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Comments
If your son will get a warning and a probationary period before he gets kicked out of school, I'd let him fail ... chances are good that once he sees the consequences, he'll shape up on his own.
What I did in middle school ... in 6th and 7th grade, I warned the Ensign that these were the last years he could get away with poor grades. His 8th grade g.p.a. would influence his high school placement and high school grades would impact college choices. So 6th and 7th grade were the last years he could see what the impact of goofing off would be without it affecting his future.
He did goof off, and got lower grades from lack of doing homework ... then in 8th grade he buckled down and got excellent grades.
Now, in 9th grade, he's slacked off, but still manages to get his work done. Mostly.
Enneagram 5w4. I'm researching what that means, before designing t-shirt art about it.
"I feel no shame in making lavish use of the strongest muscles, namely male ones (but my own strongest muscle is dedicated to the service of men - noblesse oblige). I don't begrudge men one whit of their natural advantages as long as they respect mine. I am not an unhappy pseudomale; I am female and like it that way." RAH
We have had the same issues with our now 16yo. We did all the taking away, nagging, and general yelling type stuff and none of it made much difference, except to frustrate us further.
Instead we sat him down and told him he was on his own to get his stuff done, that we weren't going to monitor, nag, etc..
Our only real requirement for him now, is to maintain a B average so that the car insurance will be affordable when he gets his license. He will have to pay the difference if he doesn't make it.
Since he is trying to get a part time job at the local computer store, and will need to drive, this seems to be giving him some motivation.
In a couple more years he will be on his own, so we've figured that he needs to start learning how to do stuff himself, because we won't be around to nag at him then. Better to start learning now and get a little practice before the real world comes.
Now..our 10 yo DD, she's a different case. She's in all the advanced, gifted stuff the school offers and is still sort of bored. Her GT teacher said the smart ones are the ones at MOST risk to drop out, because they get bored out of their minds.
I'd add, that our kids have learned more on their own via the internet than I would have expected. DS is major computer nerd, and has learned programming, has run a minecraft server for profit, etc.. DD is artsy and has learned painting, illustrating, etc..
The most important thing you can do is to teach your kids to think and create on their own. In the new economy, that's the way ahead.
@mrsozzy got some books about how to motivate the kids, that's where we got the semi hands off approach from, and it has worked the best, for our kiddos anyway.
YMMV, but if what you're doing now isn't working, you can't make it much worse by trying a new way.
The problem we see over and over is that he won't own up to his mistakes. He waits too long and then doesn't have a plan to get himself out of his bind. He runs into a wall and then hopes it will just 'go away'. I don't operate in that matter. I may not be the most meticulous planner or having everything outlined and perfect, but I can trouble shoot like a pro. I can think on my feet. I can get shit done (on time, even if it's coming down to the wire!). That's what I model for my kids. So hopefully my son will learn a way that works for him.
Will type more tomorrow when I am back at a keyboard ... too hard to respond on smartphone ... and no judgement implied that your parenting is poor .... poor parenting is when the parents don't care or get involved - you clearly do both
Peace!
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Fuck Culture. Live your life - Beatrice
I have absolutely nothing to offer in the way of good advice
There are some difficult years in there.
I was fortunate enough not to be in an environment where I would be permanently excluded for my behaviour (poor performance relative to my ability, truancy, disorganisation).
I grew up with a Mom that could pull off crazy stuff too (and I'm now that Mom). Some of that was just inborn talent, but a lot of it is because she has a broad skill set to draw off of. She could whip together a costume at the last minute because she'd been sewing for 30 years.
It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. http://www.wisdomgroup.com/blog/10000-hours-of-practice/
You can make a cool card for your H because you know how to use graphic design software. You've put in the hours. You have a big bag of tricks to use in order to accomplish things.
Your son is leaving things to the last minute, but because he's still young he doesn't have the skill set, or experience to be able to pull it off.
I try to impress upon kids that developing a broad skill set gives them more leverage to be able to do cool things. You never know when some oddball thing you learned in 10th grade will come in handy, but chances are it will someday.
