Children - Letting them Sink or Swim

[Mike]

For you parents of high schoolers (past or present), I have a question for you. How much do you monitor and push them in school, and when do you allow them to make their own decisions and live with the consequences.

It's summer time, and this isn't very timely, but it's something I've been meaning to put out there. Our youngest struggles in school (heading into the 4th grade), so we need to support her a lot. Our older two (8th & 10th grade) get great grades. Our son heading into the 10th grade gets nearly all A's in an honors program, but if we weren't constantly checking his grades online and emailing teachers about missing papers, he wouldn't be achieving what he does. It's the same with our daughter.

Julie and I struggle a lot with allowing them to operate on their own, because we don't want them to harm their academic futures when we can take measures to keep them on track. We won't be able to be there forever. At some point, they will have to sink or swim on their own merit. In college, it will all be up to them.

So, what are the parenting philosophies that you have with school work?

 

[WIP]

One of the things that we try to avoid is over-pressuring. Be there to help them learn but don't place higher expectations upon them than they are capable of. Be honest with yourself and recognize that they all learn at different rates and sometimes in different ways. Some do better in school and others not so good.

For example, our oldest daughter is a terrific student. She will be a senior this coming year and as a Junior finished with about a 3.9 GPA. Not bad considering that she carried two full semesters of college credited courses earning 27 credits. She plans on a full load again as a senior with her goal to come out of high school and enter pre-med as a college junior. We have never had to push her to study. She's one that learns quickly and retains much and she likes to learn. Whenever she asked me to help her with homework I never just gave her the answers she sought. Instead, I respond with questions of my own in an effort to get her to think outside the box and find the answers for herself.

Our youngest is a little different. My methods frustrated her (and me) terribly. With her I had to be a lot more tactful in my methods. One thing we learned about her is that she has very poor reading comprehension however if she reads out loud to herself she does very well. My wife figured this one out. We do have to push her to work on her homework more but we are careful not to overdo it because if she gets frustrated she'll clam up fast. Having a big sister to compete with helps us here. She is so proud when her report card is better than her sisters, which is a tough goal for her but we resist the temptation to remind her that her older sister is taking college courses and not high school courses. She'll be a sophomore this coming year and ended her freshmen year with about a 3.8 GPA. We were very proud of her for that one.

When their grades drop a little I will make a comment but only to let them know that I am taking notice. I once told them that I don't expect them to be perfect but I do expect them to do their best. What more can I ask for than that? I don't know if this is very helpful for you but I guess you know your own children better than anyone. You know what will motivate them and encourage them. Just don't raise the bar out of their reach.

 

[Mike]

Thanks for your response. That is great advice. I received a PM from someone who is not a parent or married and couldn't post in here with solid advice as well. The problem for me is getting that knowledge from my head to my heart. It's the same problem my wife has.

I focus these conversations around our son, because he's in high school, and there's more weight put on his record for college. He is a very bright person. As I said, he's in an honors program. He has advanced classes that have seniors in them and no blow-off classes. That said, he never... and I mean NEVER does homework. He says he gets it all done in school. Generally he does very well with his testing, but when it comes to reports or projects that demand a lot of preparation, his standard is very low. This is where we can't help but step in.

We have Power School. For those unfamiliar with it, it's an online portal where teachers post grades on a daily basis, and you can check for assignment grades and whether they've turned them in as well as tests and overall markings. If we weren't there to say, "Hey you didn't turn this or that in. You need to check with your teacher to see if you can get any credit, but you need to turn it in either way!", he would never do it. He has a major book report to do over the summer. On the first day of school in the fall, he takes a test and turns in his report. It's quite a lengthy project. His report for his freshman class was over 30 pages long. So you can't start 3 days before school begins. And we have to push him all the time to spend 15-20 minutes a night (starting mid-summer) and pace himself, or he'd never have it done. And that is a MAJOR part of his grade for English. It also is the first impression the teacher has of him in the fall. Very important.

