<p>My son is a high school junior. He has slacked off pretty much all of high school. He is very bright. (His ACT score was 31.) His GPA is a little over 3.0 though.</p>
<p>After visiting some colleges, he finally decided that he would really try this quarter. His worst grade this year has been English, with a B minus for the first two quarters and a C plus for the third quarter. So far this quarter, he is averaging an A minus, because he is now trying. This teacher stated that she was going to cut him a break, and actually drop the C plus when calculating his final grade if he does well this quarter.</p>
<p>The teacher has given the kids an extra credit assignment due tomorrow. If he completes the assignment and gets the full amount of points, his grade for the quarter will go from an A minus to an A plus. This could be huge, considering it will get averaged in with his B minuses to get to the final grade. But he flat out refuses to do the assignment. (It's a one page paper.) He says that an A minus is good enough for him, I should be proud of him for working so hard and bringing his grade up so much, and that I'm obsessed with college because I have nothing else to do and should get off his back. </p>
<p>I am really angry. First of all, I work full time and have three other children....so it's not like he is my whole life's project. BUT...I have intervened this quarter and spoken to his teachers in an effort to work with them to help him boost his grades. This is the reason I know that this extra credit assignment exists. (He says I shouldn't have contacted any of them in the first place.) I have never spoken to teachers before, but felt pretty desperate when I saw how badly he was doing this year. Maybe I'm in the wrong for doing all of this. But I am so angry that he can't spend an hour writing a one page paper that could mean the a full letter grade difference for the quarter, and a half letter grade difference for the year.</p>
<p>I can only imagine what it will be like when it's time to write college essays. </p>
<p>So what do I do now? Do I have any right to be angry at all?</p>
<p>(BTW, he was doing poorly in several of his classes and has pulled them all up this quarter.)</p>
<p>You need to back off and quit hovering. Firstly, because your son is the only one who can motivate himself to try harder AND second, he HAS improved , because HE put his mind to it, not because YOU told him to! He finally realized that he would have to suffer the consequences of continuing to slack off if he didn’t make some quick changes in his priorities.
“He says I shouldn’t have contacted any of them in the first place.”
He’s right. By this grade he should be the only one communicating with his teachers about required/ supplemental course work.
So have trust in your smart kid, congratulate him on the huge improvement in grades, and let him alone.</p>
<p>Find a mantra that you can repeat to yourself when you feel your blood pressure rising-then, take 5 BIG, DEEP BREATHES and let them out sloooooooooooowly.</p>
<p>He’s not on drugs, not stealing, not drunk every weekend. Still respects
his parents and wants to do well. Thank your lucky stars and give your
kid a break — before he is on drugs etc.</p>
<p>I went through many similar scenarios with my S1. He would get in a hole and then dig himself out…but never, ever put forth additional effort to really get waay out of the hole. I don’t know if he was bored to tears in high school or if he was just rebellious and lazy. He refused to take the ACT again even though he needed only 1 more point to automatically qualify for $5000 more of financial aid. That was a major blow-out between us. I’ve finally determined that I was just wasting my energy, driving myself crazy and he was never, ever going to change. I am the exact opposite of my son. Everything he is I’m not. I was neglecting my other boys trying to change my oldest boy. So…as the kids would say I finally took a chill pill. Was able to put the ACT incident behind me by rationalizing that perhaps he would actually do WORSE and not BETTER because heaven forbid he do something twice. My S did his essay on what he disliked about high school and why he wanted to go to college…he wrote it in hmmmm maybe a half hour. My S1 found a college he loves, full of laid back kids, with laid back profs, in a laid back town and a major with very little busywork. My son is thriving with a good GPA. Better than in high school. My blood pressure has normalized and I can talk to him like a normal person and I’ve accepted him for who he is. I fear for the woman he marries. That said, according to everyone who knows him including his former teachers, employers and current profs: He’s intellectual, he’s an incredible writer, he’s socially adept, he’s compassionate, he’s thoughful (which explains why all his guy friends’ girlfriends were always crying on his shoulder.) and reliable and I have no advice how to change him. I have no advice how to make it work with you and yours. My S1 is a Ford with a 6 banger engine and not a Ferrari. He is not a “fire in the belly” kind of guy. He’s a B type personality. I’m an A type personality. I can only relate. He’ll go the distance but it will certainly be on the roads he wants to go on and most likely the path less travelled. Kinda reminds me of my husband of 25 years and I can laugh now…three years ago I would have been in tears.</p>
<p>To be honest, you’ve done all you can. Pour yourself a drink and try to think about something else. Your son is who he is; you want him to get into the college that HE deserves, not the college that you deserve. Even if you successfully bribe/threaten/guilt/control him into getting a higher grade in English, he won’t have learned a lesson and it won’t stick. You’ll just have to rinse, repeat during his senior year, and then worry his freshman year of college that he will flunk out. Better to let it go now (assuming he is fully aware of the consequences of a lower GPA) and just enjoy life with the kid. You have a smart slacker son. (I do, too). He’ll either mature out of it or he won’t. Battling over an A versus A- isn’t worth it, and the fighting will spill over onto your other kids.</p>
