I am not sure about “learning” in american k - 12. It is at such a low level that it is not worhwhile menionning. I did mention to my D. when she was really young, that there is no way she would not do well if she just does her homework every day and does it well. k - 12 is in such shambles that kid who understand this basic concept, can achieve As in every single class even the ones that she absolutely hates with all her heart. This concept has worked like a magic and I actually was surprized by the fact that it has worked even in college which is by far much harder academically and no HS, including the best privates prepare kids for this challenge. However, now I hear the same from my grandson, as an echo of my own words (probably is): “just doing my homework”, he is a straght A kid with huge number of unrelated interests who just got accepted to one of the hardest to get in HS’s in NYC…by simply dong his homework and pursuing his wide range of interests.
Jbrione…what were you hoping? That parents would help college students stay organized, help with their homework, contact professors, make sure the student goes to tutoring or office hours, help the student choose courses that are easy enough to pass?
By the time a student gets to college, they should hopefully have the skills to succeed without intervention from their parents.
The OP asked:
My response: My parenting has evolved. When they were young I provided a lot of structure. Our primary focus was never on grades or test scores…though my children would say they knew it was very important to my husband and me. They took their standardized tests “cold” from a young age. (ie. tests are an opportunity to show what you’ve learned.) By the time they took the ACT and SAT they looked online at the sample tests to see the format. Then they took the exams in the Fall of their junior year, with the intention that if they performed poorly they could seek help on specific sections of the test. Fortunately for us, it worked out well.
Now that we have reached the ‘college phase’, I feel they have a strong foundation for success…time management, self-confidence, etc. My role is more along the lines of managing expectations and in general, remaining engaged…where the level of engagement is constantly changing. 
The question I ask myself, ‘is it good for their long-term growth and happiness’?
To clarify, “Helping kids do well starts when they are very small. It is all the things you teach them along the way, not just when they need help.”
What I am trying to say is that since they learned to talk, we have been doing an endless number of little things like talking to them, teaching them a new word, or asking them to thing about some issue, or teaching them people skills, or making sure they understand the importance of education. None of which are directly related to school.
By the time they get to high school, we will discuss college plans and will get some ACT or SAT prep, and that may get an extra point or two, but I think that what is a reasonable level to achieve is largely already set. The tutoring may nudge them from a 31 ACT to a 32 ACT, but it won’t usually move them very far.
Every child has an academic potential and personality that is unique to them. It starts with making reading a major part of one’s life- exposure helps both the innately gifted reader and those who need the practice. Different strategies work with different personalities.
Our strong willed, gifted kid did what he wanted to- we couldn’t make him do homework just to get good grades. He had the potential to have a 4.0 (unweighted) but didn’t always do the work required for top grades. Likewise in college he chose his own courses, including rigorous academic ones and didn’t always do the extra work to always get the A when he may have. Certainly not a premed student!
We forced our son to do the ACT and SAT practice tests once (he had taken them in middle school for gifted purposes) but his extensive reading over the years and math courses honed his abilities so he did nearly perfect on them. The tests to prep for are the subject tests- those are knowledge based and “we’re reviewing precalc in calculus” is not sufficient to do the best as our son found out (parental nagging did no good- did I mention our son is/was extremely independent/stubborn/strong willed?).
Define success. It is NOT getting straight A’s in college. It is being able to function independently and in a profession chosen by the person. It is not doing the profession parents desire or find prestigious either. There can be financial success, academic success, social-emotional success, and so many other kinds one can imagine.
Actually one of the best things that happened to our Honors math major son was reaching too high for math grad schools (a brutally competitive field- the math GRE has a 900 top score possible to differentiate the superstars from the merely excellent). He then added computer science and chose to work in that field. He seems to enjoy it and is intellectually satisfied so far. Others we have known with PhDs from top institutions have not had luck getting jobs. So- is our son a failure for not going to grad school or a success because he has found his niche?
What works for others, even the majority, may not be right for an individual- nor even be best for that majority.
I helped my kids prepped for the SAT, saved me lots of $$$. They did better then most of their cousins and friends who paired lots of money. For AP test, I searched for the best AP books and purchased for them. For colleges, they are on their own but I put special emphasis on getting good grades because you never know what you want to do when you grow up. Don’t close all the doors by getting poor grades.
I paid for an online ACT or SAT tutoring program for son, it didn’t cost much and he went into the testing having a better idea what to expect.
Each student will be different. Our son had his own high standards for academics so it made it easier on us parents. Pay attention to detail and stay focused were things I would sometimes repeat. I always believed in balancing academics with down time, time spent with friends or alone time recharging. Yes, I feel that needs taught, too, for some students.
My son finally learned in college that you don’t have to make straight As to learn. He observed students doing reasonably well but not stressing. He observed others pouring way too much effort into getting a perfect grade on every test. One classmate spent hours and hours on a project and was utterly devastated to get a B. He recognized there was something not quite right about that reaction.
Son graduated college with honors. Oh, and had a job. We encouraged independent thinking even while he was in grade school, so he was used to figuring things out in college, but knew we were always available to bounce ideas off of if necessary.
One note is that I agree that “you don’t have to make straight As to learn”. But not having the college GPA very close to a 4.0 will derail from some tracks. So, if one wants to have a variety of dooors to be open after graduating from college, so that the graduate will choose, instead of being basically pushed to one way or another by certain GPA (very unfortunate realization at the end), why not strive for all As in every class, like class or not, in classes related to your major or not? As an example, it is a much better position to be able to choose from the variety of Med. Schools that have accepted you instead of being pushed to (hopefully!) the only one that happened to accept a person whose otherwise admirable and great GPA was simply not enough to have a choices at the end. And this applicant was actually very lucky as few decimals down, like having college GPA less of 3.6 could potentially result in no acceptances, zero. Is that a good ending for somebody who worked very hard meeting challenges of college pre-med track? It is happenning every year as only about 40% of applicants get accepted to some Med. School, 60% do not get accepted anywhere at all.
