My son is in the 8th grade and his grades suck. An F, two D-, two D, and a C-. What have you done that actually worked in your household? He lost computer privileges a couple of months ago, and now spends his spare time playing video games. Every freakin’ day with the video games.
I put a stop to that today.
Our daughter is 19, and when she was in high school we went round and round and round with her about grades as well - she just never got it. We grounded her, took away privileges, got a math tutor… nothing worked over the long run and it led to arguments, frustration, and more arguments. And that was just my husband and I.:smack: She graduated high school by the skin of her teeth and wasn’t eligible to go to anything more than community college.
My husband told me that I’m too lenient, and after thinking it over I realized that he’s right. We’re starting with a new term as of this week, and so far? Two F’s. The video games are gone until he has at least C’s. I need to decide on a consistent approach that actually works.
We tried that with our daughter, but it was like she was determined to be defiant, no matter what DH and I did. All of the groundings, talking and tutoring did nothing in the end. I don’t want to run over the same old ground again.
I think about how you train a dog that it’s not the head of the pack. You don’t confront it, you don’t roll it over to force it to submit. Rather, before you give the dog anything–food, walk, attention–you require the dog to do a trick for you. Eventually it builds habits of obedience.
Your kid ain’t a dog, and you’re not a pack of wolves. Nevertheless, I wonder if there’s some wisdom there. Don’t punish him when he fails. Rather, remove all privileges now, and let him earn them back through success. Measure success by effort: you need to see him working.
The work should happen in a public space, e.g., your kitchen table. Be sure he has the tools necessary to perform the work. Establish a time that it’ll happen on a daily basis, and stick to it. If he resists, that’s okay. He just doesn’t get phone privileges, computer privileges, extracurricular activities, the right to eat out with the family, and so on. He may continue to resist as long as he likes. When he decides to stop resisting, that’s when you return the privileges.
Here’s my chief suggestion. Think back to when you were that age. Think about how you acted, what you believed, how you felt, what your goals were, and how you responded to your parents.
When you were 12 or 13 years old, did you care about what college you were going to attend? Did you give it any serious thought at all? Did you worry about what job or salary you would have after you finished high school? Did you ever really think that far ahead? Were you making rational plans for your own future?
I’m guessing that the answers to these questions are “no”, assuming that you were a normal child. Pre-teens and early teens simply don’t prioritize that far ahead. They are in middle school, which will be followed by four years of high school. To the 12-year-old mind that seems like an impossibly long stretch of time, hence there’s no need to plan for what comes after. Expecting someone of that age to “get it” and start preparing for college and life after is a lost cause.
now ask yourself this: how did you feel about parents and other authority figures at that time? Probably you felt some amount of resentment, frustration, disdain. Of course there’s no logical basis for this, but that doesn’t change the fact. These are emotions. They rage from time to time. There is no reason for it. A 12-year-old boy has no yet learned to master his emotions, so they dominate.
The result? Rebelliousness. If the parents make it clear that they want X, the child will often do Not X deliberately. Why? It’s their way of proving to themselves that they can defy their parents. This is not speculative. Any psychologist who works with kids has seen cases like this. They get low grades in order to show that they can’t be forced around.
What’s the actual plan as far as the work goes? My kids are younger, but whenever there was a glitch, we went straight to their teachers and worked out a concrete set of actions that we could all take to get back on track. Just a blanket “no x, y, or z, until your grade improve” could be promoting a sense of helplessness at this point, as well as anger and apathy.
Also, the kids are in charge of doing their work and turning it in, but we also stay on top of what is going on and when it is due.
I heartily concur about a set homework time in a public place. Nothing fun happens in our house until the homework is done, period.
I am having the same problem with my son, but he’s an 18-year-old senior. All D’s and F’s. And I didn’t know it because he was snatching his progress reports out of the mail before I got home. I’ve solved THAT particular problem, but don’t know how to get him on track. It doesn’t help that he has a 19-year-old girlfriend either.:rolleyes:
That sounds about right. I remember feeling that way myself when I was his age. He just turned 14, by the way. He has a December birthday and missed the cutoff by 17 days, so he’s a little older than the other kids.