<p>I think you have a mom’s right to be annoyed with his decision not to do the extra-credit assignment for the half-grade boost, but it’s time to take yourself and your emotions out of the equation for his achievement or lack of it. You’ve done your part. </p>
<p>Acknowledge his hard work to bring his grades up and encourage him to keep it up, but do stop hovering and let him make his own decisions about how hard he’s going to work. What comes out on his h.s. transcript is his responsibility, not yours. I do understand your feeling p—sed off, though.</p>
<p>I sympathize completely. Its very hard when you have a bright kid who refuses to take advantage of opportunities that others would love to have. </p>
<p>My suggestion would be several-fold:</p>
<p>1) Don’t go to bat for him in the future unless he asks you to do it. You are setting yourself up for disappointment.</p>
<p>2) Figure out with him what his plans are after high school because college is expensive and it’s not worth paying a lot of tuition money for someone who doesn’t demonstrate, while in high school, the desire to take advantage of the educational opportunity. A few years of work may be what he wants and needs. Or he may not have made the connection between his effort and your willingness to pay for college.</p>
<p>3) Get ‘zen’ about it: It’s his life and his choices. You can’t make him want what you want for him. Anger isn’t constructive for your long-term relationship, which in the end, is the most important thing.</p>
<p>4) Get very clear, with yourself and him, what your policy is about providing support and his reciprocal obligations. Every family is different on this and there isn’t one right answer. But you can give or withhold your support as needed to communicate your values. (“I work hard to provide for you. You need to work hard so you will someday provide for you.” is a fair proposition.)</p>
<p>Sometimes, at this age, the kids with a lot of insight start resenting the games involved in doing well in high school, including things like extra credit assignments. </p>
<p>Also,if he feels like he is working for your goals, rather than his own, then he will change the goals so that he can feel some autonomy. Autonomy seems to be the most important thing to many at this age (I have had 3 go through this, and could not even help with my son’s laundry for fear of him losing his independence, an issue I did not dislike at all!)</p>
<p>First lets run the numbers, or, perhaps the letters in this case to see how much of a difference we are talking about. I assume the teacher would consider either an A- or an A+ this quarter as “doing well”. If he gets the A- averaged with two B- grades, that probably works out to a B for the final grade. An A+ averaged in would probably get him up to a B+. On the surface, that seems worth spending an hour or so to write a one page paper.</p>
<p>What seems to be going on here is a power struggle. He doesn’t want you running around to his teachers fighting his battles for him. That is not entirely unreasonable at this point in his life because he presumably will not have you there to do the same in a little over a year. You want him to leave no stone unturned trying to improve his grades. That is also reasonable because junior year grades are critical when applying to colleges. Unfortunately the way this played out, the way he wins the power struggle is by hurting his own grades.</p>
<p>The question is where to go from here. You can escalate by coming up with some dire consequences for not writing the paper, but then you take the risk of sabotaging all the progress he has made so far. Or you could back off and put the responsibility squarely in his lap. Not knowing your son, I am not going to suggest which way would work better in your case. Personally, I do my best work when someone tells me what the end product ought to be rather than when they attempt to micromanage every step toward that end product.</p>
<p>I have a son whose stats were very similar in high school. It took me a while to learn that my anger did nothing to increase his motivation, but it did a lot to increase my own blood pressure. He just got his grades back from college where he is happily working much harder than he ever did in high school. He managed a 3.5 this semester, putting him on the dean’s list for both semesters in his freshman year.</p>
<p>eden… This thread makes me just a little bit heartsick, because it reminds me of all the time and worry I spent nagging my son to do better, earlier, more… and all the little celebratory moments that he and I missed together because I was looking ahead to the next thing I’d have to nag him about. And the hurt in his eyes when he shared an outcome he’d worked so hard for, and was so proud of, and I focused on some imperfection instead of the wonderful things he’d done right. He and I have talked that through in depth and are fine together, and he knows I’m insanely proud of him – but I can never reclaim those moments. And neither can he.</p>
<p>Have you told your son how proud you are of the effort he’s made this year and the substantial results he’s achieved as a result? If so, maybe he needs to hear it again. If not, his reaction isn’t that surprising to me. I’ve had some run-ins a little bit like this with my son, and honestly I’m still trying to train myself to back off, take a deep breath, and trust him (and let him blow it if he chooses). </p>
<p>The summer between junior and senior years is a time of tremendous growth (at least it was for my son and many of his classmates). Your son is headed in the right direction and would have plenty of good college options with the stats you’ve described. As long as he stays generally on track, the future will sort itself out.</p>
<p>When it’s time to write the college essays, if your son is like mine (who for years has hated writing with a depth of passion normally reserved for tyranny and terrorism), there will be some essays that you think will never get done… and then in the last day or so, after you’ve thrown up your hands and left him alone, all of a sudden the words will flow. And it will get easier for him with time and practice. As he grows (and maybe gets a little cocky), he’ll probably blow an assignment here or there, but he’ll learn life lessons from those experiences that he’d never get from your lectures.</p>
