Parents of 15 year old boys, I need advice...

Parents Forum
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<p>Ok, I parented two daughters through h.s. and off to college. They both did well and we survived the emotional upheavels and bumps along the way....now child 3, a male is driving me crazy. He is a wonderful kid, great personality, very smart on paper, hates school, lazy and unmotivated. next to Bart Simpson he is an under achiever. last year mediocre grades, zero school activities. This year after the "come to jesus speech", lowering his classes from the hardest level to the next level....we were hoping for some high scores...but no we are off to the same level...it seems no matter the level of class, he seeks this level on grades....he is not "good" at any sport, but socially does well with the guys....and sometimes the girls....but NO school activities yet.</p>

<p>I am looking for some parents experienced with boys like this....motivating factors, methods used, how to instill some self discipline and motivation....to get him out of this rut. His dad was a perfect student so thinks he just needs to figure it out....the problem is, he has no desire to figure it out.</p>

<p>HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLP.</p>

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<p>I have a son like yours (now 22 and starting graduate school). They do grow up. It just takes a while.</p>

<p>My son thought all school-based activities were Mickey Mouse nonsense. But a job was "real," and he had plenty of use for the money he earned. (Computer nerds always need newer equipment and software.)</p>

<p>He got a part-time job shelving books at a public library at 14 and then a better-paying job in a party supply store at 16. For him, this was more meaningful than school-based extracurricular activities. </p>

<p>Would paid employment appeal to your son more than extracurricular activities do?</p>

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<p>My son is in many ways similar to yours, except that he likes school. He just doesn't like the work and is uninterested in any school activities except for one sport. He's also very smart on paper but a stunning -- and happy -- underachiever. I like to say he has a very Zen approach to grades: an F is just another letter in the alphabet, not any different really from an A...</p>

<p>This drove me and his dad crazy. So instead of sending him to our neighborhood high school (a popular and well-regarded but huge school) I enrolled my son in a small, very focused, discipline-oriented charter school. There, someone's on him ALL THE TIME and is in constant communication with me. Between the school and his parents constantly overseeing his work, my son is finally on track in terms of his assignments. </p>

<p>I've also put into place several motivational measures: some are more successful than others. For example, he needs to have all As and Bs in order to have a cell phone. The result? He's probably the only 15year old in the country without a cell phone. That bugs him, but he knows perfectly well it's his own fault, and I know he's trying hard this fall to get the required grades on the next upcoming progress report. </p>

<p>In terms of school activities, we told him that after his fall sport season is over, he needs to join a school club/organization of his choice OR we won't take him to practice driving -- which in turn will delay him getting his license when he turns 16 next spring. Also, we told him he needs to pick another school club/organization in order to quit the piano/music lessons of which he's grown tired. So it's piano - or another activity; take your pick. The result: he's actively exploring his options because he wants to drive and is sick of piano. </p>

<p>Finally, I asked my older D, who is 20, to start including my son in some group activities with her friends when she's home from college. This year, I will send DS for a long weekend with her at her school in Boston. My hope is that he is exposed to interesting kids who do interesting stuff... and to the reality that in order to get into a 'fun' school, he needs to get serious about grades and ECs. </p>

<p>I also have a back up plan if my son continues to underperform this year (he's a high school sophomore.) I may send him on a semester or year abroad program in his junior year, then have him repeat the junior year at his home school. This will buy him a year to grow up a bit... since I do think a lot of his behavior is due to the fact he's less mature than most kids his age. </p>

<p>So... no real help in this email... just a message to reassure you that you are not alone.</p>

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<p>You are not alone.</p>

<p>Boys are different.</p>

<p>"The perfect student" boy does exist, but he is unusual and probably a first or an only child - don't know about families from Asian backgrounds with Asian cultures, they seem to know something about motivating boys that we don't, ;).</p>

<p>The majority do grow out of it, but some only when they are older - 22ish. "Real" things are more important than school.</p>

