Talk me off the ledge (father of a 12 YO)

You have obviously have a smart son. It sounds like a lot of pressure for a 12 year old. Enjoy your time with him and it sounds like he needs some fun.

  1. Three hours per night is too much homework for sixth grade.
  2. It is not good to focus too much on grades. If they are making a good effort, that is what is the most important
  3. He needs to develop socially to. What is he doing for ECs?

I think you might have me confused with the OP??? If not, I am not sure whom you are referring to.

Okay… From my open-enrollment public high school there were dozens every year who went to Ivy league and equivalent (add Chicago, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, MIT). It’s fewer now because they added an additional high school to the district, but in my year nearly 140 out of about 750 went to Michigan which is a good enough school to set you up for a career in anything. Obviously some districts are worse but I bet any school you pick, most students went to open-enrollment public schools.

@eggbeater Is he really happy? Does he enjoy the homework or does he complain about it? His grades in middle school do not matter. You don’t want him to burn out. How is he doing socially? Like Vladenschutte related, our open enrollment high school also sends kids each year to top schools, MIT, Stanford, Harvard. You also have to worry about you. Checking his grades every hour is not normal. Your anxiety might damage your relationship with him. And who knows where he will want to go to school or what he will want to study in the future.

May I broach something indelicate? You’ve said you’re concerned about your relationship with him. But are you concerned enough about the damage it might suffer in lieu of your vision for what he is to be academically?

How much of this is in your mind?* “Screw the relationship; I need this kid to maximize his potential. And that looks like THIS…… He’ll thank me later.” *

This is the typical Tiger Parent mentality. I see it among the parents of my DD’s peers. She goes to one of the top ten HS in the country. Her school is 90% Asian – most kids come from households where immigrant parents work in hi tech/engineering fields. The pressure these kids are under is indescribable. And I see lots of miserable kids who can’t wait to get away to college to escape. Some are just waiting to wade into the excesses of what they perceive college party life and independence will offer them. I’m afraid many will be lured into poor choices b/c the bulk of the parenting they’ve rec’d is all about drilling them solely to get into school A, B or C – the obvious signs of success, in their parents’ minds.

Your constant checking on your son’s grades is very scary. You should honestly re-evaluate what you value. We are both Asian parents – our parents’ generation showed us the example of hard work and sacrifice. But even in all that, I had to come to terms with what I would see as the marks that would satisfy me as a father of two daughters. Character is the number one item. College, career, family, earning potential – all that is a distant second. My oldest is going into Comp Eng next year. My younger one (8th grade) envisions herself in the medical field. Early on, I asked myself if neither said they wanted to pursue college, how would I feel? As long as character was on solid ground, I would be OK with it. What are you OK with?

Some really great points have been raised. I just want to applaud the OP for having the insight and the concern for his son to be questioning his own behavior.

I certainly haven’t done everything right raising my kids, but one thing I have tried to do is to recognize my mistakes and when appropriate to apologize for them. If I had been obsessing about my kid’s grades and driving him crazy micromanaging, I hope I would have later said to him " I am not gong to keep checking your grades all the time because I think it is hurting our relationship and my mental health. I do care about your school work and want you to do well. I will be checking your grades, but less often. Please come to me if you have problems."

While 3 hrs / day on homework is excessive, we do not know how exactly there are spent. “Smart” is not enough here. More important factors are focus, discipline, time management, all brought up by balanced life. If a kid knows that there is nothing exciting for him after homework is done, is he there day dreaming, texting, whatever…If he knew that he needs to be done by certain time because he needs to be somewhere else, place and surroundings that he was waiting for to be every day, maybe 3 hours will go down to 1.5 with the same or even better quality?
One really do NOT need to be smart at 12 to be a straight A student. One does not need to be smart to be successful in college. Other factors will be more important. Later on, at certain job, Grad. school, one may need to be above average in certain area to be successful, but again, other skills will be of more importance. Most of these skills are developed in childhood and not only dealing with academics, but having rich fulfilling life overall.

