<p>Consider the possibility that right now she is trying, that right now she is doing the best that she can do, given her illness. </p>
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<p>Spending an hour a day on school may not be something “simple” for her, in fact it could be impossible when she is depressed:</p>
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<p>Continued recovery, continued healing can help her try harder over time. These are more important right now than working on getting into a preferred college. </p>
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<p>It is frustrating to think that if only she could try harder she could get better grades and then a better college. But what if she is right now doing the very best that she can? Maybe frustration could melt into a deeper gratitude for what she is accomplishing in spite of her illness, and a deeper desire to simply accept and be with her where she is.</p>
<p>staceyneil, you might try to private message the original poster to see what happened (odds are that she is not following this thread any more). Just click on her name, and you get an option to send a private message (assuming you have enough posts to be allowed to do so).</p>
<p>ADad, thank you for the thoughtful response. In fact, after I wrote that last night, I spoke with D about all this and I do believe that she is doing everything she can right now. It’s been confusing since it has seemed, in the last few weeks, that she’s really quite happy and energetic now that she’s getting significant therapy and medication. But in talking to her I found out that the cheerfulness and positive attitude we’re seeing is due to an immense effort on her part. She decided she is going to get better and she’s spending all her time & energy staying positive and keeping sad/bad thoughts away.She says she doesn’t have any resources -yet- to shift to the next daunting task: grades. She also said she’d welcome help from the school resources in prioritizing assignments, learning better study skills, and things like that… things she vehemently refused any help with just a few months ago. So I can see that she really is making a huge and valiant effort, and I don’t feel so frustrated any more!!!</p>
<p>gouf78, I wasn’t sure what you were asking. Yes, she is now getting therapy and has started medication, and things are vastly improved. (She had refused both previously.) It seems like she needed to hit bottom to realize she wanted to get better. She’s now trying very hard and making a huge improvement in her life.</p>
<p>intparent, thanks… I did try -twice- to send a private message, but both times when I clicked send the message just seemed to disappear. No record of it in “sent messages” or anything. Not sure what I am doing wrong!</p>
<p>Staceynell, your daughter is nowhere near bottom. I’ve seen bottom. Also relapse is a major part of the process in depression and most other chronic ailments, particular those involving mental and emotitonal health. </p>
<p>I’m not sure looking at whole lot of selective, expensive colleges as carrots was a good idea. With her grades and high financial need, admissions to any such school is truly a reach, a lottery ticket, and with her health situation, it is probably just as well.</p>
<p>Hi all. I just thought I’d post an update in case any other parents or kids are going through a similar experience and need a ray of hope:)</p>
<p>Things are vastly improved. Therapy and medication have helped a lot, but the biggest factor has been my daughter’s change in her willingness to accept she needed help, needed change, and work on getting better. Perhaps therapy and medication precipitated that change in attitude, or perhaps it was willpower, we don’t know.</p>
<p>Things are not perfect. She was dx with ADD-inattentive type, which helps explain a lot of her struggles. She won a scholarship to a 3-week Outward Bound program which she says changed her life. School has started and she’s planning on getting all her college applications in by late November… she’s applying mostly to reach schools for financial reasons, so we have no idea what will happen, but she’s giving it her best shot. Motivation and organization continue to be somewhat of a struggle for her (though NOTHING like last year!!!) and she’s getting some coaching from an ADD coach, but the big difference is she’s aware and working on overcoming these things. It’s pretty terrific.</p>
<p>So… if things seem bleak… hang in there. It’ll get better :)</p>
<p>SO happy for both of you! It’ll still be a long gradual haul as you already know. Expect the ups and downs. But the fact that your D accepted help (and dug in to get well) and it seems to be working is super!
She’s very lucky too–she has support at home from you which is SO important. A lot of kids don’t have the support of parents (some of whom refuse to acknowledge that a problem exists) which makes it almost impossible for kids to recover in such circumstances.
Your update made my day!</p>
<p>No wait, she’s a senior…sitting by watching all the others go crazy doing college apps. She “might want to take a gap year” and “might want to go overseas”. Definitely straight A student if she does any work, and A’s with a few B’s (at a gifted school with all college-level work) if she does not. </p>
<p>FRUSTRATING! </p>
<p>Eventually, she will get it together. I did the same thing. We had many major issues going on at home, so I dropped out, got a job, and realized that I would work for people with 1/4 of my intelligence for 1/4 the salary if I didn’t change things.</p>
<p>I went back, graduated with honors and went on to Grad school. </p>
<p>Some kids just need to learn things the hard way. I hope my daughter - and yours - will not, because you can’t support yourself and live in your own apartment with a high school diploma today, as I was able to do for a few years back in the day. </p>
<p>No, it’s MY daughter. Received an ADHD diagnosis for the first time after the beginning of senior year…let’s see what we can get accomplished in 11 months!</p>
<p>Make sure you read post 66!! This is an update to an old thread. Please start a new one.