<p>You gotta love them.</p>

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<p>I have often suggested that you make sure you have no underlying learning disability. Bright kids can mask the problems they have. S2 had significant difficulty in processing and clerical functions. I mean a testing result at 25-30 percentile when all his other testing results were at the 90-99 percentile.<br>
He also had a disgraphia that had him reverse what he wrote down. This disparity hit him hard in organizing and writing down anything from class. Some tutoring and learning techniques to compensate helped him get through HS and then graduate with honors from a well regarded university.</p>

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<p>Op- it is unrealistic to expect your son to wake up one day and care about grades. Not going to happen.</p>

<p>We found that letting the interests lead the way was the way to go. Spend a day at a big museum (Met in NY, Air and Space in DC; don't know where you live or would suggest others) and then stop in the bookstore on the way out. Let him pick out one book on something he loved. Take him to the library (wait in the car while he's inside) and tell him to get a bunch more.</p>

<p>Have the TV mysteriously broken that weekend (or the cable modem on the fritz) and voila, kid is now interested in something.</p>

<p>Or take him to a ball game (minor league works fine if that's what you've got) and start a discussion about the Negro League or Honus Wagner or Cooperstown and then repeat the library business. Or just listen to him- he may have some interests or passions that don't translate into school activities (what the heck is key club anyway) but that are the basis for something that he really cares about.</p>

<p>For most boys that age, there's nothing they won't do for something they're passionate about (fixing cars, fixing computers, ultimate frisbee) and there are few ways to motivate them to care about something they think is BS. Once you get a handle on what he loves you can start building off of that. Does he love politics? Surely there's a history teacher at school he likes????</p>

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<p>I have two daughters and one son. I cannot think of a girl I know or know of who is not deeply involved in at least one EC-most are involved in too many things. However, I can think of a pretty long list of my son's friends and my friends' sons who are involved in NOTHING and others who had an EC but dropped it by junior year. Some of these guys have fantastic grades, class ranks and test scores. Besides lack of activities, they have all the personality of a rock when they talk to an adult. I am so curious as to where they will all end up!</p>

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<p>Stray thought. Make sure you are NEVER comparing him to the the 2 DD's. More boys I know who have followed older sisters rebel against being compared to "little miss perfect" :) They will do anything include fail to show they are different.</p>

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<p>My son is the oldest and he actually has ECs. It's a short list by CC standards but a very long list compared to so many other boys who do nothing.</p>

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<p>Yes that was a good point and I do try to avoid it but their names are on the walls for achievements at the school, so even if I dont' mention he walks by it every day....</p>

<p>Today, I gave him my valedictorian speech (called that by my eldest) about he determines his future, not his mom and not his dad or his sisters......but anything worth having requires hard work....unfazed. His response--big news he should make better grades. I did tell him if we see him work hard and do his best that is one thing but completing hw in record time (45 min) to head out for bball on courts for 3 hours, 20min dinner and 3 hours of t.v. video facebook....isnt' working hard its hardly working. </p>

<p>Overall he is a great kid but he scored among the lowest for motivation in 1st grade when tested for the gifted program. He got in on his other scores but at this rate he will be the smartest fry chef at McDonalds....</p>

<p>I appreciate your responses.</p>

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<p>I have two sons who are similar to yours. One is 24, always hated school, though was very bright, tested high, insisted on taking the hardest classes (an ego thing for him), but didn't bother to do homework, so got Ds in classes he could have aced.</p>

<p>Other, the younger S, was bright, loved school, just didn't believe in doing schoolwork.</p>

<p>Older S dropped out of soccer, his only school EC, after soph year because the coach wouldn't play him much. H and I told S he had to pick some school EC or else we'd force him to be in the wrestling team. (S is a big guy, but didn't like pain). S managed to fill up his time with a writing job, so we let him off the hook for school ECs.</p>

<p>Younger S was a shy perfectionist who -- if given forever to decide what ECs to do -- would have taken forever to make up his mind. So, since he couldn't figure out what to do in a reasonable amount of time, I put him in the school's competitive math team (S had a lot of natural gifts in math) and in a science program (S also was strong in science), and also a community-wide volunteer group (S loves volunteering). </p>

