Colman Noctor

So that idea of, you know, some children will be meandering through the Leaving Cert, but they might hit their groove around 2021 and find that some might be super organized and prepared and coming at this, but might find that their maturity struggles maybe in the college life independence scenario.

So while it develops at different rates, it can also have, it's again, maturity isn't an equal opportunities employer.

It can be, it can be mature in one sense and not others, you know.

Yeah, that's a real problem.

I think over the last 10 or 15 years, we're seeing adolescents as an apprenticeship for adulthood and everything that they do has to have some function and pay off and dividend.

And you're doing this because you'll get points in your leave and you'll get this and this will stand to you when you're going to college.

There's very little kind of doing stuff for the crack or for fun or just for the sake of it.

Why?

Because I wanted to.

And that kind of formalization of adolescence is not what adolescence is.

It's about experimentation.

It's about getting it wrong.

It's about wrong turns.

And oftentimes young people, parents will be panicking now about a young person who maybe wants to take a gap year or they're not sure of what course they're doing or they might start the course and realize two months into it, it's not for them.

You know, U-turns and change of directions aren't failure.

That's oftentimes a measure of your success, knowing what's for you and what's not.

And not jumping into something if you're not certain is also a quality that

some people would think is a very good quality to have.

Do you know what I mean?

And so I'd be, as a parent, trying to be flexible and thinking about what moves they're making and not translating lack of certainty into panic.