<p>DD is a freshman in HS. Her grades are pretty good (high 80s-high 90s), however I feel (and her teachers feel) like she could be doing better. I'd like to see her putting more effort into studying for tests, required reading, practicing guitar, going to extrahelp, etc. and feel like she spends a little too much time on FB and TV. She usually is pretty good with this stuff when her EC schedule is more packed, but it's not as packed as she'd like it to be for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>I do not want to threaten, take away priviledges/phone/computer time, or nag. I am open to putting together some type of incentive program where she self-edits her FB/TV time to be more productive. Anyone successfully do something like this to get their kids into better time management habits and keep them focused?</p>
<p>It’s early for this, but I would say that my daughter had a dramatic increase in motivation after we visited colleges between soph and junior year. She was embarassed at first as everyone else was a junior, until a junior she liked told her very sincerely that he really really wished he had visited the summer before because there was too much pressure to decide if you wait. </p>
<p>She is now doing early action apps for her favorite four - if she gets into one, she can relax for the rest of the year!'</p>
<p>I would accept where she is as a freshman. Pick a couple of “battles” but don’t insist on a total overhaul. This is an internal struggle I’ve had observing both my super-achiever (now a college senior) and my upward-trend late-bloomer (HS senior).</p>
<p>They can’t be everything and do everything. The only thing I’m seeing in your note that concerns me is that when she’s doing what she thinks is relaxing (believe me, I see it at my house, too - watching Family Guy for the 100th time instead of something more “meaningful”), you have a laundry list of things in your head that you’d rather see.</p>
<p>I’d stick to schoolwork, and help her balance that with the “rest” of her life. Don’t push music practicing or reading for fun or things that need to come from inside. She’ll have to figure that out for herself. And have faith that she’ll be more mature as a sophomore, junior, senior, and forever, but she might never be or do all of the things you see her doing in your imagination.</p>
<p>We put an incentive in place. We also wanted our kids to take control of their learning and grades. We wanted them to be self-motivated, or at least learn how to balance school and life. We told them if their GPA was 95% or over we would pay them a bonus. Our school shows the weighted GPA and in hindsight we should have told them a 93 or 94 unweighted in their 5 core classes. Live and learn. Our kids now have a goal that we are all happy with and it allows them to balance working hard and playing hard. They have a GPA value that gives them “permission” to enjoy life a bit. The whole “do your best” was fine for my son, but my daughter would not let up, because nothing less than a 98 was “her best”. She was upset when she’d get a 92. Every kid is different. I think our incentive works well for our kids.</p>
<p>Check your language. Your title mentions self-motivation, but you’re really talking about external motivation, right? Self motivation comes from within, and IMO, comes when a kid sets his/her own goal and sees a value to achieving that goal. Parents can nag and prod, but when the goal is set by the parent instead of the kid, the kid will never be self-motivated. I have a kid who “never lived up to expectations” but then I realized that those were MY expectations, not hers. I realized that D’s goals were very different from mine and I was pleased to see her work extremely hard, take risks and focus on achieving her goals (artistic, not academic). She’s happy, successful in HER chosen field, and could care less about a 4.0 GPA, etc. Have you asked your D what HER goals are?</p>
<p>^^^there’s a lot of wisdom there, megpmom. We must allow our kids to define for themselves what is important and goal-worthy. If your daughter doesn’t feel YOUR goals make sense to her, no amount of pleading, begging or bribing will get her there. That’s not to say we can’t continue to help guide them. Start with looking at the inherent qualities your daughter possesses and consider career paths/majors that she might be interested in. Talk with her from time to time about the information you come up with. If you sense a spark in her when a particular subject comes up, take her lead. Once SHE has come up with what makes HER happy, you may find the ‘self’ in motivation start to emerge.</p>
<p>I’m not a big believer in bribery (aka incentives) to get kids to do what we want. I think it’s more important for the kid to figure out what they want and to be invested in those goals themselves.</p>
<p>Watch [url=<a href=“http://www.ted.com%5DTED%5B/url”>http://www.ted.com]TED[/url</a>] with your daughter and discuss the various topics and what’s needed academically to pursue similar interests.</p>
<p>I have a 10th grade son who has never been very motivated for anything but playing guitar. I haven’t found the switch to turn him on yet, but last year I began looking at college stuff with another kid. I ran some EFC numbers and gathered some data on merit. I sat son done and said, “Hey, 4 years is long to you, but here are the facts of what we are espected to pay, what we think we’ll be able to pay for college and here is what you need to do to get X Y Z school with merit.”</p>
<p>Can’t say my method is working to the full extent my A type personality would like, but I can say college is more in the fore front of his mind. He purposely choose a harder academic load this year to get him to the range of colleges he likes.</p>
<p>I must admit that I reached “critical scream” level with my daughter in her freshman year - I decided that I had a choice - either I could lose my relationship with her, or I could give the job of motivating her academically and discussing her missing assignments, etc to my husband, who has a much more hands off approach. Her grades dropped dramatically (ok - from a B to a C - for most kids that would be good but I am Type A as well) for the second semester of her frosh year. BUT I got my relationship back, and we began to re-establish a healthier parent child relationship. She sloooooowly improved in soph and junior year, and is sad that her overall GPA isn’t higher now that she is a senior. HOWEVER, we have a great relationship and she is a kind, responsible, sober (as in non-alcohol drinking), level headed kid whose moral compass is right on the mark. I needed to back away and remember that school, in fact, is not the most critical lesson we have to teach in these last four years when they are under our wing. For her junior year, we hired a (somewhat overpriced) coach that did an email and a telephone session with her each week on her goals. She said absolutely NOTHING different than what I was trying to say, but the way we rationalized it was it was an expensive way to keep me calm, her talking to us, and an unemotional person giving her assistance so that I didn’t need to nag her a bout school work. Worked for us.</p>