With Joshua, we leave very little room for a drop in grades, even down to a B in a class. This may seem extreme, but we always tell him, "If you never do homework; I mean NEVER-EVER do homework, it must be because you are absolutely sure you've mastered the material." I give him no room, since he is in high school, yet never studies. Our 8th grade daughter is the opposite. She will spend 4 hours/night studying, and making assignments look like artwork. But she's so meticulous about her work, she'll run out of time and not complete some things. She won't generally volunteer for extra credit when teachers offer it.

Both of these children need to learn lessons in life about self-discipline and accepting repercussions for unsatisfactory work, but as a parent, this is one of the most difficult things for me to stand by and watch. It's like seeing them on their bikes heading for a 5-foot cliff. It won't kill them, but it will hurt, and the bike will be trashed.

Parenting was SOOOO easy when we were just changing diapers and feeding them!

 

[Bonairos]

So, what are the parenting philosophies that you have with school work?

I hear you (having released 5 of them into adulthood).

As with everything in their lives, we constantly reminded our kids (while growing up) that it was our job to make it as hard as possible for them to do wrong AND as easy as possible for them to do right. The choice was theirs! HAHA!


Be blessed, Stay blessed, and be Bold!

 

[handy]

I hear you on this dilemma, Mike. We have much the same situation in our house. Viola is terrible about doing homework and unfortunately, her grades aren't A's. She gets some B's, mainly C's. I know she would do better if she did do homework, but she is sort of like your daughter...she struggles so long and so hard for what she does get, when she gets home she just doesn't want to have to deal with school anymore. There are times when she'll do a project at home, and I can see why she struggles...it's hard work for her. As she used to get mainly F's and now gets mainly C's, we do cut her some slack. It doesn't help that we live way out here and they leave for school before 6:30 in the morning and don't get back until 5:00. It's not like the kids in town who start at 8:00, are home by 3:30 and spend the rest of the afternoon in front of the TV.

Thomas...well, if he gets a C, I know he's slacking. He gets A's with seemingly little to no effort. We just don't tolerate C's from him, because he can and should do better than that.

As far as how much to look over their shoulder and help them out...I think it's a good thing to help keep them on top of things. Part of this is maturity...when they get to college, they'll be somewhat more mature and will probably be more on the ball anyway. But, my two are 11 years old and soon to be 14 and they still need the extra parenting in this area. By 11th and 12th grade, I see myself pulling back somewhat on checking their assignments and making sure they're getting things done. I'll probably nag them for the two years about "When you get out on your own, you won't have mom to take care of this for you, ya know!"...to which they'll probably reply, "Yeah!!!!"

My best friend's daughter just graduated high school and we were talking last night about what a relief to have that part of parenting over. I'm looking forward to my kid's high school years, but boy...will it be nice when they get that diploma.

 

[Sparkey]

Hi Mike,

There can be a lot of benefit obtained from knowing personal learning styles and I'd suggest that you encourage your kids to get to know more about their preferred methods of learning. You can do searches on subjects like "Multiple Intelligence" (by Howard Gardner) or more general subjects like "Learning Styles" or Metacognition.

High School didn't prepare my kids for college (or me, for that matter) because the subjects were much more packed with information and we were expected to know them in greater depth. Not only were there higher expectations, more density of subject and a general lack of background and familiarity (on my part) involved with college level learning but also at times the subject didn't carry my interest. So that makes the student have to carry their own motivation.

The class that helped prepare me the most was a "College Study Skills" course. There I learned about various learning styles (VARK-Learn.com) and the 4MAT System, learned how to use the Cornell Note-Taking System, Time Management systems, Goal Setting, Visual Study Tools (like flash cards, time lines, Matrixes and Hierarchies), Motivation and Procrastination, as well as the SQ5R study system (worth looking at). The course (3 credit -- Eng170) also covered Blooms Taxonomy, Yerkes-Dobson stress facilitators/debilitors, the 5 Day study plan, how to take tests (predicting what type of questions and overkill study methods) as well as other things like how to cope with text anxiety.

