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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I promise you he will be fine.  I will always choose smart over doing well in school.  Once he gets to a certain point he'll choose what he wants.  If he really is smart he will do well because he wants better.  He will figure it out.

If he doesn't he will be fine because he will have chosen this.  School is about rules and what you are supposed to do.  Life is not like this necessarily.  Life is about more than just hard work.  The best thing that school can help you with is understanding the value of hard work.  But he will learn this in or out of school at a certain age.

I was like this, my DD is like this and I personally know people like this.  You have to wait until something clicks with drive.

You also don't always need drive to be successful.  You can absolutely figure out how to make a great living without wanting to run the world.  I am the laziest person ever who hates to work.  Everyone who knows me things I'm really driven and ambitious.  They could not be more wrong!  Through a combo of luck and ability, I do very very well.  Nothing to do whatsoever with drive.  There is nothing wrong to work as smart as you can to do well without wanting to work as much as possible.  Smart is the name of the game.  Have some faith in him.

The only thing that negates the above is if it's something about learning disabilities or mental health impacting his abilities.  That's important ti assess.[/quote]

Funny but I would chose working hard and being a good citizen over being smart.

You do have some good tips but that is where I disagree[/quote]

What I mean is -if you are smart - the chances are that you will figure things out and your ability to do something really well is likely higher than someone with less ability/smarts.  I'm not suggesting being a good citizen or working hard are not great goals.  I'm suggesting that if you are truly (in this case OP seems to be) worried about how well your kid is going to do because they are saying they want to coast and not go nuts trying hard, that they can actually still get from point A to point B IF they have a great deal of ability/intelligence.  I know a ton of people who didn't click in the school department but post school years, started their own business and became wildly successful.  But, they are also very sharp.  They were no dummies.  So while they were slackers, they had great potential.  Now you can be a really great person and hard worker but if you aren't the sharpest knife, you can still find happiness and so fine but what I'm suggesting is your likelihood of what OP any someone looking for "success" is less than that really smart person.  That's all I meant.  Intelligence does count for something.  Not everything, not happiness and certainly effort and kindness are even higher on the list of goals, but if you have brains, your life is going to be hell of a lot easier.

Let's face it, many many many people who are successful have both brains and worked hard so often you need both but in the context of OPs concern that her kid only wants to coast by - I'm just saying - he well may be able to coast by if he really is that smart and don't worry too much about him cause he's not going to completely fall on his face no matter what!  What he ultimately wants to do will be within his choice but anyone that smart is probably going to figure out how to get where they want to be.[/quote]

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