If he does well in school but forgets to turn in assignments sometimes, which in some schools can mean a 0, then come up with him for a way to keep track of things. With time he will get better at it.

Sorry, but I have a hard time believing that. If it is true then it is a complete aberration. While researching I came across this article. It mentions one of NoVa’s top public high schools, and how barely anyone even applies to tippy-top colleges, and how hardly anyone gets in. I posit that this is not an aberration, but more the status quo.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/23/AR2007102302634.html

OP, is any of this helping. What is still on your mind?

@TV4caster and @Vladenschlutte,

The public school in our NJ town is Millburn High School.

Fwiw, my son’s private school nearby sent 18% to Ivy League schools, and more to selective non-Ivy schools.

This year was probably a better than average year, but it is not out of line with past performance.

@tv4caster, I don’t know about dozens but if you look at the 2014-15 profile for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), the 2014 senior class (a little over 400 students) had 46 acceptances to Cornell, 54 to CMU, 22 to UCB, 16 to MIT, 12 to Brown, 11 to Princeton, 10 to Stanford, 10 to Penn (keep in mind these are acceptances, not students). By far, most kids applied and were accepted to Virginia schools: 170 accepted to W&M, 168 to UVa, and 161 to Va Tech. Many parents probably think why pay for Ivy when you have UVa?

@TV4caster if Vlad went to a public feeder high school like the ones in Ann Arbor, this is entirely possible. I would probably say at least 10% of my graduating class went to U of M. We were considered a feeder- not necessarily because of quality but because of proximity to U of M. I’d probably say a few dozen in my class went to Ivy or equivalent, but I had 1700-ish people in my graduating class.

@SlackerMomMD TJ is a public school, but not an open-enrollment public. Kids have to apply to get in there and the acceptance rate is similar to an Ivy. I am talking about true “plain-jane” high schools where there is no “school within a school” or IB program etc.

@romanigypsyeyes That a would explain the UM numbers but I still would question the dozens of kids going to Ivies.

@IxnayBob that is very impressive! and I see that it is truly a public school. I also guess that those figures are a somewhat rare exception

@TV4caster, Millburn High School, referenced above, is an open-enrollment public. Additionally, there are some privates nearby that peel off some of the high achievers that would ordinarily be attending.

^^^I know. I said that in my comment to you

^^ I had not seen your comment before I began typing. A favorite site of mine, Bogleheads.org, will show a poster any posts entered between the time they start a response and when they click Submit. I got into the habit of not hitting refresh, which I should remind myself to do here.

The school is impressive, but to be honest, with the demographics of the area, it is less surprising. One of the reasons we sent our son to a private HS was because the private had more diversity (SES and ethnic) than the public. Counter-intuitive but true.

What’s being overlooked in this discussion is that certain schools (middle or high) generating kids that go on to tougher admit U’s might be a case of simple correlation. It’s entirely possible that the driven kids (or, maybe more accurately, the kids in driven families) gravitate toward these schools, rather than the school actually making the kid. I’ve yet to see anything that proves actual causality.

Wow step away from the forum and I miss so many great replies. Thanks everyone.

Maybe I gave everyone a bit of a darker picture than I intended. I am worried that school is starting to color our relationship but we still are good as father and son. Like he said he is still happy when he goes to school. He never goes to bed or leaves in the morning without seeking me out to say "I love you " and good bye or good night. We still shoot around at the gym and play catch when we have time. We’ve been best friends since he was born but I have been feeling a bit of frustration simmering below the surface (and admittedly rears its ugly head occasionally) but a lot of it has been alleviated by what everyone had been posting. I think the great majority of my fears have been reading the forums here and expecting him to have the same drive at this age.

It’s been especially interesting to read the multiple comments re boys at his age. I also have custody of his 13 yo cousin who has been going through the same issues in a neighborhood school. When I think back to myself at the same age I was in danger of being held back. I ended up graduating from UC Berkeley and getting a professional degree. Selective memory I guess.

My plan going forward is to not check grades so much, have him play with his travel team, and let him go to office hours with his teachers so they can take some of the load off us as father/son.

Thanks for all the awesome responses. It saved my sanity.