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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My parents focused on effort. “We see you working hard and are really proud of your effort. I understand that there are times you are frustrated but you keep working and that is impressive. Here is how Dad and I are going to support you. All the hard work you are putting in is working though. Do you see how you are doing examples here better? That is amazing.”

The key is you frame the conversation with both kids based on effort. They might need to put effort in in different ways but you focus in on the fact that the one with good grades is doing a great job listening to the teacher and finding ways to do other things when they are done in class. They are not distracting other kids who are working and that is hard to do.

DS has been a solid 4 student and is now a straight A student in MS. He is smart and doesn’t have learning issues or other factors that make learning hard. We still focus on his effort. The homework assignment we saw him spend 5 minutes on was a B. A B is a good grade but if he had made the effort to spend more time on it, it would have been a higher grade.Our job, for him, is to help him develop good study skills and work skills when school isn’t hard. So we praise his effort when he comes home and reviews notes for his harder classes before playing video games, even when he doesn’t have to. [/quote]

Don’t reward either kid for their grades, celebrate the hard work they both put in.  Also, point out that knowledge is the goal, not the grade.  Grades are just a rough indicator of how much is being learned.

Poor grades indicate that they may need extra help to learn the necessary content, so it’s an opportunity to discuss how you can help them (communicating with teacher, tutoring, screening, etc.).  Similarly, while all As is an indicator that the child is doing well, too much emphasis on grades can eventually make it tempting to focus on the grade more than the content (cramming to learn something just long enough for a test, cheating, etc.).  [/quote]

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