I have an 11 year old son and 15 year old daughter. My daughter is quite intelligent and is in the TAG (talented and gifted) program (probably not much longer though) . She just finished almost failing 10th grade with D’s in every subject except a C in Art and an E in Chemistry. She is going onto to 11th grade only by the grace of God. This is a repeat (though worse) of the performance last year which was mostly comprised of D and C grades. The typical pattern is that she starts the year with A’s and B’s and finishes with D’s and E’s. The main problem as I see it is that”
1: That I have her 30% of the time and my X has her 70% of the time.
2: She really doesn’t seem to really care about doing well in a real world sense
I don’t have to call Sherlock Holmes in on the case as to the reason why she is failing academically. When she is with my ex-wife she completely blows off her homework. My ex works a retail job that gets her home (tired) at 7:30 PM in the evening 4-5 days a week and she is unmotivated to check her daughter’s work. When she is with her mother my daughter basically screws around on the net after she gets home at 3:30 on the bus, eats dinner after her mother gets home then takes a nap after dinner, wakes up around 9-10 PM (her mother is asleep at this point) and stays up till 2AM-3AM on the net, until she collapses and goes to school exhausted the next day. Wake up and repeat.
Because my hours are more flexible I can make her do their homework when she is with me, but I catch her lying to me almost continuously about what schoolwork she has to complete and accomplish, and a check of her book bag almost always roots out numerous missed homework notices. I can’t really blame my ex for this behavior as a 15 year old is supposed to know enough to complete their homework and she lies to her mother just like she lies to me.
I have explained to the point of exhaustion (mine and hers) interspersed with a fair amount of jumping up and down when report cards come out, why it is important she does well in high school as a preparation to apply to college. She seems to desperately want to get out of the local area and get into the big, wide world and go to college, but she refuses to do her school work. Although she is a major league drama queen, my daughter is not a nasty or disobedient child in any overt sense and seems hold the incompatible desire(s) to be academically accomplished, popular and well liked (she’s 5’11" and a bit of a techno music geek) and not wanting to do any significant work towards this goal re homework.
This was a very long setup to the problem I’m having. I love her unconditionally and she is my little princess but dammit **I. am. tired ** of being lied to and manipulated like a hand puppet so that she can escape doing her schoolwork. My ex is congenitally clueless and will stay clueless until the day she dies. My daughter is very intelligent and tests in the top 1% of most ability indexes but has inherited my distractability, her mother’s procrastination and my mother’s drama queen tendencies, which does not necessarily make for an easy life or a good student. I have busted my ass to try to give her the tools to succeed and I am so disgusted at this point I’m on the verge of writing her off as a college prospect. I told her after this last year ending report card, that, in all seriousness, a permanent career in the fast food service industry is where she is headed and that I am really just completely burned emotionally re being able to care at this point. The truth is that I do care very much about her success and I want the best for her, but I am really beside myself as to how to get from point A to point B.
Anyone have kids in this situation? What was the solution?