<p>I am a parent new to this forum. I am puzzled with some issues, looking for ideas, appreciate if any one can help.
My daughter is at grade 9. She is intelligent, always top 5% of her class, got into top 26% of John Hopkins CTY, won gold medal of science Olympiad.
The issue is: she does not study or work hard enough, that will lead het to good college. In school, she is in 5 Hons. Classes, often she does not do homework or forgets to submit the homework. Her grades are dropping. Also, I feel at higher classes, she should be studying more & more, but most time she spends on internet, chatting with friends in FB/Tumblr etc.
Do you have idea, what I can do to motivate her to study her own rather than we parent pushing her to study?
Thanks in advance,</p>
<p>Your intentions are unclear. Do you want her grades to improve or just for her to spend more time studying?</p>
<p>Take it easy on her. If you take things away for every single mistake she does, she will just start to hate it more and more (first hand experience). You have to sit down with her and talk. Tell her that it is fine that she does whatever she wants to on the side, but as long as she finishes her work. Try to be her friend in this. Don’t impose. Shouting at her and forcing her will probably get her to study, but she’ll eventually start hating studying that way, and probably not want to go to college, in an extreme case. Encourage her spending time with her friends on Facebook and Tumblr, etc., but tell her that her homework would probably take her not long at all, and she will be able to finish it in no time, and if she does that, there will be no reason for you to nag her to do anything. This way, she might realize that she can just get over her work and then do whatever she wants afterwards, and start doing her work more diligently. Even if this doesn’t work, it’s worth a shot, right?</p>
<p>Do not try to be her friend. You are her parent. That being said, studying for studying’s sake is not good. Lay out clear expectations (not study for X hours each night but get HW done, study for tests, etc). I tend to think that students who enjoy school do better.</p>
<p>We just had a “rule” that the kids had to finish their homework either when they got home (in non-sports season) or immediately after dinner (we always ate dinner together at 6:30). If they wanted to do something like visit friends, play video games, lay around texting or chatting it had to be done AFTER the homework and studying. The amount of time needed will vary from day and day and semester to semester depending on class workload but it rarely exceeded 2-3 hours…and those exceptions where more time was needed generally happened when they had a very large paper due, or project or it was exam time. I do recall a few days where it was all afternoon and late into the evening but those were rarities.</p>
<p>If she’s not doing homework or forgetting to turn it in, I think it is fair to expect the kiddo to put the time in that it takes and establishing a time, like after dinner or right after school is reasonable and gets them into a habit they will need in college of setting aside a specific time and place to study. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter how “smart” a kid is, to be successful they do need to self-regulate and make good decisions about educational requirements without a parent standing over them. They don’t need to be chained to a desk, but they absolutely need to do the bare minimum, which in my opinion is homework and turning it in. After that it’s all them and the type of grades they are going to be happy with. You can’t “motivate” her to study. You can only make it clear that she is to set aside time each day to study and finish homework and I would suggest asking her to pick a place where it is distraction free. If she needs to turn over her phone to you and shut her bedroom door, than so be it. These are good habits to acquire, but they need to be HER habits. She’s absolutely the right age to learn this behavior also. It’s too late when they are juniors or even seniors, by that time they have bad habits like trying to do homework at midnight.</p>
<p>Is it possible that your daughter has ADHD (inattentive)? Some very bright students begin to develop problems once in high school when the work becomes more demanding in terms of organization and time management. Procrastination and failure to hand in work done can be symptomatic of ADHD, but can also be just normal teenage behavior. Hormones and various new social distractions can alter habits at that age. Still, you might want to read a little about ADHD and see if it fits. I would say, no matter what, not to judge your child or be harsh, but be supportive and clear. Ninth grade is still young but keep in mind that she should be transitioning to independent functioning over the next 4 years so coaching without controlling seems like a good approach now.</p>
<p>There is too little information to guess at causes. For example, you mentioned that she won a gold medal at science olympiad, so it sounds like she does put forth a lot of effort and do exceeding well in certain circumstances, but not others. When I was in HS, I had similar inconsistent performance. I rarely studied unless I found that material interesting and sometimes did not do assignments or did them in a way that my teachers found irritating. One of my math teachers recognized my inconsistency as boredom with the class pace and suggested that I might do better by independently reading textbooks out of the classroom at my own pace, rather than being forced to attend classes and do problem sets that I found mind numbingly dull. This worked quite well for me. I received perfect scores on all standardized tests related to the math material I had covered independently. By the time I was an upperclassmen in HS, I was taking math classes at a university beyond what was available at my HS and receiving top grades. </p>
<p>However, this probably doesn’t describe your daughter. Instead she might also have a related medical issue. Or a psychological issue. Or a social one. Or she might have switched focus from academics to a new boyfriend. Or she might be overwhelmed in her classes. Or she might be a perfectly normal teen and you are overreacting. Or countless other explanations. There isn’t enough information.</p>
<p>The daughter is distracted by the internet, Facebook, and her phone, according to the OP. Easy solution: move her study area to a place where Mom and Dad can keep on eye on how her time is spent. Introduce a new rule: social media time must be earned after study time. If she wants to study in her own room, she must first show grade improvement.</p>
