Parents of the HS Class of 2013 - 3.0 to 3.3 GPA

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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<p>I’m the mom of a 2012 B student but our thread hasn’t seen much action lately so I’m lurking here…hope you don’t mind :)</p>

<p>My S is a 3.0 (actually just under, and that’s with As in a couple of music classes). He also has the optimistic “it will all work out” attitude, and a penchant for not studying or doing homework but saving himself from failure with good test grades and all-night paper writing sessions the night before big projects are due.</p>

<p>I am struggling with him now, who just brought home a just-under-3.0 first semester report card, with a handful of more competitive colleges taking it into consideration for admissions/FA. I have nagged and yelled and grounded all semester and it’s not working. (Though he has some acceptances form some nice schools already, we don’t have FA info yet so who knows what will happen).</p>

<p>Trying a different tack now. He’d been grounded for school days, and was coming home and not doing homework. Yesterday we negotiated a trial run of “if no homework is missing (we can check online), then he can do as he likes between school and dinner”. We’ll see how it goes.</p>

<p>As for books, I recently read one recommended on another topic here called The Blessing of a B-. More general parenting than college specific, but about teens. A very good read.</p>

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<p>Ohiobassmom,</p>

<p>Thank you for pointing out that there are two 3.0 threads! I hadn’t noticed that, and have been posting on both I imagine. Not really a problem though, as we are parents dealing with a lot of the same issues. It does explain why I didn’t see my other friends here (like yourself.)</p>

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<p>I am subscribed to both, and report acceptances in that one. But this one has some cool discussions going on :)</p>

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<p>Yes, I’m in the wrong thread too. Hi Ohiobassmom! My son will also have disappointing mid-year grades, even though he knew that his first-choice college had deferred him pending those grades. </p>

<p>I have been taking a different approach with him, the “it’s your life” approach. This is after years of nagging, punishing/grounding, bribing, checking his homework, and trying to help him keep his binder organized. Okay, I still nag. But otherwise, I’m trying to turn over the responsibility for his life and his decisions to him. He’s almost 18 and HE is the one who has to live with the consequences of his choices, not me. I helped him with the college admissions process, but if he now chooses to neglect his responsibilities at school to the point where his acceptances get rescinded, or he can’t graduate, well, it’s his life and it will be his problem. Because I can’t come to college with him and make sure he goes to class and does his work and studies for exams. If he fails to do those things, the consequences are going to affect only him. </p>

<p>He’s been going to vision therapy for a while (we found out recently that he has no depth perception!) and last week he came home from it all grouchy and said he wanted to quit. I said, Fine, quit. He looked at me in shock. “You’re not going to make me go?” I said, no I’m not going to make you go; it’s your life and your eyes and your decision whether you are going to do the work to fix this problem. I think he then decided that he would continue to go (for whatever good it does when he won’t do the exercises at home). Anyway, this seems to be a big shift in his thinking. He’s used to the mindset in which he tells himself that he’s being made to do things he doesn’t want to do and subjected to irrational rules imposed by unreasonable parents.</p>

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<p>Hi simpkin!</p>

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<p>I’m trying to get there, I really am. I struggle with the knowledge that I won’t be there next year so should begin to let him have the natural consequences of his (non) action now, vs the feeling that I only have a few more months to make a difference in this arena.</p>

<p>If what i am doing IS making a difference, and I am not at all sure that it is.</p>

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<p>I don’t know that anything I’ve ever done has made much of a difference! He really needs to grow up. I’m encouraged because I think I’m beginning to see the faintest glimmerings of an understanding of cause-and-effect. He is generally very reasonable and agreeable at home (he agrees with whatever I say and then does whatever he was going to do anyway) so at least I’m not dealing with teenage attitude on top of everything else.</p>

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<p>We might have twins separated at birth :)</p>

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<p>simpkin - I’m trying to get to where you are. My kid certainly believes my life revolves around discovering ways to make him miserable. I work full time and have 2 other kids, so, no, making him miserable is not really my hobby. I look at some of the other “school” moms and wonder what he’d be like if I were really involved.
Hoping a year from now I can feel confident that we have raised him well and he is ready to face his future.</p>

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<p>The whole idea of just ‘letting go’ and let them lead their own life is one of the most hardest attitudes to adopt with respect to your children, especially when they are making bad choices with respect to school. I’ve done that for just a bit now, somewhat successfully, but I still occasionally ask if the homework got done. He used to lie to me about actually reading and studying, and lately he’s now more open about not doing it. I used to wonder why I asked, since we both knew he was reflexively lying.</p>

<p>But no, there is no improvement yet. I do know it will take a long time, but time is running out.</p>

<p>At the same time, I do know that this kid can run his own life and be successful at it, if he finds the field he likes. In so many ways he is hyper-responsible, but not with respect to, say, English literature. I know I could leave for a week, and he could do the shopping, make dinner, do laundry, etc. </p>

<p>So what to do when our society says English literature, or history, needs to be passed in order to become a professional that has nothing to do with English literature?</p>