He’s not even sure what college is about, let alone feeling any desire to go. I get that. At this point in his life, school sucks and is stupid. The last thing he wants to hear when he gets home is more about school.
That’s the problem though - I do have a pretty good understanding of how he feels, and have been fairly lenient in the past. I can’t do that anymore. Last term his grades were C’s and B’s, with one D. We told him to turn in all of his papers (his grades are poor because of not turning work in).
So much for letting him take control of his education on his own. Also, he needs a math tutor. He does seem to be turning his work in for that class, but the grades are horrible. He hates that teacher. I’m going to call her tomorrow and start getting assignments directly from her so we know what’s due. That way, my husband and I can help.
Here’s the thing about math - the way that I get the answer is different from the way the kids are being taught. We went through that with our daughter, too. It ended up with us both being frustrated because even though the answer would be right I would hear “But that’s not how the teacher is telling us to do it” and me saying “The answer is right, so let’s just move on” and her saying “But that’s not how we learned it in class”… and on and on.
Tell him that one of the great things about being an adult is that, for the most part, people don’t care how you get to the right answer. It’s quite common for elementary-school teachers to take off points if you didn’t do the problem the right way, even if you got the right answer. That’s rare in college. Adults get to figure out a way to do stuff that works for them, even if that way isn’t what someone else would say is the “right” way. I’d say that’s an upside of adulthood on par with being able to decide how you spend your own money or when you go to bed.
I didn’t learn to drive till I was 23 because, for some reason, “the right way” to parallel park is something I just can’t get. I had to get over thinking I had to learn to do it “the right way” and just find a way that I could do and that achieved the same results as “the right way”.
Don’t do what my parents did. Withhold privileges, withhold praise, make it seem like the kid is ‘less than,’ and in particular, don’t ignore the kid. My grades plummeted in 7th grade, right when we were starting to get homework, and they never recovered. My parents gave me a ton of negative shit, withheld any privilege they could think of, and nothing changed.
What they didn’t do was get involved. Never checked to see if I was doing my homework, never made doing homework seem like anything but a fucking drag, just sent me off to my room where I read and listened to the radio. And gave me shit.
It sounds like you don’t do this, and other posters have offered great advice, but I felt compelled to write this because I have often wondered over the years why my parents left me out to dry like that. My life would have definitely been different if they hadn’t.
My dad (the engineer) did that to me in grade school. Showed me his way of doing it. Don’t do this.
What you don’t realize is teaching math relys on piggybacking lessons where once you learn “their” method they go on to teach the next step to it and piggyback these steps.
If she’s learnig your way of doing it (even if it gets the same answer) once the teacher moves on to the next step she will be lost again.
Tell your son that you love him and want to help him. I’m going to assume that’s the truth. Talk to him. Ask him what he enjoys doing, beyond the normal crap that interest kids (videogames, etc). Find something that interests him. Show him that you want to help him find what will make his life meaningful. This can be tough as a parent, because we easily get frustrated that they just don’t get it. Every kid is not made for college, but most can probably handle it if they are motivated. Maybe he wants to be a chef. Maybe he wants to design video games (a lot of kids want to grow up to be video game designers now). Show him that whatever he wants to do in the future, it will take some effort and training.
Also, I’d suggest, if possible, learning to math the way his teacher shows him, if you want to help with the math homework. His math shouldn’t be that tough, so why not learn to do it a different way. Then if you want to you can still compare and contrast styles.
I got nuttin’ to add except to say that when I read the OP, purple haze, I wondered if we were actually sharing the same son! Suffice it so say I am following this thread with interest.
