Reply to Flunking out of 9th grade

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1. Test for hidden LD's if you haven't already. Also rule out depression, drug and alcohol use.

2. Sit down and do career day and a simple budget with him showing what life will be like when he is on his own. What job? How many hours? What is the actual range of pay for such a job? Use real data he can find on line. Then figure out taxes, where he can afford to live, food, utilities, clothing, etc. Sometimes they have too see real data to understand that they are now stepping on the path to their future. Failing out of high school has significant financial and life style consequences down the road. Actually starting backwards can be an interesting way to look at it too. Where do you want to live? What does it cost to live there and figure out what annual salary is needed to start out on a life in that location. Then do the job options available to a high school drop out and see if he can make it add up to enough to live where he says he wants to live.

3. Once he settles on a realistic career goal (not that he has to stick to that one, of course), then he might listen when you talk about what he will actually have to do in the next four years to make that career a possibility for himself.

There are many paths to success, but helps to understand that you are on a path.

Good luck.[/quote]

Flip the priorities on this one. Jeez. Explaining to a 14-year-old that OMG MAYBE HE WON'T BE ABLE TO BUY IN COOL TOWN X is not going to have much, if any, impact.

Achievement is [b]not[/b] the basic problem here. It's the kid's behavior and apparent depression, probably combined with a parental and peer culture (as exemplified in the quote post), that are driving that problem.[/quote]

Hence the 15:06 correction. And did you not read #1?

The rest is only if there are no other issues. FWIW, I pass on this mini-economics exercise because it worked for us. It was fun and eye-opening for our DS and made a huge difference in his priorities and efforts. It was done with humor, spontaneously sparked by something he said, and not as a come to Jesus lecture. The discussion matured him a little bit. But mostly, school for him, which was just a boring place he had to go and do what others told him to do just because they told him to do it, now has a personal purpose that he finally understands (like the PP's kid who wants to go to a particular college). He's never been a people-pleaser and is the last kid who would succumb to outside pressure to get good grades, so we tapped in to his self-interest and his own desires in life, and it worked.

There is a big difference between the message you need to send to a kid who is at risk of not graduating high school versus the unnecessary pressure culture put on kids to go to HYP and the like. [/quote]

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