The problem with most attempts at behavior control systems is that the reinforcement schedule is too long. The time horizons for eighth graders are too short for long reinforcement schedules. Doing something you hate now for a reward in six to nine weeks, does not seem much of a deal for someone with a short time horizon. Also the longer time between reward or punishment and the action, the smaller the effect. This means you need to find a reward or punishment that can be implemented at least once a week. Also punishments can have adverse unintended consequences, so be careful.
I would talk with the teachers to find out what is causing the poor grades and then sit down with your son and come up with a set of rewards and punishments that can be implemented as least weekly and you both think are fair. Then try to implement the system consistently. Try to work on your relationship with him. do things he likes together, it is easy to let a dispute over grades ruin your relationship just when he is making important decisions.
Let me preface this by saying I’m posting before reading all of the replies…
I have 2 sons. (13 and 11). Their education has always been top of mind in our house. I’m talking since first grade. I’ve told them on several occasions that school is their responsibility just like working and paying for everything is mine. Period. I expect them to do their homework, study when they needed to, and do well on tests. Just as they expect me to buy food, clothes, take them all over the state of Texas for sporting events, buy new sporting equipment every season, ect.
I guess this has worked. I never have to speak to my boys about homework. It is done before I get home from work. They both make A’s and B’s. They do this because it is expected. They understand that this relationship works both ways and right now school is their job.
My point is that a hardassed approach of ‘don’t coddle your kids’ is not the solution to all problems. You need to find out why the behavior exists. Severe punishment - and yes, to a kid, six months of no video games is severe - is only going to frustrate both parent and child if the kid isn’t doing their work because of a learning disability or emotional problems (or any variety of other potential causes).
The same applies in the workplace. Human beings are complicated and sometimes good workers (and good kids) do bad work or bad things. I’ve sat down with an employee with slipping performance and had much more success with asking them what the problem was than by reading them the Riot Act. Most of the time, you can find out pretty quick what is going on once you try, and that is with people you barely know, not your own kids.
Kids are people too and their feelings and needs are real. I remember being a kid and a teen and one of the biggest problems is that adults just don’t listen or take your problems seriously. We as adults, with our experience, may think that their angst is irritating or even laughable, but to the kid, it’s very real. Their perception of time and the future is different but still real to them. This is why I bring up my own experience, to express why strict disciplinarianism can sometimes hurt more than it helps.
This is good advice too.
My old boss had a son that had failed 8th or 9th grade twice. TWICE. Finally got an assessment and found out he basical had a Forrest Gump like IQ. And proceeded to just FUCKING GIVE UP ON THIS KID and devoted all her attention to the Non-Forrest Gump like kid.
HOW in the HELL does someone not realize something ain’t quite right with their kid for 13-14-15 years? When we heard the news, none of us were surprised. How she treated this son afterwards just nauseated us.
Feedback, purple?
Anything here ringing the old campanile?
Uh…I was also miserable in middle and high school, too. I was the square peg. I didn’t fit in and seriously wished I was dead. I was told by the parents that there was no money to send me to college but in any case I wasn’t college material anyway so it would be a waste. I WAS good in art and English - I got consistent A’s in those subjects. But I didn’t get math. Starting with the basics. To this day, I still have to count on my fingers and need paper and pencil to figure out the smallest problems.
Understand that? I didn’t get math.
I. DID. NOT. GET. MATH.
I. DID. NOT. UNDERSTAND. MATH.
It was like speaking English all your life, and then they give you a book written in Arabic and say, translate this, and do it good or else.
Algebra class. I tried. I really, really did. By the third day, sitting at my desk, I could actually see the teacher and blackboard ahead of me…recede into the distance. It was all over.
Extra homework. Extra algebra practice. Staying after school. NONE OF IT HELPED. I certainly got no help from the weird old teacher (she was a math teacher, and she was of course not of this earth).
I wasn’t “rebellious”. There was nothing to “take away” from me. I had no help because I just didn’t get it. You could stand over me with a baseball bat, lock me in my room without food for a week, yell at me, sneer at me, call me stupid. None of that helped.
I DIDN’T GET IT.
I’m sorry your kid isn’t getting all A’s so he can get a big fat job like a lawyer or college professor and not have to sleep on a grubby mattress eating Hamburger Helper. Just saying, if he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t get it, and taking away everything enjoyable in his life is not going to make a lightbulb go on over his head. And he will be building up a nice reservoir of sheer hate for you.
