotherapist and clinical director of the Therapy Institute

Hogan says it can be difficult to know how to manage parental expectations and worries versus the student’s often more laid-back approach.

For parents guiding students, he recommends “trying to direct them as much as you can without you becoming frazzled by the expectations that you have for your child”.

He also has a warning: “There’s so many ways to one destination and parents get caught… and become myopic in their viewpoint of how you get to something.

“I think the points race, personally, needs to really be addressed. I think the way we’re looking at testing students… things have progressed so much in our society, things are so complicated in our lives. We understand the complexity much more of the human brain.

“We don’t all learn the same way. This mad race for points and the Leaving Cert – it suits the minority. That’s the reality that people don’t understand.”

Hogan argues that the system as it exists today can fail neuro-divergent and neuro-atypical students.

As parents, he cautions that “we all have expectations even before our child is born. We have to manage those.

“We have to realise there’s more than university too. And we can succeed and we can thrive without university in our lives.”

When a student takes a different road to the one parents had envisaged or hoped for their child, “it can seem like loss”, Hogan explains. “It’s about understanding a child in a different way. There’s a real sense of acceptance of what your child is interested in and the diversity of your child. We all find our niches.

“As parents we’re trying to help them so that they don’t make mistakes and so they don’t get lost in the system, but we can’t apply our expectations in a way that becomes almost pathological for the child.

“It’s going to make the child develop a really negative critical voice and inner voice if they see we’re disappointed that they’re not going to college, if they see your disappointment as parents.”

Comparing with others “feeds into a real sense of discontent in the family”, Hogan says. “This idea of pretence and keeping up with the Joneses, that your son or daughter has to be doing this to be at that level, I think it breeds resentment in the kids. They resent their parents.”

“The meaning that we put on results and grades, it’s just crazy”, he continues. “I think parents get caught in that and they think that it means something about the child’s IQ. Really at this age the child’s brain hasn’t developed fully yet at all. It doesn’t finish developing until they’re 25 and you don’t know what your child is capable of yet.”