<p>In so many ways, I think we have it upside down. The last years of high school and the first years of college should be about specific subjects that students are interested in, and only later should we add the literature surveys and the Western civ requirements, when they are more mature and have a bit more life under their belt.</p>

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<p>My Son for example has been told that we will not pay for any college that we do not approve (he wants to join a for profit school called Musicians Institute rather than stretch and get into say USC). Either he does not understand what it means when we say he has to live by his own actions and it is his life or he understands but does not feel it important to do anything about it.</p>

<p>Not sure which one it is.</p>

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<p>Aaaarrrrgh!!!
that is all.</p>

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<p>MI in LA? I recently met 3 grads, who recently joined a band a friend started awhile back. They ALL said they could have gotten the same education at their community college. Since they’re from PA but went to LA to pursue music, I wasn’t sure which CC they meant. But basically they have a ton of loans and don’t feel they learned much. YMMV.</p>

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<p>This may not work for all sons, but for mine, we worked a deal … I would pay $20 for A’s, nothing for B’s and he would pay me $20 for C’s. I started doing this a few quarters ago when he appeared to be distracted, so the first 6-7 weeks, I tallied up tests, key projects, and quizzes and he made $60. After that got him started, I only counted end of quarter grades, and now we only count full semester final grades. For him, money is motivating, and for me, it more than paid for itself by the merit aid he received, and it was cheaper than a tutor.</p>

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<p>^^ Snowflake, if only I had thought of that! Money talks.</p>

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<p>Things like that didn’t work for my kid because he doesn’t think long-term. He’s not going to study today if means he might get $20 two months from now. He’s kind of like a puppy – you have to reward or punish the moment you catch him doing something, or it is meaningless.</p>

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<p>I think that at this stage our students should take responsibility for their own actions I(or inactions), that we should let them deal with the natural consequences of what they do (or don’t do) and that if this means they don’t get into a good college or manage to keep up the academics if they do, then so be it. I say this all the time - but I am not at the point where I can put this into action. I keep thinking that if I can just get him there - follow up on his homework assignments, check in with teachers, etc., and get him to the point where he sees the cause and effect of doing the work and getting good grades an the satisfaction that comes with it, he’ll be motivated to do it on his own and will have some momentum to keep him going. I think I’m being a little naive about this, but I guess I need to feel like I’m doing everything I can, even though ultimately he’s the one who has to do the work (I am not doing his homework for him!).</p>

<p>Part of my frustration is that I just do not understand where he is coming from. He could get such a different (positive) result for really very little added work. His friends are generally very good students, so it’s not like he is surrounding himself with slackers. So at this point I am hanging in there and attempting to make a difference where I can. And reminding myself that there are some things that are out of my control.</p>

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<p>^^^
I’m right there with you. I get it that it needs to be turned over to them. But the trouble is that I also see a train wreck coming, and although he can’t see it, I know that a year from now, it’s not going to be pretty. And so I feel like I need to keep warning, but then when I do, it’s ignored, or in some ways makes things worse. </p>

<p>And yes, it would take soooo little to do better–since he literally is doing almost nothing, it would mean just an extra maybe hour and a half a night. He could still be doing his sports, still hang with friends, still surf the web and everyone would be happy. He’s been told this by teachers, advisors, counselors, therapists, grandparents, parents, friends, but he won’t budge. So it suggests to me that there’s more going on than just teenage angst, but even with a professional counselor, he just clams up and we were told that it wouldn’t be productive to continue.</p>

<p>So it’s going to be the train wreck that wakes him up. And it might come even sooner, because he’s in danger of academic probation this quarter. When I remind him of that, he says, angrily and emphatically ‘that’s not going to happen’, and when I remind him that he has said that about the danger of getting Cs, last semester, he just looks at me angrily and exasperatedly and walks away.</p>

<p>And I just hope the train wreck does wake him up. It would scare me if he continues to believe that he’s not the problem but the rest of the world.</p>

<p>He knows he’s screwing up, but he also knows that he has to change and right now he sees the change as very , very hard. So in order to do what he’s doing, I know he’s avoiding thinking about it and convincing himself my attitude is the problem, not his. I get it, and I want to be sympathetic, but it’s hard to watch.</p>

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<p>Yes, same with mine. It is very frustrating. And he does surround himself with slackers, so that doesn’t help!</p>

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<p>Back in 9th grade I set a specific consequence if he got less than a 3.0 each quarter.</p>

<p>His HS gpa now that he is a senior? 3.0. Actually just under.</p>

<p>I often wonder what would have happened if I’d set the consequence at 3.5. Or on missing work. Or if I had anything to do with it at all.</p>

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<p>I could not have said it better. The only difference is that my son rationalizes, “it really does not matter, as worse case I will teach music in a K-12 school” etc. What tears me up is that he is so bright. I can give him problems from my work and on more than occasions I have shared his insights with my team and they have said “wow, that is a good perspective”.</p>

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<p>Would not have worked in my case. I have tried everything stretch targets, realistic targets, no targets.</p>