How often do you check your child's grades?

Parents Forum
41

Sounded very much like my HS years…cept there was also a lot of heated fatherly lectures which boiled over into a near physical confrontation while I was 14 and barely 5’ whereas my father was much taller and outweighed me by over 100 pounds.

The resultant estrangement ended up becoming such that he never saw another report card after first semester sophomore year of HS nor my college grades until several years after college graduation.

The fact I somehow earned a near-full ride FA/scholarship package to a respectable private LAC and worked off what that package didn’t cover meant my parents couldn’t use the “I pay for your college so I demand to see your grade” argument on me. And it was moot anyways as real accountability I had was to the folks administering the scholarship portion of my package. GPA dropped below a certain point…bye bye scholarship. Fortunately, that never became an issue.

Plenty of HS classmates who were fellow “slackers”* also had extra chores foisted upon them. Guess what? Some of us ended up hating doing or even thinking about household chores so much we do our best to get them over with ASAP and find people who enjoy household chores** or even talking about them in casual conversation to be quite odd or sometimes even aggravating.

Some of those classmates went so far as to hate discussing the topic of household chores to such an extent they’ve actually broken up with SOs or if they were married…was one of the things factoring into their divorces…all because they felt the SOs/ex-spouse brought up the topic of household chores too much in casual conversation.

In short, parental imposition of extra chores as punishment could lead to the child growing up with an unhealthy and maladjusted way of looking at chores.

  • In actuality, the main factor for our mediocre or flagging HS grades was our hitting the academic wall due to the academically rigorous environment of our STEM-centered public magnet.

** Some of my older relatives and some friends actually took some joy from doing household chores. So much so that it sometimes does give me the creeps.

42

I look at grades every few weeks or so, especially with S to make sure nothing is getting overlooked. I remember one instance with D, where it was early in the semester, with a teacher who gave a low participation grade to start with - students had to earn higher - and there was a quiz everyone bombed. D briefly had an F in the class (turned to A by the end of the semester). I printed out the F and put it on the fridge as a joke. It became one of our recurring family inside jokes.

I was one of those kids who had a parent that punished me if I did so poorly as to have a B in phys ed (just not my strong suit). I’ve always tried to not put that kind of pressure on my kids, and they’ve responded by earning great grades and receiving significant scholarships to college (not Harvard, but strong schools that offer merit money to good students).

We believe that the majority of students will NOT achieve an A in every subject. That’s an awful lot of pressure to put on a kid. If they’re trying and doing their best, that’s enough for us. What’s important to us is not succeeding in everything, but finding those areas where success is most important and where they are most motivated.

43

I rarely check grades. We try to put more emphasis on effort, and less on grades with our kids. I can see that they are all working hard, and that is all I can ask.

I did get an update at conferences, and I do look at report cards. Also, they usually tell me if there are any issues.

44

I think I check like once a month or so? The grading system we use sends out a weekly email of missing assignments in their classes. I’m okay with them missing a few assignments if the grade is still fine.

45

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