<p>S is not competitive, and math doesn't inspire him, so after a year, he got off the math team. He also dropped out of the science program because it was too easy for him. The community service ended up being his main EC, and it helped him blossom. He got a couple of wonderful adult mentors in it, and he eventually became president of the organization, and was named county youth volunteer of the year because of some major projects he had helped organize.</p>

<p>He ended up doing a gap year after h.s. when he somehow didn't get around to applying to college even though he said he wanted to. He lived at home and volunteered with Americorps. This gave him lots of time to mature, and he's now a soph in college.</p>

<p>When I visited for Family Weekend last year, one of his friends said S is the guy whom everyone knows. In addition to doing well in his coursework, S is involved in a community service activity, a martial arts club, a photography club, a dance club, and also has volunteered in the local community. So, given time, these boys can blossom.</p>

<p>Still waiting for older S to completely blossom. The lesson that I learned with him is if your kid is disorganized and says they want to go to college, do not do all of the work of organizing them. If they are motivated for college and mature enough to go, they will get their applications in. I organized S so he got into college, but there, he didn't bother going to class, and flunked out. At 24, he's working a low level office job while writing the great American novel. </p>

<p>I'm hoping he'll follow the footsteps of some of my male friends, including one who is an award-winning writer, who after dropping out of college and bumming around for a while, went back to school and even got their doctorates and became college professors. Knowing adult guys like that gives me hope that S will eventually get on a more organized path.</p>

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<p>I only have one 15 year old son, but I deal with a LOT of them. Most are not like girls when it comes to school, and that's probably alright (after all, I still think it's a man's world, so they must be alright!). My son, and many of his friends, are into sports, and into socializing, so perhaps they are different from yours, but I don't know any that are into excelling scholastically. My son has also been through a serious video game period ( which seems to be dying down in favor of a serious music period...just rap and pop, but still better then video games in my book). How does YOUR son spend his time? I can't say I know how to motivate him, but he has a teacher who turned a much despised journalism elective into a serious commitment, and he is now the graphics editor of the yearbook! Maybe a teacher can help.</p>

<p>Ditto that issue about comparing. My brother got compared to me and my sis, and while it still motivates him ( a video/documentary of his was recently nominated for a grammy) , he has "issues" . We never compare my son, but he compares himself. While he does sports things that we can't dream of, he comments about how he will never measure up academically.</p>

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<p>Atlmom- has he ever actually had a job at McDonalds? My kid was too lazy to apply for the cool internships his GC thought he should try for, was too disinterested to write the one page essay required by a local organization for a great summer job, and couldn't even get his act together enough to do a one page resume.</p>

<p>He spent that summer on the night clean up shift at a fast food place- was the only job he could get by the time he got himself moving. After a week he had a fire lit under him, was ready to start thinking about college, was emailing his GC to revise his class picks for Fall semester. Something to think about. My son was surrounded by people for whom this was their only option- didn't speak English well enough for a job working with the public; no HS diploma, no computer skills, etc. It was a chilling wake up call.</p>

<p>I think that worked better than my speechifying. My kids aren't interested in what they call "Ben Franklin Moments", i.e early to bed, early bird catches the worm, 98% of life is just showing up. But make them head off to work wearing an atrocious uniform and goofy cap so they can come home smelling like a fryolater- that seems to have meant something. He was not one of those kids curing cancer during his HS years, but we explained that living under our roof meant doing something productive with your free time- volunteer work (you pick the cause or we'll pick it for you....), paid labor of any kind, etc. </p>

<p>The biggest goofball in our neighborhood bagged groceries every afternoon after school throughout HS. He was a brilliant, disorganized kid who thought homework was a waste of time. He's now self-supporting less than a year out of college with a degree in engineering from a top school. A job that you hate can be a better motivator than one that you love- especially since his parents told him that since they would charge him for the high speed cable connection (his "lifeline") and ask him to cover his share of the family cell plan, a job was his only option. Worked better than 12 EC's.</p>

