And?
Success in life is based on passion, desire, effort and enough brains to figure out what you want to do and then do it. Which college you went to and what grades you got doesn’t have a lot to do with it. There are some exceptions to this but it is generally true.
With my 3 kids (college, high school and junior high), we talked/talk about grades some, but the much bigger issue is just an underlying expectation not to blow stuff off or do things half-assed (school, sports and work). If someone had a paper due and they didn’t leave enough time, we usually asked them to walk back through the last few days and figure out how they could have managed their time differently. More about process and effort than what the actual grade ends up being.
It’s possible our parenting influenced them, and it’s possible it’s genetic or it’s something else, but whatever it was, our kids seemed/seem to feel an ownership of their responsibility to do decent work and we’ve never really had any conflicts where we wanted them to get better results.
The thing I’m left with is that I think more control on our part would have taken away from that natural ownership/responsibility that they feel/felt.
Exactly what I found with my son, and I think it’s probably true of 98% of people, although you should have heard the howls when I first shared it on this board!
I found out about this by reading Parenting With Love and Logic, the only parenting book I think is really worth a damn. Better to teach your kids through the natural consequences of their actions, and allow them the power of solving their own problems, rather than being a drill sergeant or helicopter parent making all the decisions and taking the heat off them.
I could never put as much pressure on my kid as she puts on herself, she’s a perfectionist and rule-follower extrordinaire. It’s not to say that I don’t have other issues to worry about because those same qualities also make her prissy and judgemental, but grades and homework are pretty much a non-issue in this house.
We weren’t terribly strict on my step-son’s grades, but we did expect him to keep them at a C or above. He wasn’t the best student, but now at 23, he’s done rather well for himself. It really isn’t always about the grades.
Ha ha. My parents were not so over-bearing and obsessive that it caused great amounts of stress, but I always knew that if I didn’t get perfect grades, I’d be in trouble. There was always that bus ride home on report card day that caused a bit of anxiety if I didn’t have straight As, because I knew I was going to get a talking to. Less than Bs and I knew I would actually be grounded. Ri-goddamn-diculous, if you ask me, but those were tricks. My mom was right that there was no good reason I did not have all As (there really wasn’t - it was always the result of my lazy ass not doing all my homework), but it’s still kind of silly to ground someone for getting a C. I mean, come on. Then high school came around, and they finally got off my back, as I began getting all As since I reckoned universities would be into that kind of thing.
Now after I’m out of college and have a real career in the real world, which is what all this grades crap was presumably supposed to lead up to, I ask myself wtf was the point of all that? I suppose the theory is my life would have been better if I had all As in junior high school? I would hate my job less? Have a better one? The good news is I’m not having any kids, so I’ll never have to ask myself how much emphasis I should put on grades.
No pressure at all, except to make sure they do their work. It hasn’t really been an issue yet since our oldest daughter has gotten virtually nothing but straight A’s since she’s been in school with basically no pressure for us. Our next oldest daughter is in kindergarten, so grades aren’t really an issue yet (she does fine, though), and our youngest is only two. We’re more about responsibility, honesty and effort than about demanding particular results. Working hard on a paper and getting a B would not bother us. Putting in a half-assed effort or not doing it at all would bother us.
Also, we would never tolerate cheating. We would take an honest 2.5 over a fraudulent 4.0 every day of the week.
No I wouldn’t say we put pressure on her. She always was a good student but in junior high but would often forget to turn her homework in, or the reading log, even though she did the reading. We always have told her that she had to do work up to her potential and she was responsible for her own actions.
She is a straight A student in the 9th grade though, always makes sure her homework is done, etc. I know the junior high teachers all emphasized that grades started ‘counting’ in high school for college, etc and that I think clicked for her this year. So it really hasn’t been an issue in our household. However we do pretty much let her know our expectations are that she goes to college as both my wife and I went and we have saved for her to go as well.
For me grades are important but they aren’t the end all. Having good social skills is equally (or more) important than grades in my opinion. You need certain grades to get into college but those social skills will determine your success in the world in my opinion.
I have a friend who stresses grades way too much and as a result his kid is a straight A student as well but has the social skills of a baboon! My daughter and her friends can’t stand him because he hasn’t learned how to interact with people and he just stumbles into one blunder after another socially. I feel for the kid but it isn’t my kid. I think he would be better off learning social skills to balance those intellectual skills.
