Need advice in dealing with teens

In My Humble Opinion
1

For the most part we’ve done pretty well raising our kids using some simple behavioral techniques: reward the good stuff, ignore the bad stuff, etc. But now as our oldest is approaching his teens it’s getting a little more tricky. The target behaviors are less black and white. When a four year old steps on your briefcase walking across the floor there’s not too much to debate about what’s good or bad. Some of the issues coming up lately are more complex.

For instance he went from being an A+ student with moderate effort to being an A-/B+ student with minimal effort. He also decided to drop off the cross country team, the only sport he’s shown any talent in.

How would you deal with these things? Ignore them? Nothing wrong with A-/B+ but there is something wrong with just doing minimal effort. Also I think it’s hard to force a kid to be on a team. And if we did decide to do something, what would we do? The books we used to help with childhood problems only address the bigger problems of adolescence, like lying, stealing, running away, etc. I’m thinking there may be some way to use use contingencies again, but can’t think of how to do it.

Any thoughts, knowledge, experience out there to share? Your own adolescence? Things you did with your kids?

2

Huh, he sounds just like me, except when my mother noticed the drop in grades and spoke to me about it; I explained the work was boring. Then I decided to hand my work in on time and studied for the occasional science test.

For the drop in grades, I suggest talking to him about it. Ask him why he has stopped doing his work, and perhaps give him motivation to do it. Tell him he can only play videogames after his homework is done, or that he can’t go over to Jimmy’s next Tuesday unless he studies for his math test first. My mother gave me the scholarship talk, which goes along the lines of “In college, you may not qualify for financial aid, but I’ve got your two younger siblings to support, as well as half of Jessie’s college bills to pay, so you better get an academic scholarship.” I don’t know if that talk works on normal kids though, since I’m obsessed with paying off bills and getting a good education, regardless of how lazy I can be outside the classroom.

As for cross country, I’ve never been much of a sports fanatic and I specifically didn’t join sports with my mother in mind, because I don’t want her to worry about rushing me off to practice just as she comes home. I would however, suggest talking it over with him, and asking why he quit. It is a personal decision, and you cannot force him to partake in sports if he doesn’t want to, but ask him to consider the effects of cross country. It’s a great way to stay in shape, a fun time filling activity, and is a wonderful way to meet friends. Actually, where I live, the cross country team is more like a cultish family, with all of them helping each other out and sticking together. However, if your system is anything like ours, cross country requires daily practices, early morning Saturday meets, and a certain number of hours exercising in the gym. That is a lot of dedication, and some people are simply not willing to commit to it.

Of course, IANAP.

3

He is approaching his teens? School does get harder the older you get, which might be an issue. “Not trying,” if that is his excuse to you, might be that he is simply afraid to admit it is more difficult for him.

And when dealing with teens, all I have to say is to encourage without smothering, respect him as much as he respects you, and try to maintain an open, honest relationship. If he matures fast, treat him maturally. If he is immature, address it likewise.

Most of all, try not to push him too much. Especially during the teenage years, this can be very enraging.

4

Teenagers don’t like to admit it, and they probably would in fact deny it, but they need as much parental attention as infants. Stay very involved. It can be tough–they say they don’t want that much involvement, but keep in touch with them. They may not want it, but they will appreciate it.

When they’re 22.

As to specifics, one thing about teenagers is that suddenly they need lots of sleep, but in most places middle school and high school start much earlier than grade school (which is backwards), and of course teens don’t like an early bedtime. So one reason for grade deflation and for dropping out of sports is that they’re tired.

Another is that they’re learning things that require a lot more concentration (let’s face it, algebra is harder than learning the multiplication tables) and it’s possible that they skimmed over some basics somewhere along the line, and missed some critical lesson on the most effective way to study. (And there are different ways that are more effective for certain kinds of learners–but mostly, in public schools, kids are only going to get one studying strategy, if any.) This causes a small failure, which becomes a self-perpetuating spiral. And can look like lack of effort. (To make it more fun, it can also be lack of effort.)

Hang in, nag (yes.) and keep in mind that your job is to get the kid safely (more or less) through adolescence and not to win a teenager’s popularity contest. Oddly enough we were Awful Parents to our teenagers, but one of them actually thanked us for being tough. (When he was 22.)

