Study strategy of your high achiever child

[Anonymous]

I have a high achieving 10th grader at an all-girls private school known for rigor and hard grading. She has gotten all A's and A+'s because she's naturally interested in academics. She loves math and loves reading books. If we didn't send her to school, she would still learn these things on her own. She likes hanging out with her friends, but is not into sports and not yet into boys. I'm Asian, so I'm guessing people assume I am a tiger parent due to stereotypes. However, this is just her personality and we don't push her. I honestly wouldn't mind if she were less high achieving academically. In general, she is highly disorganized and forgetful. Her room is always a mess and her room and desk is just awful despite us making her clean it up once a week. She's your classic absent-minded professor type.

[Anonymous]

Tiger Mom here. We do not leave these things to chance. We teach study skills at home and make sure they practice using those study skills until it becomes a habit on the child's part. YMMV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tiger Mom here. We do not leave these things to chance. We teach study skills at home and make sure they practice using those study skills until it becomes a habit on the child's part. YMMV.

How long has that taken to bear fruit for those kids who aren't naturally high achievers? I have a bright hard working kid, when pushed. However, we seem to always be the ones to push him. How can we help him be more self-driven?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tiger Mom here. We do not leave these things to chance. We teach study skills at home and make sure they practice using those study skills until it becomes a habit on the child's part. YMMV.

Can you talk more about that? Which skills did you teach and at what age?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's genetic, OP. You need to parent the kid you have, not the one you wanted to have.

My oldest has severe inattentive ADHD and low processing speed. Even with meds, which greatly helped, it was very hard for him to focus and think through his homework within a reasonable timeframe. We twiddled at the margins with study skills, planner use, tutors for stuff he missed, but the reality is that he was born with a significant distractibility and slowness handicap. We had to sit next to him, redirect him, check if he'd missed any assignments, and issue reminders (ie, nag) all the live-long day. We tried to step back a bit for senior year, to prepare him for college. He's in college now and doing OK on his own, because he actually has a lighter workload than in high school. He takes the minimum credits every semester, and no double major.

My youngest has a high IQ, which compensates for mild inattentive ADHD, and also has a blessedly rapid processing time. She finishes her work in the blink of an eye and it's mostly correct, so she gets straight As without even trying.

Life is unfair.

This is cope.

This attitude is the reason why America is going downhill. Where is the growth mindset? The grit? The positive attitude? And no, using your ADHD or mild disability as a handicap is NOT okay.

I have inattentive ADHD, and my parents (poor immigrants from a country where education is the most important thing) pushed me very hard in school. I'm a doctor now and am much more financially secure than when I was a kid. But if I had used my inattentive ADHD (which, BTW, was only diagnosed my final year of med school, so I didn't rely on BS accommodations like a crutch like so many self absorbed DCUMers) as an excuse to not be pre-med or go to med school, I would have given up on so much.

Seriously, parent the kid you want! If the kid you have is not academically motivated, you NEED to light a fire under their asses so they can get moving. That's what happened to all of our family friends in our neighborhood (poor immigrant enclave of Queens), and almost all of us are smashing successes now.

Ohhhh I LOVE you “This is cope.”

First, you were always easy to beat on tests when I was in school because fundamentally, you aren’t really that smart,BUT you work hard super, super hard so you perform well.

You don’t understand that for some kids, this stuff (all of school) just comes easily. I never had to try hard at school, I got great grades, 5s on almost all the APs I took and school was always easy. Sorry it was hard for you, it is for one of my kids too. The other one takes after me.

I hope all of your grit and pushing made you so much happiness in your life. But based on your post, I think your definition of success and mine are vastly different.

[Anonymous]

I’m guessing he goes to public school. Switch him to private where he needs to work for his grades. That’s what worked for my kid. He became very lazy in MS and handed in meh work and still got As. Catholic school turned him around.