I am talking about medicine, because I am familiar with this field. I am sure there are other fields that have certain min. requirements for the college GPA. But do not get me wrong, there are other requirements besides GPA that have to be fullfilled, so GPA is only one aspect of college life. Having wide range of interests and “trying the waters of un-known” is a great way to grow personaly which is also a goal of the college education.
I never cared that much about grades. I cared about learning. I got my kids excited about reading. I taught them that the minimum expected of them was to the homework in a timely fashion. By high school, I had very little idea about what the homework and deadlines were. I sent ds to an SAT prep class because I thought it would be easier than trying to nag him into practicing writing essays (the only section I was concerned about). It was a waste of my money, so S2 just did a bit of practice at home. Not as much as he might have, but he got into colleges that were appropriate for his level of intellect.
I did do my best to give them advice about the mix of courses to take, to look for good professors not good course descriptions, but my advice mostly fell on deaf ears. Younger son did go for help - using the writing center some freshman year and staying on top of his Arabic class. Neither kid made straight A’s. Older son is at his dream job. Younger son is doing a second post-grad internship - sadly not unusual in his field (IR). (Oh and he just learned that a local gallery sold 16 pairs of his origami earrings!)
Mathmom, your post about getting homework done in a timely fashion reminds me of one of the most important aspects of college, and that is time management. It was something my son was good at. He stayed on top or ahead of the course work as best he could. He made good use of technology to sync the phone with the ipad with the laptop to coordinate projects, class notes and lectures. Yeah, he uses the cell phone for the social aspect, but was smart enough to use it to streamline some of his class work as well.
He also looked at reviews for professors that taught classes to see how they were rated, it made a difference to him. I think he used something called rate my professor to check them out.
Doing homework in a timely fashion and doing it well is the ONLY requirement for having an A in every class, I support this concept with all my heart, I told that to my D. at the very young age that if she does that, there is a sure A in the class! It works as a magic!
That’s simply not true.
@MiamiDAP Aha, ya that might be true in High School, definitely not in College. Most classes don’t even have “homework” assignments.
It might be true of her kids’ high school - it wasn’t true of ours.
danfer91,
"@MiamiDAP Aha, ya that might be true in High School, definitely not in College. Most classes don’t even have “homework” assignments. "
-Worked perfectly with excatly the same results for my D. at both HS and college. There is “homework” in every class, they may not be written down as assignments do, they are assumed nonetheless. Being prepared for each class is a homework, since you are doing work for this class outside of the classroom, what else you can call it?
Not only that worked at college, it worked at Med. School. I am not saying that the level of homework is the same in the 1st grade math class and what one needs to do for the classes at Med. School. Nonetheless it is a work that needs to be done outside of the classroom, and it is NOT the same as an “assignment”, assignment is simply a part of the homework.
MBA, law, and medical schools care somewhat about GPA. Some grad schools do to. Straw man argument to say you get an A and not learn anything and all stressed out while getting B is not. My kids have Bs and not get stressed out but she rather beats the curves. She bragged to me that the average of her class last exam was C and she got an A+ for one of the most fear class. I’m sure she did learn something and not just getting good grade.
My son’s eyes were opened in his sophomore year with one professor when he poured much energy into a report. He got a good grade, but the notes he received back on the paper were very vague and generalized. He realized the professor really didn’t pay much attention to what my son had invested much of his time and energy into. Now, not all professors were that way, but my son learned a different lesson about college assignments and how they might be perceived by the teacher.
Upon reflection, with a D at UCSF Medical School, another at Yale, and the youngest about to enter college as a freshmen–much of the credit goes to my wife. So, while we did many of the thing concerned parents do; select a good school district, provide more than tacit support in the school and studies and encourage any type of intellectual endeavor, regardless of topic…my wife deserves much credit.
Let me explain, I really believe, having seen their mother do two challenging medical sub-fellowships, while they were growing up, provided a real world template about tenacity, hard work and the ability to pursue your goals in the face of challenging situation. Having all girls, this was a remarkable thing for them to not only witness but be a participant. Also, I think it provided them a different optic to how a husband can support a career and our respective home life. So, while I have done a great many things, and I was never a per se, house husband, they were allowed to see that we did not have a “traditional role” in our house, but there was plenty of support to anything related to education—and that goes an awful long ways.
Maybe the real question is, what are you doing (or what do you think other parents are doing) to help a lot more behind the scenes than others see?
When a kid in fifth grade tests into eighth grade math, smart kid - yes, but certainly mom and dad are training him or her behind the scenes. That doesn’t “just happen.”
I never helped my D. with writing, I do not have what it takes. Nope, her writing did not just happened, she just always liked to wirte, not so much to read though. Well she tested in 4th grade at 13th grade level in writing section. We did not even understand the grading since there is no such thing as 13th grade. But it was not a mistake for sure, continued to be a strong writer. I do not believe much in in-born talents I believe that practice develops the skill. But certainly not any of our input, I cannot even spell correctly most of the time. And again, Spanish, nobody in a family knows it, except for D. - easy class for her. She is also the only one to pursue medicine and the only one heavily into competitive sport (used to be). We took her to practices, for sure, but why she was invited to try out - because she moved so quickly thru the swim lessons.
We definiltely encouraged her to read…she was OK before HS, then just dropped it.
…not always it comes from the parents, some personal preferences are at place…