(Gee, enough parentheses in this post?)

Hilarity, survivor of 2 teenagers with one to go.

5

So could every other parent.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the cross country thing. Youths attitudes change.
Whats he/she doing with the time that was cross country time? Thats what your worry should be.
I was a jock. Both my kids are more talented than I ever was but they both dropped out of sports. I really believe it was because of the politics of high school sports. nuff said.
I don’t know waht to tell you about grades.
#1 kid could hold As without trying.
#2 can only hold Cs with effort.
They are both smart and quick witted but???
Good luck
just

6

How old and what grade is this teenager in?

7

Well i can’t say i’ve raised any teenagers in my day, but i’m not too far out of them to not remember them.

As for the grades, (please forgive the overarching statement) I’ve noticed that intelligent males get lazy with the general mentality of "I know i can Ace this, They know i can Ace this, so why bother putting the effort in when i could be playing video games (or some other distraction)

As for the sports team, i hate to sound efternoon special but he could be getting picked on by the team. Teenagers are just as spiteful as children but more intelligent about it. If he is inteligent “jocks” will see him as a threat and try to make him feel less than he is, because “jocks” need to be number One so they fix the inteligence problem by destroying self esteem and getting the kid to leave the team.
If he enjoys it and is have problems with team mates then he may leave it all the faster as he may not want something as special as that to be tainted in his opinion.

The one thing i can say for certain is don’t just ignore it. Ask questions but phrase and tone them in such away that you are not prying or critising just being concerned and observant.
Let them feel that you are still watching after them but not “watching” them. It may mean more to them than you may know just to know you spotted the difference.

If things get worse if grades slip further, sit down and talk with them like an adult. Let them understand that even though they may be having problems your not going to treat them like a child again.

let them know that if their having a problem you can trust them to either figure it out, or be mature enough to know when to ask for help. If you can get this across and they DO need help they will ask.

These are all things my mother did for me, she talked to me like an adult and treated me like an adult and if the situation called for it kicked me in the butt like an adult. Teens are stubburn, males even more so and even the best and brightest need to have it pointed out that they’re being bone headed.

Trust me i wasn’t the easiest sun. I had two older sisters so my mother had the experiance but i was able to try her patience alot. At some point she decided that i was going to make my own decisions no matter what she told me to do. (i’ve seen a lot of parents get very confortational over these things)

She stopped telling me what to do and started discussing things, pointing things out from her own experiance or those she’s seen, just like you might do with a friend, give advise point out possible trouble and trust them to make the decision, and be there to help pick up the pieces if neccesary.

And because she put this trust in me /I/ expected me to make mature decisions because obviously if she trusted me to then i could. at that point i realized i knew jack about a lot and i would frequently go to her for advise. Having adult…ish… conversations and discussions about anything.
I hope this helps some.

8

A-/B+ student? Wants to drop the cross country team?

I don’t have kids, but I’m having a hard time seeing the problem here. Compared to my teenage nieces and nephews, your kid sounds like an angel.

Let the kid enjoy his teen years a bit if that’s what he wants. He sounds like a good kid to me. If I were you, I’d be thrilled that these are the kinds of “problems” you’re having with your teens.

9

Maybe with cross country the problem isn’t with them, but maybe another kid being a ragining butthole. Maybe talk to the coach or other parents.

Also, I have to agree with Athena. Your soon to be teen sounds like they are doing fine so far. Keep on top of things but don’t micromanage too much.

10

My husband and I have taken the **‘Our Children Have Been Abducted by Aliens’ **
approach with our three children, two of whom are still teenagers.

The shocking change that comes over your adored, beloved, well-behaved children when they become teenagers is very hard for a parent to accept. My husband and I maintained the following principle, and it worked really well for us:

-That sulky, irrational grump sleeping in my child’s bed is not my child.
-My child was abducted by Alien Overlords and is living with an alien host family on a faraway planet. In turn, the Alien Overlords left a strange creature from another planet in my child’s place. He just looks like my son.
-The Alien Overlords will return the swapped children when they turn 21.
-Meanwhile, and here is the really important part, as long as my child is living with that distant alien family, and their alien child is living with me, I will treat this awful creature with the same respect, kindness, and understanding that I hope that alien family will extend to my adored child.

