Frustrated Parents Seeking Help!

I use to teach 7th grade until I had my babies and now stay home. Let me just say this one of the hardest times in their life. It will get better :). Don't compare you kids they are not the same. If he not getting in trouble in school, doing well making A's and B's just be happy for him. There will come a time (probably next year) that he will focus harder on school. Didn't we all go through that phase in life when we just got by. He is a normal teenager trying to be an adult the more you try to control the issue the harder it will be. Sounds like you have a great kid and be thankful that the only problem you are having is he is not on the honor roll.

I think you should focus on his good grades and be happy with A's and B's. This is a personality trait. He isn't a perfectonist like your daughter. He is old enough now that you don't need to oversee his homework much. Let him know you are there if he needs help and you will take him to tutoring if that is what he wants then let him take care of it. The conflict that you have with him is not worth it. The stress it causes is not worth it. You are not going to change his personality and study style by consequences. I speak from experience as I went through this my daughter who is 12. This year I took her out of pre-ap classes (per her request) and do not micromanage her school. It has made our lives so much easier. She was making b's and c's last year and is now making a's. Now of course if he is failing that is a different story. You just have to recognize difference in your two kids and adjust parenting to benefit each child. You probably don't have to help your daughter or get on to her to make her get good grades. She probably just does well because she wants to. They are all so different. Best of luck.

As a teacher I feel that most students just dont understand the importance of education...really. Even though Im sure you preach about getting an education and so on, most students REALLY dont know exactly how important it really is. I was a smart kid but wasted a lot of time and energy avoiding work, unless it was work I wanted to do. Isnt that just nature though? I think your son will do fine in the real world. A's and B's ARE good, just remind him that A's are what gets scholarships, not B's and that his transcript to college is starting now. Good luck! Im sure he will be great at whatever he decides to do in life.

Take any extras away from him. Such as tv, video games, anything that is remotely fun to him. Make him earn it back. We are doing this with our son. We are going back to 2nd grade where he brings home his binder and I check it, and he has to earn these priveleges that he wants to have.
I did have our son talk to his school counselor and was relieved to know that this is typical teenage stuff. There are so many more distractions these days for kids. I just think they get overloaded with so much stuff and forget that school comes first. We pulled our son out of football and just told him that he needs to focus on school and not everything else. Good Luck

I agree with Cindy J - I have two sons - a 13 year old and a 15 year old. They are very similar - very bright and they both get 98-99 percentiles on standardized tests - my oldest got a 4 (out of 5) on the Biology AP last May (he just finished 9th grade). Yet, they are very, very happy with their B's along with some A's here and there. You have to keep in mind that the grades are not yours and do not reflect on you (and that may be the hardest part of this issue - it was for me since I always made straight A's in school). The grades are your sons and in my experience - and as you have found - bribery doesn't even work. I know my kids could get straight A's, but there view is that the kids that do get the straight A's work 3x as long as them. So, they've done the cost-benefit analysis and decided it's not worth the extra effort.
Also, is your son happy? When I spoke to my younger son's science teacher at the end of the last school year, her view was that as long as kids this age are happy and are doing their work for the most part, then we parents should be happy.

Also, for the parents that feel that you should control the situation, check all their work, etc., while that works for a while, there will be a point where you can't do all of it. Also, with my kids, when they do ask for help, I don't always get the assignments! In the end, too much help will hurt them as their grades will drop in H.S, rather than go up and they will not have learned study skills on their own (we all have our own learning and organizational styles). My son's counselor says that it's far more important for colleges to see an upward trend than a downward trend. My older son has started off his sophomore year with a little more focus, so I'm hoping the trend is upward. But, again, B's are not bad grades and grades are not at all what colleges look at. You can also find lots of stories of folks that weren't successful in school that have been very successful in life -Owen Wilson, for example, got kicked out of St. Mark's for cheating on a math test. There's lots of other examples like this, especially for math-smart kids.