<p>It’s so easy for parents to stress out and view every small misstep as a sign that our kids are limiting their options or setting themselves up for failure. We want their lives to be perfect… but there’s no such thing. There are soooo many roads to success in life, and your son is hardly on the rocky road to despair at this point in his life with a 31 ACT, a 3+ GPA, and an upward trend! Please don’t let your frustrations stand in the way of celebrating your son’s wonderful qualities and his work-ethic-in-progress. Like the old t-shirt says, God isn’t through with him yet!</p>
<p>At D’s high school, even though minuses and pluses show up on the transcript, for GPA purposes, and A is an A and a B is a B for calculation purposes. A+ doesn’t count for extra. I didn’t know, but D did. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t lose momentum for the college app season coming. Look like he’s getting his own act into gear because the thought of going to college appeals to him.</p>
<p>I have great sympathy for your situation! However, I see this as you and your son having two quite different perspectives on what is at stake. For you, it’s a matter of his not being willing to write a one-page paper that would get him an A+ and pull up his GPA. You are absolutely right to be dismayed at his unwillingness to do such a simple thing.</p>
<p>BUT, for him, it’s a matter of your controlling him and going behind his back to discuss him with his teachers, and not letting him make his own decisions. And he is also right.</p>
<p>The best thing is to let this ride, cool down, and approach things a different way. Discuss his college plans- discuss what a reach, a match, a safety school might look like with the stats he has. Maybe he will try a bit harder in the coming weeks and pull up his grades, make an impression on his teachers. He has already demonstrated a willingness to work harder. Support him on this path and otherwise back off.</p>
<p>I’m a little surprised at some of what you’ve been greeted with here. Sure, you have the absolute right to be disappointed and tell him so. Some of his present and future privileges should be based on his efforts. We always told out kids that they should rather here about any issues with their work ethic from us before future employers fire them.</p>
<p>This is a kid I’d have a deal in writing with before college application time. It would be based on what I’d be willing to contribute to his college education based on his level of motivation to do his best. In our house we all have jobs. DH and I go to work and the kids get their tuition and other support based on their willingness to work as hard at school as we do at work.</p>
<p>I picked up an interesting book just a few days ago. It is called: “The Motivation Breakthrough: 6 Secrets to Turning On the Tuned-Out Child.” The author is Richard Lavoie, an expert on children with learning disabilities. I have read only part of this book so far, but I have a lot of respect for the author, and think that what he has to say can apply to children – or teens or adults – without learning disabilities as well.</p>
<p>The first “Motivation Myth” listed by the author has to do with someone saying: "Nothing motivates that kid . . . " He points out that all human behavior is motivated. So when we say: “This kid is not motivated”, that is incorrect, because actually, he is not motivated to do that which we wish him to do.</p>
<p>In my opinion, it is important that older teens close to adulthood learn to discover their own motivations. Believe me, I am not saying that I have not had similar struggles with my own S. But, I would try to think about helping your son figure out what is important to him, and what motivates him (in a positive, encouraging way). I would not recommend punitive actions for his decision to not earn the extra credit. And in fact, I would consider saying something like: “Maybe I did step over the line by speaking to your teachers without letting you know that I was contacting them. I was trying to help, and I noticed that you have been working harder at school. But I realize that you’re a junior now, and I should have consulted you before doing that.”</p>
<p>I would also try to refocus on learning for learning’s sake – which hopefully is the ultimate goal, rather than just worrying about grades. Just one person’s opinion!</p>
<p>How about this? It is perfectly fine to be frustrated and angry. It is a natural human emotion. But, anger is a feeling and not an action. So, it’s not even about him and you certainly don’t need to tell him. I recommend going for five mile run. Failing that, chunky monkey or cherry garcia. ;)</p>
<p>You are micro-managing at this point. you shouldn’t be involved with every single assignment grade your son receives. You’ve already gotten your general point across about him improving his grades and he has. I agree with geek_mom. Apologize to your son and congratulate him on his new improved grades. Tell him that based on his new efforts you trust him to decide when he must take on extra credit and to manage his own work. Step back and let him find his own motivation now and enjoy the rest of the time you have with your son at home.</p>
<p>I have a son who is grown and out of the house but to this day he can push my buttons in exactly the same way. He was very much like your son in HS, and all my attempts to help him only ended up making him feel inadequate. It really doesn’t matter whether your son has an A or B in English, but it DOES matter that he feels that you believe in him. Trying to control his behavior will always backfire.</p>
<p>Someone suggested taking deep breaths. It helps. Just take yourself out of the situation, try to separate your emotions from what is happening – go for a run, whatever. Spare him your righteous anger, all it does is poison the atmosphere and deprive him of his own motivation.</p>