11

As a recently graduated teen, I can understand where he is coming from. The drop off the cross country team might be attributed to a) a coach he doesnt get along with, b) teammates he doesnt get along with, or c) laziness/lack of interest.

The drop in grades might simply be the same reason why my grades dropped; lack of interest/ too difficult. When I got into high school, I tried to stay in the upper level math classes like I had in junior high, but ended up almost failing out because I simply couldnt grasp the upper math as easily as the lower level stuff. In high school, friends brag about acing tests without studying, and the smarties really dont study and still do well. We normal people still need to at least read the material before the tests.

Another reason for the grades might simply be that he is sick of high school and ready to move on. At the end of my sophomore year I realized that high school was simply not for me, and I took the initiative and graduated a year early. While that drastic of a move is not for everyone, I can honestly say that I do not regret it at all.

While nagging him now might bring up his grades, he will probably make your life miserable while he is still in the house. Some kids might need the extra attention from parents about their grades, but as soon as my parents started getting on my case about grades I stopped studying alltogether out of spite. Once they backed off I started studying how I wanted to study and my grades went up.

12

Sounds to me like he’s simply growing in to an adult.

There comes a point in your early teens- usually right as high school starts- where you realize that just because you’ve done something all your life, that doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it. You realize you don’t have to keep your childhood friends. You don’t have to keep the identities that have been hanging around your neck since elememtry school. And most of all, you don’t have to be what your parents want you to be.

It’s one helluva thing to realize you arn’t just a manifestation of your parents’ collective will, and it leads to a lot of shaking up of things.

My advice is to really pick your battles. If you nag him about grades too much, grades are going to become something that belongs to you (and can be disregarded or rebelled against) and not him.

And find out what does interest him and support him in it. If he wants to skateboard, get him a skateboard and take him out to the skatepark. If he wants to make movies, find him a video camera and a computer and get him to the community television station. If he wants to be a punk rocker, take him to the shows and tolerate the green hair. The things he decides he likes now are going to stay with him for a while, and as long as he is active and channeling his energy in to something he loves thats not illegal, things will go all right.

13

I noticed, both with my own kids and the groups I’ve been involved in, that hormones kick in about midway through the fifth grade. At that point they begin the classic swagger and their attitudes change for the worse.

It’s hard to come down on a kid who’s getting A’s and B’s, even if you know he’s only giving minimal effort. Instead, try and find some subject he’s interested in. If he can’t learn more about it through school, find an evening or weekend class or a summer course that he can attend.

(I was a big one for giving my kids money for superior grades, until one of them started arguing that if I gave him $X for a 4.0 report card, I should give him .75 $X for a 3.0, .50 $X for a 2.0 and so on. He never accepted the concept of a “bonus.”)

As for cross-country, just ask him “Okay, if you don’t want to do that, what do you want to do?” Let him choose his extracurricular activity. As long as it’s not the junior heroin addict and Hepatitis C club, he’ll get more out of it that way.

14

About the grades thing - here’s what I’d worry about. Does he still care about his grades? Does he still care about academics?

I, as a teenager, definitely went through phases where, although I still cared about my grades and made sure they didn’t drop TOO low, I had other things (more having to do with personal growth) that needed my attention at the time.

15

As for the grades, it seems like your kid has figured out the law of diminishing returns - that the gain from going from a A-/B+ student to a straight-A student isn’t worth the effort involved. If you want him to do better, increase the rewards for getting straight-A’s enough that it is worth the effort for him. Either that or just ignore it - I started slacking and doing the same thing grade wise when I was 12 (am 21 now) and I am doing just fine.

Onto the cross-country, unless he is getting fat and won’t excercise, don’t worry about. Really, sports in school don’t matter at all in the long run; IMHO, I think all school sports programs should be shut down, and the extra money be spent on better quality academic teachers.

16

Is it drugs? Maybe it’s gangs? :eek:
Cross country does kind of suck so I wouldn’t worry about that.