New threads make for better responses to current problems.</p>
<p>Yet another example of bright hs students (incl girls) had ADHD-ish/EF challenges. Ah, wish I had know about this club 7 years ago. </p>
<p>Good news - maturity can help the situation. Our story had a happy ending, and I hope the same holds true for all the stressed families that posted.</p>
<p>A lot of parents seem to justify their child’s underachievement because they think they are not being challenged enough. I think this is just enabling laziness. When I was a kid, my parents taught me that there were no excuses for not completing your homework. I actually remember one incident in third grade where I forgot my homework at home. When I told my father about this, he said that was unacceptable and that you always need to turn in your homework in on time. This didn’t mean that they put too much pressure on me academically, they actually have for the most part been very hands off. What they wanted me to learn was how to be responsible regardless of the situation. There were plenty of times in middle school and high school in which I thought the homework was stupid busywork. However, I did it anyway because that is how you prove yourself to be a conscientious student. Now that I am in college, I get great joy from my work and never have trouble meeting deadlines. The kids I know who were able to get away with slacking off in high school often had trouble getting themselves to do the work in college, even though they liked what they were studying. They didn’t have the discipline.</p>
<p>Poeme - That’s great that things worked out for you. It sounds like you had caring, helpful parents. </p>
<p>But there is a subset of kids… more common on CC than in the real world… that sail through elementary school and ms and sometimes hs too on sheer brainpower . They don’t need parent intervention. It’s not that the parents don’t care and are reluctant to intervene. The kids gets A’s and the teachers rave about them, so parents assume all is well. Sadly these kids do NOT learn much about organization , but nobody knows until they hit rigor of tough college classes or ap/ib hs rigor.</p>
<p>I know plenty of kids who came to college having never gotten anything below an A in their life while barely putting any time into their work. But they do not all end up in the same situation. Many realize upon coming to college that they need to step up their game and adjust accordingly. The others are not able to do this. To me, it seems this is often caused by arrogance and/or lack of a work ethic. For boys, sometimes it really is just immaturity and they will eventually grow up. </p>
<p>The problem I am mainly referring to is that of kids who think they are “too good” for busy work. I knew a few such kids in high school. They think they are too smart to play the game and look down upon people who actually make the effort to do what they are supposed to. They will make you feel like the reason you are doing the homework is because you are not good enough. I also knew a few kids like this freshman year of college who made me feel stupid for starting my work on time. Guess who is ahead now. Many of those very kids who thought they were smarter than everyone else have now burned out.</p>
<p>Many kids seem to have the idea that intelligence matters more than hard work. They actually think that working hard makes them seem less intelligent. I think that many times this attitude (not always) can be attributed to the parents and how they project their views onto their children. It also could be a generational thing. My father observes that his residents are much less conscientious that in the past. They want to have success and a certain lifestyle without having earned it.</p>
<p>You might want to consider foreign universities for her (such as English ones), where grades are determined by high-stakes final exams. Most of the grading at American universities, at least for lower-level classes, is just the same kind of busywork.</p>
<p>As for preferring to hang out with boys, in my experience a lot of teenage girls do that because they boys want to sleep with them and are thus more attentive. They like the attention. I’m not saying that this is your daughter, but it is something to be aware of.</p>
<p>to the OP – so glad to hear you have a diagnosis for your daughter, I am glad I read through this thread to see the update as I was preparing to respond along the lines of – don’t discount possibility of ADHD type challenges. My 19 year old son was (and still can be) similar to your daughter – so much frustration in our house as he continued to underachieve through high school. I had never considered ADHD because he could immerse himself fully in what he loved, and I thought that meant he couldn’t have such issues. Finally investigated the summer before he started college and he was diagnosed ADHD summer before he went to college. He has meds and, when he took them the first time for a summer class – it was hilarious (not to make light of it) – he came home with pages of notes, energized and excited because he could stay on top of this 3 hour class. </p>