So I like that my daughter is a good student, but more importantly she knows how to interact with other kids AND other adults. Having the social skills to go into a situation where you don’t know anyone and enjoying yourself is a better marker to me then good grades as an indicator of future success in life.
I remember the odd time I got an A my dad would say “Imagine how well you could have done if you’d only done some study.”
I homeschooled my oldest using the unschooling method. There was never a grade. She advanced when she mastered a skill.
My six year old goes by IEP more than anything at this point because she’s developmentally delayed. If report cards worked like IEPs I’d appreciate them more but I realize that regular ed. teachers have a lot more kids to work with so going in to such detail would be really hard.
I guess I am surprised no one here has confessed to killing the pets to make an impression on a slacker . . .
I have always made it clear to my son and daughter that 1) I know they are both intelligent and 2) there is no excuse for them not to get As and Bs given the schools they attend. They have not disappointed and I have never had to do more that express an expectation that a low to middle B is flirting with a C and should be brought up or say that they were so close to straight As that they might as well put forth the a little extra effort to get all As.
My personal belief is that success in school is a lot to do with setting consistent expectations so that they expect to succeed as well. This is the same approach I take in regards to their attending college - I have never said “if you go to college” but always “when you go to college”. I don’t want them thinking college is optional. Of course if they go and find out it’s not for them then that would be fine - I know college is not a sure path to success but it almost always helps.
For the record my two teenage children do not spend hours on homework or studying and are also active in other areas including athletics and arts. Indeed they spend much more time than I prefer listening to music or playing video games but as long as they meet the expectations I have set I don’t complain too much.
I never put any pressure at all. I never pressed them to do homework either and when a teacher insisted we sign it, my wife ridiculed the idea by using names like Marx (Groucho of course) and Fidel Castro. (The teacher called to ask what gives. Got an earful about the only discipline being self-discipline.)
Once, when he was in college, my son asked for (and got) homework help. He acknowledged that on his paper (as required by the honor code). They have all done well in life. They went from being responsible children to being responsible adults. Of course, my wife and I count ourselves fortunate.
Or whether you went to college at all, for that matter.
Our daughter manages to get A’s and a couple of B’s with very little intervention on our part. Over the course of her education ( she is in 11th grade ), she got a couple of C’s in classes that did not hold her interest - English and Theology - and a few “Needs Improvement” in 2nd grade Handwriting.
I am in the camp that thinks grades and standardized test scores are a shaky indicator of knowledge. Anyone can get a A in a subject with minimum effort.
Attacklass once brought home a report card with all A’s except for gym. In a deep voice, and with my gruffest voice I and the accent born of a thousand kung-fu movies, I said:
“Huh. Go upstairs. Study gym!”
None. Now, because they are no longer in school, but then, because it is a fruitless pursuit. I spent my time pressuring them to learn and utilize their minds. If the grades followed that was fine with me. Sadly, the rotten little *&#$@s did so well they were accepted at expensive colleges, which I am paying for.
I don’t get on their cases unless they start bringing home Ds. I know that with even the most minimal of effort they can pull a C or higher, so Ds mean they aren’t trying at all. I care about the lack of effort a lot more than the grade.
I expect my daughter to do her homework. My wife or I help her with homework if she wants or needs help, and I often check her homework. We encourage her to do the best that she can. If she makes less than an A, however, it’s not such a big deal. We recognize that grades aren’t everything, and we recognize that she has a life outside of school. As long as her grades are reasonably good (and they are), and as long as she’s happy, we’re happy.
Its been a long time ago but I told my son to do his best and if he needed help to ask me. If he got a bad grade, we’d talk about it but I never browbeat him. One thing I did do was to put him the car one day; first, we toured the neighborhood in which we lived; that neighborhood was okay but not upscale. Then we toured the upscale neighborhood and then the bottom of the barrel. I pointed out that the upscale houses belonged mostly to college grad professionals, the bottom of the barrel was where school dropouts lived and our own neighborhood was for people like me who had no degree but who had worked hard and been lucky. I think he got the point. I tried to be a father who was the exact opposite of the rat bastard my own father had been.