@Winter - you said you don't care about 'how' he chooses to study ... well, i suggest that 'how' to study might turn out to be exactly the place to start fixing your son's underachievement ... maybe he stares at the books and doesnt know how to begin to get all that info organised into the most important points and themes to be able to put into his test responses or writing assignments, etc ... maybe he takes poor notes so when he goes to review them, there is nothing to mine for nuggets ... forcing him to sit for 2 hours at a table is not the same as making sure he is able to use those 2 hours productively ... taking away distractions / privileges doesnt fix the problem ... i think it is common knowledge for folks attentively raising and educating kids that there are a couple of commonly seen plateaus where kids stall out and start to struggle after coasting on natural ability ... 3rd grade is one ... 8th grade is another ... some lucky naturally gifted high achievers don't hit a plateau until after high school (or beyond) ... you can 'watch him like a hawk' but the necessary step after watching is analysing what you see and intervening to guide him to better habits
or - perhaps the thing to look at is that your son's capacity is not as high as you think it is - maybe an academically accelerated atmosphere is not his place to shine ... if he earns a 2.4 at the advanced school, he'd probably earn a 3.4 or higher in a regular school - not too shabby, right?
you mention 'personality' and i almost always respond 'BS' when people throw that out as an excuse / explanation regarding a child's behaviour (i am NOT including special needs children in this generalization - only children without medically diagnosed learning / developmental/emotional disabilities, etc) ... every kid is entitled to their personality but personality has nothing to do with conformance to expected behaviors and learning how to exhibit the practices of achieving students ... elementary aged kids need to be trained in how to be students in a way that matches their ability to do so - not all kids learn the same way, but they CAN all learn the same things even if they do not achieve in the same way or to the same level based on capability ... if the skills are learned in elementary school, they are 'in place' for middle school and high school ...
and personality even less to do with experiencing the consequences of failing to adopt and exhibit the practices .. both of my sons have very different personalities from each other, but they both learned the skills (even if they learned them in different ways according to their personalities) ... we have friends with 3 daughters with very different personalities but they all are strongly achieving young women (Nursing school grad / Teaching school college student on full scholarship / HS senior accepted on scholarship to Pre-Med program) ... dont let your son be deceived about personality effects - its a cop out and an excuse to give up instead (imo)
you say you are not about keeping up with the joneses, but i seem to recall in your thread from last fall that you brougt up that there was an element of prestige associated with going to the advanced school and about excelling at sports ... i suggest that even caring about 'prestige' is a form of keeping up the with the joneses because prestige is nothing more than something for other people to look at and admire ... you yourself last fall expressed that you want to be envied by people ... it might be useful for you to at least inspect if your stress comes in part from wanting to feed those needs
i do wish you and your son good luck and i do not think you are a poor parent ... i share my opinions in hope that something gives you an idea of how you can achieve the outcome you want
peace
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Fuck Culture. Live your life - Beatrice
Do you believe that the only reason kids don't succeed or struggle is because they haven't been taught the proper ways?
even after we factor out the numerous obstacles that come in the form of environmental causes (e.g. poverty that leads to suboptimal nutrition, lack of access to educational support materials, lack of adequate/stable housing or healthcare, lack of parental presence due to shift work, hospitalization, incarceration, etc, or neighborhood violence), chaotic home life (e.g. substance abuse, domestic violence, children in caretaker role for elderly relatives or younger sibs, parade of problematic 'significant others' in parents life, etc) there are still simple questions of capacity ... its hard to address, but half the people are of below average intelligence and can not be reasonably expected to achieve the objectives of contemporary education - it was fine when we were all just farmers or unskilled laborers or hunters / gatherers; today - not so much ... especially when the teachers typically come from the bottom 20% of high school students in the previous generation and using methods that are suspect at best and downright deleterious to learning at worst.
kids have it hard - they need the big people in their life to smooth out the distractions so they can get on with the hard work of achieving to their best potential
ETA: i do not believe that personality = choices ... i beleive that people of many different personality types can make the same choices ... it reads as though your son is choosing to not employ the skills that he has learned that could lead to higher achievement ... i understand that you bristle at 'conformance', but its all a matter of degree, isnt it? ... we all want to think of ourselves as noncomformists, but we all 'conform' to something, don't we?
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Fuck Culture. Live your life - Beatrice
I have my own business and am well educated. Both my wife and I have college degrees. We have been quite focused, from the very beginning, on our children's education. I have taught them study strategies. I have enforced study times. I have reviewed homework. And with rare exceptions, they have always earned mediocre grades. My older son, now a senior in high school, has finally started doing well in school but he has already severely impacted his choice of college. My younger son (a 10th grader), has done the same.
I have tried everything including something I swore I would never do--I tried rewarding good grades with $$ but even that didn't work. I used to ground them if they had a C average in any class. My younger son, in the 8th grade, spent more of the school year grounded than he did a free man. Nothing has made a difference.
I finally decided that lessons learned the hardest are learned the best. He is content with mediocre grades. He will either wake up at some point or he will limit his vocational options.
School sports programs don't seem to have the same structure that they did previously, so often times they're not providing enough rigidity to certain personality types. Some boys actually do need the Denzel Washington coach from "Remember the Titans", but that figure is effectively gone from HS sports these days. I'm not making a value judgment here btw; I'm just pointing out that you can't count on that type of discipline/structure from that activity, like you could say 30+ years ago.