Geez, why not just talk to your daughter about this? She’ll say she’s doing fine, then you can explain how you and her teachers think she could do better. I know she’s only 14, but at some point, she’ll be the one who totally controls what’s important in her life. Better start to be ready to let her make her own choices by not squelching her decisions today.</p>
<p>Your kid is in 9th grade, barely into high school. I am for one who would limit her time on the computer and cell phone usage. This doesn’t have as much to do trying to push her to get better grades, but I don’t think a lot of kids of that age have that much self control yet, and more often than not they get hurt by what they see on FB anyway (who got invited to what party).</p>
<p>D1 made a lot of money “tutoring” someone in 9th/10th grade. Her biggest challenge at each of those tutoring session was to keep the girl off the FB or texting. A few times D1 had to take both of them away, so the girl could focus. When the girl did focus, she picked up the material very quickly. The mother was amazed how well her daughter did on each test whenever D1 tutored. D1 said to me, “If the mother would put her foot down and ban those things when the daughter is studying, she wouldn’t need a tutor.”</p>
<p>Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Most were very thoughtful and insightful. </p>
<p>She herself gets disappointed at certain grades, but then she doesn’t make the extra effort to improve (ie. go to extra help, or math lab, or bring home the book to study over the weekend). That’s what gets me frustrated. I try to gently remind her from time to time…but I too am trying to preserve the good relationship we have (tells me everything that’s going on, comes to me with friend issues, etc.). I am quite supportive of her interests…probably more than some parents would be. I also don’t push in other areas…for instance, she doesn’t like math, but chose to do honors this year. A few weeks in, she stressed out and wanted to drop into regents and I was 100% behind her decision to do so.</p>
<p>Last year I did as geogirl1 does, and told her if she got above a certain grade in all her classes she would get a bonus. This kinda, sorta worked. She just missed it in one class and was very hard on herself. She can be very, very sensitive and hard on herself, yet doesn’t always have the discipline and habits of a type A/perfectionist.</p>
<p>As Emmybet said, while she’s zoning out/relaxing, I am seething with a laundry list of things she could be/should be doing…but for the most part, I hold my tongue or gently suggest.</p>
<p>Love hearing everyone’s thoughts and approaches with their own kids. Thanks.</p>
<p>You might want to read Alfie Kohn’s books on internal versus external motivators. Rewards and punishments can sometimes alter short term behavior but, according to him and others, can cause some long-term problems.</p>
<p>With one out of three of my kids, Facebook etc. was a distraction. She got her work done, but it took a lot longer. There have been times when we agreed that she would not use the computer, for instance, in a week when there were papers or exams. I tried to rely on discussion with her, and on her opinion and agreement. </p>
<p>I would de-emphasize grades, which are incentive programs in and of themselves, for some kids and families, and instead emphasize hard work and learning. I found I didn’t really have to look at grades: as a mom, it was pretty easy to tell who was doing their work, who felt interested and motivated- and who was on Facebook a lot (computer is in our kitchen!).</p>
<p>Rewarding grades with a bonus doesn’t really work in a fair way in some families. You might have a gifted kid who barely works and gets A’s, and a less academically talented kid who works ten times as hard but gets B’s. Who should be rewarded?</p>
<p>quote[Rewarding grades with a bonus doesn’t really work in a fair way in some families. You might have a gifted kid who barely works and gets A’s, and a less academically talented kid who works ten times as hard but gets B’s. Who should be rewarded?] /quote.</p>
<p>This is why I like this system, because you can set the goal at one level for your A kid and another level for your B kid. It’s about them taking responsibility for their own work and time management. Also, if they don’t achieve the set level, they lose the bonus, but as a parent you don’t get to complain. I DON’T want to monitor their FB time, cell phone time, TV time, club time or friend time. This puts me in the position to be “discipline” mom. I will discipline my child when they do something wrong, but I’m more interested in inspiring them. I want them to figure that all out and I want to give them an incentive to reach high, not an obligation. </p>
<p>My DS12 saw no reason to get a 96 with a lot of work, when he could get an 89 or 92 with minimum work. He was capable of the higher grades, but as a 14 year old boy he just didn’t understand the doors that would close or open for him depending on that silly GPA. He loved to learn, just didn’t see the point in striving for that extra step. We gave him the incentive. Now, as a junior he understands it. But he didn’t “get” it as a freshman or even a sophomore. </p>
<p>To the OP: The reason we chose a GPA and not a “grade per class” was so that there was some wiggle room. A child may not be a strong in math as they are a writer. It’s a more managable goal for the child if they can get a an 89 or 90 in math, but balance it out with a 97 in English. The goal isn’t “straight A’s” it is to find balance and learn how to manage your time. Good luck!</p>
<p>Our D1 was always internally motivated. She is dedicated to her schoolwork- but, if she felt she had learned to her max, worked projects on schedule, tackled breadth as well as depth, she simply did not care what the grade was. Her confidence in what she had accomplished was that strong. An oddly frustrating situation!
D2 was grade-driven. Then, when she hit a road bump, she crashed. That’s the problem with too much drive for external recognition. </p>
<p>To us, it’s not about “letting them find their own way,” sink or swim. HS kids are inexperienced and, unlike adults, don’t “project” well what may happen- or not- in the future. So, what we aimed for (we are not perfect) was “retrospective” wisdom. When they did something well, we tried to gently tie it back to their effort. Eg, instead of, “Do this or you won’t pass that test,” we said, nicely, “Wow, you did well; that extra time you spent going over the calculations paid off, huh?” Eventually, they got the message.
Oh, and, yes, we also believe in incentives. We don’t see it as empty bribery- but more the same principle as employees getting a bonus or raise, based on performance.</p>