Maybe he can get a job someday doing something useful with his hands, or doing something actually useful to people other than sitting behind a desk with college diplomas on the wall behind him.
I am a parent, and a couple of times my daughter’s grades have slipped, and we had to get them back on track.
First off, make sure there’s no physical/emotional/mental issues going on here. The first time my daughter started bringing home poor marks, I had her tested for dyslexia. Turns out she had it. I got a tutor for her, spent a lot of time and money on that tutoring, and resolved the issue. This was in grade school. I managed to get her to love books, because until she was in high school, I’d read to her every night. She didn’t love to read back then, but she did enjoy picking out books to have read for her. Of course, I mightily doubt that the OP’s child would enjoy a reading session each night.
The second time Lisa had problems was when she was in high school. She had turned pretty shy, and wasn’t asking the teacher for help when she didn’t understand. She was encouraged to ask the teacher, and we had some drills and extra credit work that she did at home.
In the OP’s case, I’d see if the student couldn’t get another math teacher. He might be having a personality clash with a perfectly good teacher, or she might just be a horrible teacher. It really doesn’t matter. He can’t or won’t learn with her. He would probably get along better with another teacher.
Since part of the problem is math, and you are getting a tutor, he’s probably going to be doing some extra drills. That’s what drills are FOR. They’re a pain in the ass, but they’re important.
Almost everyone else has said to get him to do his homework in public. This, plus a very definite time for homework and drills, is important. Check over his homework and drills.
Some people are saying “Don’t remove all his privileges”, but I notice that most of the people saying this are not parents. Sometimes a parent has to use extreme measures. I’d say to remove just about all privileges, with a few fun times allowed when he gets his homework and drills done to your satisfaction.
He’s not going to improve without some effort and sacrifice on YOUR part, I’m sad to say. It’s part of raising a kid.
Just out of curiosity, how is your daughter doing in community college?
Salinqmind: while the OP mentions math later in the thread as a specific subject area her kids have had trouble with, a pattern of Fs and Ds in all subjects indicate that the problem is more than just trouble with math.
I’ve been hit-or-miss with math. I hated 3 out of 4 HS math teachers as they were useless gits; they barely knew the subject matter (just teaching out of the book), and could not communicate it in any meaningful manner. But then I had one teacher who not only knew the subject matter front-and-back, but could make it seem easy, communicating in a variety of manners until even the people who stubbornly profess “I JUST DON’T GET IT!” finally got it.
And IME, people who dig in their heels and yell “I JUST DON’T GET IT!” have, in reality, given up, and are acting like juvenille asses throwing a temper tantrum.
And finally, no one, especially myself, is saying that you need a college degree to get ahead in life. There are plenty of skilled trades (ironically, many of which require some math, from basic to intermediate levels) which provide a very good living.
The numbers indicate that they are the exception, rather than the rule. Go back and reread the first sentence of this post.
Bearing in mind your point about how failing everything implies a bigger problem than difficulties with mathematics, some people really just don’t get it. Now, IMHO (and I apologise in advance to anyone who finds this offensive), anyone who cannot grasp* the material taught in public high schools is probably not very intelligent, but it would be a bit of a stretch to suggest that those people don’t exist.
*In the sense that they simply don’t have the intellectual capacity to understand it, not that they can’t understand it because of learning difficulties/poor teaching/language barriers.
As Zoe and I discussed in a previous thread, the egalitarian ideal that everyone ought to go to college has done wonders to advance the ideal of equal rights, but is simply wrong. Many- perhaps most- of the people who go to university in America (and throughout the West) are not college material and more importantly are wasting their time. If you’re going to be a plumber, you don’t need a degree in fluid mechanics or hydraulics or general engineering. It might help if you took a few business classes, particularly if you’re going to be self-employed, but there is no particular reason you need a college degree to replace a toilet or identify a leaking pipe.
If you want to advance beyond entry-level in skilled trades, you’d better believe that there’s some college-level knowledge/education involved. Math and Physics predominate.
But I guess even Joe Bob Six-Pack the Building Contractor needs unskilled laborers to tote barges and lift bails.
Mathematics for Plumbers and Pipefitters
This is the cosmic joke of today’s school system. I and the other honors students busted our asses for six years (that’s right, 7th and 8th grade too) and then went to college and drove ourselves deep into debt busting our asses there and many of us have gone on to graduate school for that final piece of paper that says “You made it.”