<p>A parent would (hopefully) not allow a child to have the TV on during homework time. Well, phones, internet and Facebook are much more distracting. </p>
<p>Be the parent, not the friend.</p>
<p>Since she is in 9th grade, college is probably not on her radar, nor should it be. And she does not have to go to a top college if she has different priorities. The problem at this age is that they do often lose sight of the priorities that later become very important to them. You may have to serve as her temporal lobe (I saw this joke once) during this part of adolescence. But I would not emphasize college admissions. Let her focus on enjoying high school, following interests and, yes, social development is important too. Emphasize good habits, values and character w/out making work about college, which is abstract and in the future.</p>
<p>Noone can tell you exactly how to get her to do more work and less socializing. I think it depends on family culture. I did more discussion and reasoning with my kids, than rule-setting. But we didn’t have much tv watching and got our first computer when our oldest was 14: it was in the kitchen! Noone had a laptop or Smartphone. No problems at all in that area until the later high school years of my youngest (who does actually have ADHD, but I swear she cannot get anything done unless multi-tasking, and Facebook has helped her writing skills tremendously!)</p>
<p>First, do not attempt to decide which colleges are “good” colleges. Do not focus her/your life on getting into a top college. Allow her to be a child and explore life at her stage in it. </p>
<p>My son is also gifted, he started school before his 5th birthday and compressed an elementary grade (did 4th grade work in a 3-4 grade class, went to 5th from 3rd). His grades went down his sophomore year of HS. He took top classes and did WCATY summer programs (WI version of gifted programs, went through Midwest Talent Search). He would come back from the 3 week summer camp expressing how stupid we parents were (who gave him the genes and environment???). Our son didn’t do all of the work, especially senior year. </p>
<p>He never told us how bored he was until years later. He shares his Indian father’s traits in that he was not the “squeaky wheel” that made a fuss. From your sentence structure I guess you are an immigrant to the US and your D likely shares some common attributes of Asians. If not, the same advice still applies.</p>
<p>You need to find out what your D really thinks about her classes. Not what she is supposed to think, not what a good daughter would say. She needs to find a way to be challenged during the school year. Perhaps a discussion with you and her guidance counselor (GC) would be helpful, assuming she can say what she really feels to that person. We found the school GC’s- middle school onwards- were delighted to have students who needed academic enrichment instead of their usual in trouble kids. The middle school GC maneuvered son’s class schedule to give him the best experiences as she knew the faculty. In HS it was easier as he was in the top classes. These, however, still weren’t intellectually challenging enough to keep him engaged all four years.</p>
<p>Giftedness and ADHD can have some of the same traits and some people can be both gifted and have ADD with or without the hyperactivity. Son was tested in first grade by a PhD school psychologist for this (after having been tested for early entry to kindergarten). I also learned a lot through parent gifted and talented committee meetings run by our district at the time. Son was just bored, and therefore not giving his full attention to the teacher/class.</p>
<p>Your D needs to know it is okay to feel bored with the pace of a regular HS, even Honors/AP classes. She then needs coping strategies to get through them. The GC should be involved. Your D may need access to extras she can enrich her experiences with- academic things to do with her time that interest her.</p>
<p>She also needs normal teen activities, including social networking. She is still a kid, no matter how smart, and may not know she is being bored. She may be the nonrebellious student outwardly but she may be tired of being good all of these years without a change in the intellectual lack of stimulation.</p>
<p>Allowing her to admit she is bored can be the key to having her get the required work done. There needs to be some reward, other than A’s, for her. The GC can be useful in this. Being gifted makes a student a “special needs” child. She NEEDS more intellectual stimulation. This may mean the GC talks to each of her teachers and they come up with some additional resources for her. </p>
<p>The approach is not the need to get into a “good” college but to motivate her to have the credentials to get into any college of her choice. btw- given the oversupply of top students compared to the limited number of spaces in each elite college that doesn’t mean she will get into the college she wants later.</p>
<p>Hope all of this gives you some ideas. I’ve lived through the experiences of a having a smart kid who could have done better. But- on the plus side, he was active in a large competitive cross country team, music and academic clubs of his choosing so he had a full childhood experience. Being gifted meant it was hard to get a good fit- we couldn’t hold him back academically and that meant not being with agemates. </p>
<p>The point of this long post is for you to think outside the box. Consider out of the ordinary solutions, not just study hard and do the work.</p>
<p>Lots of good advice already. </p>
<p>Could it be school has been easy for your daughter up until now and so she hasn’t had to study? Now it is a little tougher and/or the requirements are different—maybe more difficult to juggle so many activities----and she is struggling. She might have ADD, or she might just not know how to get herself organized. I’d start with assuming she just needs help managing her time and talk to her about that. I had one son like that. He didn’t have a good sense of time and of how much time it took to complete a given task. I made him list his homework right when he got home and then tell me how much time it would take him. Over a period of weeks he figured it out. </p>
<p>And she is a teenager now. I agree about being the parent and being ready to lay down the law about putting away phones and computers and doing homework and going to bed. Plenty of parents, me included, ban phone use after a certain hour on school nights. </p>
<p>But I really like the advice to let her learn how to self regulate. These are the years when our kids learn to be in charge of themselves. Sometimes you will have to lay down the law and take the phone away, but sometimes you can let her screw up. Let her go to class tired a time or two. </p>