This is a spot where you can use his natural rebelliousness to your advantage. See if he wants to do exactly what the teacher says, or, would like to use this neat trick you have to get the answer? Make it you and him “against” the teacher–he “beats” the teacher when he gets the right answer doing it his own way. But Hampshire makes a good point. You need to understand what’s being taught. Read his textbooks yourself until you understand what the “official” techniques are. Then he can decide which way he wants to do the work, and you help either way.
Overall, I’d say you need to start micromanaging his study time and habits. Set clear times for homework. Do it in an open area. Be there with him. Don’t do his work, but often check his progress and results. Do your own “studying” (bills, taxes, reading the paper or other non-fiction) at the same time as him, where he can see you and be available to help. Demonstrate your own study habits. Don’t do fun things without him, make it a family effort to get good grades.
If possible, have his teachers directly email you to let you know when assignments are given and due, and when tests are given and graded. It should be your son’s responsibility to get the assignments, but you need to know when he should be working and on what timeline. Good teachers will appreciate parents who are actively involved with their children’s studies. His teachers are probably as frustrated as you with his performance. Let his teachers know that you care and that they can call you if there’s any concerns. Follow up with his teachers regularly–more than once a quarter.
If you’re ambitious, find out what he wants to do when he’s grown up. Then, together, find out what kind of skills are needed. Get basic/beginner books and set aside time to help him learn it. The goal here is to let him find his own goal, and by pursuing it, learn good study habits. Once he has good study habits, the schoolwork will be less tortuous.
A friend of mine was so desperate to improve his daughter’s grades that he switched her from public school to a private school that required uniforms. It worked – somewhat.
However, I have a feeling that’s not the kind of solution you want to hear.
Have you had the required parent-teacher conferences? What do his teachers say? Just punishing him for bad grades doesn’t get you anywhere until you know what his issue is. Is he not turning in assignments be tests well, so you know he understands the work? Is he blowing the tests? He may need to repeat the grade, if he’s somehow missed some essential stuff. If he’s doing the work and not turning it in, maybe you can have him e-mail the homework to the teachers as a backup.
I’m not a huge fan of video games at the best of times, and it certainly sounds like his tie needs to be limited. If he’s not doing homework, he can do chores, shoot baskets or walk the dog. Sitting like a lump for hours in front of a monitor can wait until he gets a real job!
I’m not sure this is a good idea. This carries the message that the teacher’s teachings aren’t valuable. You might win the battle this way, but if your kid becomes increasingly alienated from school, you lose the war.
The second part, IMO, is a better idea: figure out WHY the teacher is teaching it in a new way. There’s a big emphasis in math teaching now on teaching math so that students understand why something works, so they don’t just memorize an algorithm. Plenty of teachers screw it up IMO, but the underlying principle is sound. When I teach kids to do two-digit addition, I certainly have kids who show me the traditional algorithm (add the numbers in the ones place, carry the one, add the numbers in the tens place plus the one). I congratulate them on getting the right answer–and then challenge them to explain why it works. If they don’t understand, I’ll explain in painstaking detail, referring to our work with place value, with the actual value of the 1 (i.e., it’s really one ten if you’re “carrying” from the ones place to the tens place). I show them other techniques for getting the answer. I solicit other methods of solving the problem from the students. My goal, which I am sometimes even successful at, is getting students to comprehend the mechanism for adding numbers, not just getting them to memorize the steps of a magic spell that will generate a correct answer. My mantra is, “Math makes sense!”
Learn how the teacher teaches it. Get your kid to explain it to you, and understand that if you throw up your hands in exasperation, you’re a failure. You’re asking your kid to learn this: you damn well better be willing to learn it yourself.
Certainly teach another technique to the kid, but your underlying goal should be for your son to understand why it works, not merely to memorize competing formulae.
I have an eight year old and the homework wars have already started. We do allow rewards for work done as we go though and it seems to work pretty well.
Is it possible your son has some sort of learning disability? ADD, dyslexia, poor vision, anything that might be making learning and homework harder than it needs to be?
Suffice it so say I am following this thread with interest.