All for the privilege of working for $30,000 - $40,000 a year (and there are a lot of people I knew in HS not even making that much).
Meanwhile, the more motivated C and D students have gone into construction, contracting, plumbing, public works work, etc, etc and are pulling down 50, 60K.
Har, har, har.
My personal experience suggests otherwise. I went to Kumon for a while during junior high and hated it. It was humiliating and made me feel like a failure. I was stuck doing doing worksheets full of 2+2 = ? and 7-3 = ? and not quite being fast enough to graduate to the next level, while watching tiny overachievers (who probably started on Kumon when they were 4 years old) whipping smugly through calculus worksheets.
I guess my mom wasn’t too satisfied with Kumon either, since I got to quit after not too long. My math skills are still not top-notch, but my grades were fine in the end, and I made it through AP Calculus by the end of high school.
I was a bit like this in 8th grade, I just didn’t care. I sailed through primary school, and first year at secondary (grade 7) was fine. Then when I hit 13 second and third year were just shit. It was having to do stuff I was no good at and wasn’t interested in, home economics and maths and French…I hated it and played truant quite a bit. I never got less than C grades but I had been a straight A student up until then. My parents I don’t think really noticed, because my reports were always all right, with the occasional negative comment about my behaviour rather than anything else. I did my GCSEs, grades improved a little but I was still bored and angry (and depressed) most of the time.
But when I started my A levels at 16, I changed overnight. I dropped everything but subjects I was intensely interested in, and got back to grade As almost overnight. I was one of only 2 students in the history of our school to get straight As in my final exams (saying this not to show off but to show how big the change in me was). Went to uni, did a Master’s, did a graduate diploma, turned out fine, academically at least.
My brother, on the other hand, also averaged Cs, with some Ds, and left school at 16. He now works as a forklift driver and is married with three kids. He’s happy and settled. My dad nagged and shouted at him about his grades dozens of times during his school years, but it never helped - my bro just wasn’t academic.
The points I’m making are that there’s nothing wrong with poor grades in middle school, and that they can improve later down the line. But even if your son stays at a C, like my brother, so what? He may just not be that academic or that interested, and there’s nothing wrong with community college. And, most of all, at 14 I think taking away privileges will do more harm than good. As long as he’s doing enough to pass the year - and he won’t let his work slip as much as that - I don’t think his grades matter.
If I was in your shoes, it would be a respect thing - as some posters have said, your son shouldn’t feel he can get a free ride. But if he’s otherwise behaving, is a decent enough kid, doing his chores, perhaps doing a Saturday job, I’d cut him slack on this. I loved school at 17 and 18, but loathed it at 14 and 15. Sanctions and punishments would have made me worse, not better. He’s 14. As long as he’s not sticking two fingers up at you and being an entitled brat, I’d leave him be. It’s a shitty age and he’s got the rest of his life to worry about standards and percentages. Talk to him and make sure everything’s OK, but if it is, relax on the grades.
mudkicker: good advice.
$30-40,000 a year was an entry level salary when I graduated college over ten years ago. Do you still think I’m making $30-40,000 now? Do you think I’m going to be making the same money I make now in another ten years?
If you don’t teach him the importance of discipline and hard work now, he will have the rest of his life to worry about how much he hates driving a forklift for a living.
There’s nothing wrong with driving a forklift or being a plumber or working in a call center if that’s what you want to do. But you don’t want you kid to be in a position where there is a job he wants to do or a school he wants to go to but he can’t because his grades were too low and now he’s stuck.
I’ve seen a lot of people over the years who never really make anything of themselves because they never figure out how. They float through school getting shitty grades in stupid majors. Assuming they even go to school. Some just veg at home sponging off their parents where they float from one crappy job to the next.
Your kid doesn’t need to be a brain surgeon, but it;s better to learn good study habbits earlier rather than later.
I forgot to mention that at the tail end of 8th grade, Hallboy was diagnosed with situational ADD and began meds. He says it helps him a lot.
Let me clear my complaint up…
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My classmates and I have been out of undergrad for over five years. And many of them have gone on to Master’s degrees. $30/40,000 a year with that much education, today, is a joke.
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Especially compared to the $40/50,000 starting salary for a lot of public works/construction-type jobs that require little more than a government certification.
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I guess there is no 3. I thought there would be, but there’s not.