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[quote=Anonymous]As the parent of 2 young men who are now in college (one will graduate tomorrow -woo-hoo!), I'd venture a guess that your son just has freshman boy-itis.  In our experience, this is best cured by the shock induced in the patient upon seeing his 9th-grade transcript.  Recovery, in the case of both our sons, was complete and dramatic.  The upside was that it gave the school counselor a strong positive narrative line for the recommendation letter to colleges.

Seriously, there's not much a parent can do; your son has to decide for himself that he wants to do well and that good grades won't happen via magical thinking -- you have to apply your butt to the chair.  That said, we did 2 things -- 1 intentionally and 1 not -- which our sons have told us made a difference in their attitude.

1) If your son is showing up late to class, goofing around during class, and/or not turning in homework, you can take away privileges.  We did this -- intentially, of course -- and it showed that we were serious in expecting effort.  Note that we didn't say we expected a certain GPA or outcome, just the effort.

2) It's a little late in the game for this, but you might suggest that your son find a summer program at a college or university that interests him.  It doesn't have to be an academic program, but can be anything he might enjoy doing for 1 week.  After 9th grade, both our sons went to a 1-week residential sports camp at a university known for its program in that sport.  At the time we simply saw it as a chance for them to focus on this sport for a week and get some high-level coaching; we certainly didn't see any connection with academics.  Both now say that the camp was a real kick in the pants for them -- they figured out that if they wanted to go to a school like that, they would have to work hard.  (The funny thing is that they both ended up at a rival to the university where they attended camp.)     [/quote]

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