Anonymous wrote:Just spoke to a friend, we both have 15 yo sons who can be classified as lazy and not too ambitious about grades.

My strategy was closely watching his schoolwork since freshman year and trying to make sure he finishes and submits all his assignments. He has a mix of As and Bs with two honors classes last year and one honors class this year.
My friend is of an opinion that her son needs to figure it out. He has more advanced classes but also a few Cs and one D. I am not sure what they are going to do but she is saying she can’t and doesn’t want to track his hw and major assignments and make sure he retakes his tests if needed. He’ll have to go to CC if he doesn’t get into a 4 year school.
Who do you think is right here? Have you followed either of these strategies and do you regret it or are you validated in your approach now that your child is an adult?

I was you with my first 2.

With my 3rd I am like your friend.

We will see.

I come from a culture where children's independence is valued, and parents don't get involved in schooling. DC missed about 30+ days of school every year in high school. I really thought he wouldn't even graduate. He was testing my patience.
I have no idea what his grades were, but he got 30 credits transferred to Nova.
School is easy and he works 20 hours a week.
The plan is to transfer to state school in 2027 when he is eligible for in-state tuition. I'm staying in DC.
I did mention trade school, but he wanted to go to college.
OP, you two have different kids. There's no right or wrong.

Anonymous wrote:You’re both wrong. Your job is to help your children learn the skills they need, not to abdicate responsibility (like your friend) or to control via arbitrary rules (you). Work to get them to develop buy in about the need for them to be responsible for the outcome of their life. Require effort, if anything. But respect who they are, even if that’s different from who you want them to be.

+100.

You’re both wrong. Your job is to help your children learn the skills they need, not to abdicate responsibility (like your friend) or to control via arbitrary rules (you). Work to get them to develop buy in about the need for them to be responsible for the outcome of their life. Require effort, if anything. But respect who they are, even if that’s different from who you want them to be.

Don’t helicopter. It will backfire. In so many ways. Now is the time for mistakes, not later.

We never helicoptered our kids in terms of homework assignments etc. What we did do from an early age was to teach them that succeeding in anything takes really hard work and if you are not willing to put in the time you won’t succeed. This wasn’t a one time conversation by any means. With our youngest of three we had to have this conversation quite often but she has been very successful in college and in her career. Parents need to be teachers not just class work monitors.

I also have a 15 year old. I’d b over him if he had even a b. He has a few b+ and the public school seems so not hard that I think it’s totally reasonable to have almost all A’s. I went to private and had like a 3.2. A c in public school regular classes in totally unacceptable and my kid is not going to community college.

My DC went to a school where parental oversight was frowned upon. (There were still MANY parents that still helicoptered). It was so tough to go hands off and I wasn’t sure that he would do well. He ended up doing very well in school, but not a superstar. He had many friends that had better grades and got into better schools. He got a full scholarship to a southern university, and from day 1 in college he was driven. He graduated on time, worked in his field for a few years and now is applying for an MBA…all on his own.

There is a book called the "Self Driven Child" that totally changed my perspective on this (to let kids take accountability for their own work.)

I don't monitor as they complete things. I do make a point of looking over things afterwards so they know someone is watching. I do think that pushes them to do better. So, watching but not controlling.

Anonymous wrote:There’s an article in the Atlantic right now about how the key to happiness at this stage is to expect less from your kids. I couldn’t read it since I didn’t have my login… but maybe someone can post. I go wildly back and forth between trying to be a tiger mom and being very laid back and laissez faire. Now my morning has agreed with me that she should have taken her ECs more seriously and not dropped them. Infuriating, but at least she admits now I was right.

This is the approach I am taking with my husband for our kids (16 DS and 13 DS). My parents were more involved until high school when they divorced. My mom was overwhelmed and just let me run on auto-pilot for school. My grades actually slipped freshmen to sr year but I was able to get into college after a few years of CC and working. Looking back this is what I needed because I quickly go serious after realizing the value of college while working dead-end hourly wage jobs. My college grades were excellent.

