<p>Texasmama,
What you are describing is very typical behavior for boys of all races. The parents I know of all races who are involved educationally with their kids typically have had daughters who got great grades, and sons who despite being very bright acted like your S (and my sons). This includes parents who were college professors like my H and like I used to be.</p>
<p>I tried everything to motivate my sons: paid big bucks to have a professional give them help organizing; had them evaluated for ADD/ADHD (I'm ADHD, and one S is ADD, the other is ADHD, but they both also are smart enough to be able to get good grades like I did), scheduled conferences with their teachers, created elaborate reward/punishment systems based on their doing homework, etc. </p>
<p>Both sons had SAT scores 98th-99th percentile, but both graduated from h.s. with unweighted averages of below 3.0, and with some "D" semester grades. </p>
<p>Both sons claimed to want to go to college, and I stood over older S to make sure he got apps into colleges that he was interested in. He went to college on a virtually full ride, and flunked out because of not bothering to go to class. He's 24, and hasn't returned to college. He does, however, support himself.</p>
<p>I learned my lesson with that S. With my younger S, while I made sure he visited colleges and knew how to apply to colleges, I let him organize himself when it came to applying. He missed all of the deadlines with the colleges that interested him. After that, however, he got an Americorps job created for him (He loved volunteering) and spent the next year living at home (and paying rent) and volunteering for Americorps. </p>
<p>His senior year in h.s., he almost didn't graduate because he had such a backlog of homework that he hadn't handed in. Days before grades were due, he was working night and day writing things like lab reports while other seniors were having fun. </p>
<p>After going through something similar with older S, we had told younger S that if he deep sixed senior year, we wouldn't pay for his first year of college, and wouldn't pay anything toward his college education until he proved to us by getting decent grades for a year -- that he was worth our investment. </p>
<p>So, during his gap year, S applied to 2 colleges (and he also had to pay for those applications), chose the most expensive one of the 2 to go to, and took out loans to help pay for it. He also got some merit aid (His excellent scores, rigorous curriculum and Americorps experience helped). He is now a soph after being on dean's list both semesters of freshmen year, a year in which he worked parttime and was involved in several interesting campus ECs, including as a leader.</p>
<p>As for whether you should force your S to get involved in ECs, I vote "yes." Our house rule was that our kids had to be involved in at least one EC -- either in school or outside of school. If they didn't chose an EC, we'd choose one for them, one that they could drop if they decided to participate in another EC. We did this because we think that everyone should have a hobby, and because one can learn a lot about oneself and the world by doing ECs.</p>
<p>Older S's EC was volunteering with a community paper. For the first 2 years of h.s., I basically picked S's ECs because he could never make up his mind. He ended up sticking with -- and loving -- a community-service oriented EC. By senior year, he was the organization's president, and that year he also won a countywide award for his community service.</p>
<p>Now in college, he picks his own ECs, and, interestingly, they include his diving into some ECs that he had initially tried out in el, h.s. and middle school, but had given up because of his shyness and perfectionism.</p>