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<p>Yes, getting a real job -- not a comfy internship lined up by parents -- can open their eyes to why they need a college degree, and how to succeed in the work world, one has to be organized.</p>

<p>When younger S did his year with Americorps, his organizational skills developed a great deal because his boss wouldn't let him leave until he had completed his monthly report -- even if that took all night. S learned that it's not just in school that procrastination causes problems.</p>

<p>He also developed a deep appreciation for the opportunities that college offers that one doesn't get much time to do when one is working fulltime. That's a big reason why in college, he dove into activities -- clubs, free lectures, movies, etc. -- that many other students were ignoring. </p>

<p>Slowly, slowly older S is learning via his very low level office job that even if you excel on a job, it's next to impossible to get promoted to the type of job you're capable of doing if you don't have a college degree. He is reminding me of one of my former college students, a guy who returned to college at 30 after seeing all of his college-educated friends making far more money than he was even though he felt he was smarter. I just hope it doesn't take S that long to be able to act on his perception about how life works.</p>

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<p>I don't doubt that what people say in this thread is true of boys in general, but it's not universally true of boys at all. My boy -- my younger child -- was, at least by high school, more academically achieving in a conventional sense and much more involved in ECs than his older sister. That wasn't necessarily a sign of maturity, by the way. She was much more focused, and much more inner-directed. He was constantly trying to please others and to live up to some external standard of what he ought to do to show he was smart and to get into a good college.</p>

<p>His male friends were pretty similar. They tended not to spread themselves as thin as the equivalent girls (and he) did, but they often had deep ECs -- mastering multiple instruments, self-studying Sanskrit, serious athletics, computers (of course), building stuff. Among the friends of both kids, I can only think of a couple boys who seemed like the OP's son, but there were a couple girls like that, too. I really think it's dangerous to say "boys are like that".</p>

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<p>^ True. I was saying most that I deal with ( a selected group for the most part), are like "that" ( not as academically ambitious as same age girls).</p>

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<p>My S is also a bit of an underachiever, at least compared to what he "could" be doing. In middle school, we sent him to a small private school where boys thought it was very cool to excel. He was an all A student & very well thought of by peers & teachers. However, he really hated it. We decided that his happiness was important, so he is attending a public high school. He is taking challenging classes & doing well (although he has had a couple almost-As-but-ended-upBs that were not necessary - he "forgot" to study for a few tests here & there) - not a big deal, but keeps him from being one of the "top students." He thinks all ECs are lame. He plays in bands, writes music, records, etc. This is his passion. His school has a good computer department, so he is taking some computer classes that he really likes (in addition to honors & AP classes). He is a good kid who is doing very well ... but he will not distinguish himself in any way. This may be an issue when he applies to colleges, since he wants to attend a school OOS. In the end, though, I know for certain that he will be able to go to a good school & he will do well in life. He is well balanced and happy. That has to count for something.</p>

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<p>I think we all agree that stereo typing is not a good thing...although there are plenty of studies on how boys think and girls....although my middle D was more male than female in her brain functions. I appreciate hearing all of your experiences and advice and I do have some ideas:</p>

<ol>
<li> Give him a deadline to join EC min 2 or to get a job.</li>
<li> print out a college application so he can see what one looks like NOW instead of two years from now.</li>
<li> Give him the state scholarship program (hope scholarship) calculation sheet so HE can keep track of it.</li>
<li> Increase his music time to decrease the video time.</li>
<li> Increase his golf time as a leisure activity that is life long, since bball is fizzled out.</li>
<li> Have him talk to guidance counselor one on one on opportunities for him at school.</li>
<li> Line up a family activity for community service (or for him and his friends)</li>
</ol>

<p>what do you think about these and about using the impending drivers license as a motivating factor?</p>

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<p>I wonder if the "hates school" part is a lot of the problem. If a kid isn't happy at school then the last thing he would want to do is hang around school for EC's. Plus, if you hate school why would you want many more years of it?</p>

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<p>bump bump bump</p>