So with my kids I don't want to pressurize them by micromanaging. Their generation is also more skeptical of college ROI.

Well I don’t have adult children yet, I have a HS sophomore and senior. Our plan is to expect a lot from them because we know they’re smart and capable. We need to see them working hard—if they work hard and still get a C then that’s ok, but not working for it does not fly in our house. We check grades once a week on the weekend, and we ask about missing assignments or talk about making things up, but we don’t hover, I haven’t seen any assignment they do unless they ask me to look at it.

I think we did well early on by giving them age appropriate chores, and making them responsible for their own sports gear and packing their own school bag and pool bags from a very young age. No mom or dad toting all the towels and goggles or running around the house helping them find their cleats. We set them up with systems (ie this box is for shinguards and cleats, this box for soccer socks) and expected them to be part of the process of making those get back in the right place. We made lists but made them back their own bags for vacations and keep track of their own things. All of these things help build their executive functioning. One of my kids does have ADHD so we had more reminders for that one and more systems, but those expectations helped grow their capacity.

We also aren’t afraid of having limits on their phones. Phones are sucking out their attention spans in a bad way. Don’t get sucked in to “all my friends can have their phones in their room at night” and “none of my friends have a time limit on instagram.” Be strong and lock it down as needed.

My kid fit into this category, and I think a lot of boys right now. My kid has ADHD. He is a freshman in high school and I decided that I can't let him cut off opportunities for success while he is trying to mature and we get his medication figured out. I will remind him about the need to study and do his homework. While he is somewhat lazy, he does want to do well. He wants good grades and to be successful in life. He is extremely smart, but lacks executive functioning.

He has mostly A's with a couple of B+, and this week, I've been trying to decide whether he is just not going to be a straight A student. He was really upset about a B+ got in a class, but I saw him work hard on the presentation so I told him I wasn't upset about it. For me, it's about the effort.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP. To address some comments:
- I don’t think it’s the parents’ excuse not to pay for college (on my friend’s part and definitely not on my part)
- no known issues such as adhd or anxiety but maybe?
- as for me, yes, my strategy is letting him mature as much as possible without irreparable harm to his grades. If he is still the same by college time, then he either doesn’t go or goes to CC or drops out, but then I can take it because he is an adult.

My friend did what you did, bird dogging her son through high school.

It totally backfired. She did so much for him that he had zero confidence or organizational skills in college and barely finished.

Now he is a car detailer. 100 grand on college shot to hell.

Okay this is interesting! Did she help him with his studies in college in any way or was he on his own?
And also a rhetorical question. How do we know he would have been better off if she let him be on his own (and possibly fail) in HS.

Anonymous wrote:OP. To address some comments:
- I don’t think it’s the parents’ excuse not to pay for college (on my friend’s part and definitely not on my part)
- no known issues such as adhd or anxiety but maybe?
- as for me, yes, my strategy is letting him mature as much as possible without irreparable harm to his grades. If he is still the same by college time, then he either doesn’t go or goes to CC or drops out, but then I can take it because he is an adult.

My friend did what you did, bird dogging her son through high school.

It totally backfired. She did so much for him that he had zero confidence or organizational skills in college and barely finished.

Now he is a car detailer. 100 grand on college shot to hell.

Anonymous wrote:This is going to be individual dependent. Whatever you do, don't ruin your relationship with the child or cause mental distress for him. Arrange for him to talk to some kids attending colleges or in new jobs and take mentorship from them.

I think he does experience some mental distress when I take his phone away and have him sit in his room and do his hw for the day, but overall he doesn’t hate me too much. I am more worried about whether I’m even giving him a chance to learn how to do it himself. He is better this year than he was last year but still whenever I let go - there are missing assignments and C or D as a current grade is not unheard of. He then pulls it up to a B.
-OP