Help me land the chopper!

[Anonymous]

DP, but I have the same exact problem as OP. Thanks for the advice and the book recommendations. I did back off and let him be in charge in 6th and 7th grades because I realized that he should learn this in middle school, not high school or college where the stakes could be higher. Those years, I only paid attention to math class. The rest of the classes I left him pretty much on his own. He did some mediocre work in some classes and I was anxiously awaiting a grade that would reflect both the mediocre effort and quality. But the teachers at our "nurturing" private school let me down and gave him all As - I think the lowest grade he got was a B on a paper. So all he got from that was "I can do mediocre work and still manage to get an A" - argh. The teachers said that they were being less strict on grading and deadlines because the kids had a hard time and suffered during the pandemic. So back to the drawing board, I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP, but I have the same exact problem as OP. Thanks for the advice and the book recommendations. I did back off and let him be in charge in 6th and 7th grades because I realized that he should learn this in middle school, not high school or college where the stakes could be higher. Those years, I only paid attention to math class. The rest of the classes I left him pretty much on his own. He did some mediocre work in some classes and I was anxiously awaiting a grade that would reflect both the mediocre effort and quality. But the teachers at our "nurturing" private school let me down and gave him all As - I think the lowest grade he got was a B on a paper. So all he got from that was "I can do mediocre work and still manage to get an A" - argh. The teachers said that they were being less strict on grading and deadlines because the kids had a hard time and suffered during the pandemic. So back to the drawing board, I guess.

Or maybe you've learned that your standards are different than the school's standards. And learning to do "good enough" work is actually an essential life skill. Didn't you ever have classes where performing less than your all-out best still resulted in a good grade? And if so, didn't it make sense to do that and devote the extra time to other things?

[Anonymous]

This is OP. Thanks for the advice, everyone. My kid is pretty good getting their work done, meeting deadlines, and planning ahead, and was very successful in middle school, fwiw, but I'm just worried that the jump in cognitive functioning will be a lot going from middle school to high school.

I don't expect them to go to a top school, but I would like them to succeed in high school to the extent possible.