Common!! What would fat stupid hicks have to look back on when tthey’re 35?

17

About the homework thing:

This summer I read countless essays on the subject “How I’ve changed in seventh grade.” (blech) and there was one topic trend that I found both facinating and a bit frightening: 10-20% of the kids cited “I realized that homework affects/effects [they have no idea which to use] my grades.” This of course was followed by “my grades improved when I did and handed in all my homework.”

7th grade. And they’re only just now realizing that not bothering to do or hand in homework hurts their grades. Yikes.

Given that, I’d find out from him (perhaps implying that you’ll check with a teacher for truthfulness) if he’s been doing all his homework and handing it in. If he’s been “forgetting” now and then that is a good explaination for the drop in grades - especially if you used to keep on him about doing his homework and have come to figure he’ll do it on his own now that he’s older.

18

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this thread. Work kind of snowballed on me this week and I didn’t have enough time and energy to read the responses closely till now.

Thanks to everyone who replied. As always with this board, lots of useful and thought provoking stuff.

For those who asked: He just turned thirteen and is entering 8th grade.

For those who said “Don’t worry about it” the concern is that he’ll develop and stick with bad work habits and wind up way underemployed for the rest of his life. Of course I don’t want to be a jerk in either direction, by making him burn out or by letting him off too easy. But he really is a bright creative kid who could do some greast things academically over the next few years, maybe even his whole life, and I’d like to do what I can to help him to develop good study and work skills.

19

Don’t push him too hard, or it might become a power struggle- he won’t do his work because that’s the only way he can feel that he has some control over his life. The feeling that you have no control over your life isn’t a pleasant one for anybody.

And remember, some of us do a lot better when we’re not being pressured or hovered over. I was a total underachiever in high school, because I loathed the way my mom would fuss over me if I got good grades. So I got good at getting good enough grades not to get yelled at, but not good enough to be fussed over. In college, when she could fuss all she wanted because I wasn’t living at home, I had four majors and did very well.

What you could end up with by trying to pressure him too much is someone who puts a lot of effort into doing what he thinks he’s supposed to do in high school and perhaps into college, but who later thinks it isn’t worth the effort and just drifts through life after that.

Does he have some particular subject or activity that he’s especially interested in? You could see about getting him books to read about that, or extracurricular classes (perhaps at a local community college?). He might be more willing to put in some effort on something he finds interesting, and, who knows, he might see how some things that aren’t interesting on their own are helpful toward doing what he likes.

I hated math up until I took algebra in 7th grade. After that, it still wasn’t one of my favorite subjects. I didn’t have much trouble doing it (other than doing arithmetic in my head, which I suck at), but I didn’t find it interesting at all. I did, however, find astronomy and physics interesting. Math became more interesting, because it could be applied to something that was interesting. I ended up getting a degree in math, among other things.

Oh, and if he says what he wants to be when he grows up- encourage him, but don’t get your hopes up that that’s what he’ll actually end up doing. My sister said she wanted to be a marine biologist when she was in 7th grade, and my parents latched onto that and were very disappointed when she later changed her mind. It caused a fair amount of tension between them.

20

Two thoughts from someone who has greatly enjoyed having teenagers…

I sat with my son when he was going into 8th grade and had crashed and burned in 7th. “Kid,” I said “I have a house, a job, a family, a car, a vacation every summer. You have none of those things. In the end, it makes not a rat’s ass difference to my life whether you ever do. But it’ll make a big difference in yours.”
Then I told him that I would sign his report card every quarter and provide help if he asked for it, but this gig was his…not mine. What he makes of school from now on was on his own shoulders. It was amazing what changes that conversation produced. Kids NEED to be responsible for their own lives and choices and behaviors, not because they think they’ll get in trouble if they do something wrong but because, in the end, they have to live with them.

And my second thought is…the more responsiblity you give your kid, the more responsible he/she becomes. My kids have always done their own laundry, cleaned their own rooms and bathroom, fixed their own lunches, paid their own car insurance and gas, and handled their own money. And, as I said, I have LOVED having teenagers around. They’re not a burden on me, they shoulder their own load. Makes a difference. Anyway…that’s my take on things.