Pardon my going on and on about it but it's just an example -- and I thought it to be a good one because each subject metioned is researchable to give an idea of the "depth" of study needed. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if I knew what was ahead of me in college I would have paid more attention to getting the habits that would make it possible while the getting was easy and the subjects themselves weren't as tough.

 

[Mike]

I'm looking forward to my kid's high school years, but boy...will it be nice when they get that diploma.

Looking forward to the high school years???

Of course I love being a dad, and I wouldn't want it any other way, but if they could somehow skip these years and head right to 18... I don't want time to speed up. If they could stay 12 for 6 years and then turn 18 that would be ideal. :yes

All the things I swore i would be cool with as a parent when i was a teen, I am admittedly over the top with now. As much as Julie and I tried to prepare for these years, we are still caught off guard with the complexity of parenting teenagers.

Teens are terrific at screwing with heads.

Hi Mike,

There can be a lot of benefit obtained from knowing personal learning styles and I'd suggest that you encourage your kids to get to know more about their preferred methods of learning.

Sorry Sparrow, you lost me. Telling me that "lazy" is a learning style will work with me about as well as it worked with my parents. I'm not talking about learning styles. I'm talking about kicking them in the pants to make the lazy fall out of them!

I have to wince every time I recall my teachers telling my parents I could do so much better if I gave more effort. We have improv knock-out throw-down parties if our youngest comes home with B's, because we know how hard she has to fight for them. A spelling list that would take our two older children 20 seconds to have down takes our youngest 45 minutes of practice, and then a brush up on the way to school. If our other two come home with them, it's another story. It's almost less than zero effort for them. It's like negative effort; like they have to try to sabotage their grades to get them.

 

[Sparkey]

Sorry Sparrow, you lost me. Telling me that "lazy" is a learning style will work with me about as well as it worked with my parents. I'm not talking about learning styles. I'm talking about kicking them in the pants to make the lazy fall out of them!

I have to wince every time I recall my teachers telling my parents I could do so much better if I gave more effort. We have improv knock-out throw-down parties if our youngest comes home with B's, because we know how hard she has to fight for them. A spelling list that would take our two older children 20 seconds to have down takes our youngest 45 minutes of practice, and then a brush up on the way to school. If our other two come home with them, it's another story. It's almost less than zero effort for them. It's like negative effort; like they have to try to sabotage their grades to get them.

?? In no way did I try to say "lazy" was a learning style. What I tried to say is that high school doesn't prepare kids for college level learning. Perhaps I should have posted the syllabus for the College Study Skills class I was talking about but the idea that I wanted to communicate is that even the "easy" classes require a minimum of 2 homework hours for every class hour commitment. As a student who never studied (one of the zero effort or negative effort kind) I used to rely on the osmosis method of learning in high school. College is a challenge that requires all of my time management skills just to be able to keep my head above water.

Would it hurt kids to understand what lies ahead of them? I wish I would have known -- because in the battle between "what parents want" and "fun" -- the kids lose out due to their failure to understand the why of it all.

Cordially,
~Sparrow

 

[Mike]

Sparrow, I wasn't saying you were implying "lazy" is a learning style. I was more so poking fun/frustration with my kids. Admittedly I did miss your point, but I put that on me. Thanks for clarifying. I do agree with Dora about maturity being a factor. So I do believe something can click in a person's head and turn their attitude toward school around. It happened to me in my second year of college. But it doesn't happen with everyone, and some kids didn't make it out of their freshman year. Poor study habits kill some students when they're away on their own at college. They're things best learned in high school.

 

[Sparkey]

Sparrow, I wasn't saying you were implying "lazy" is a learning style. I was more so poking fun/frustration with my kids. Admittedly I did miss your point, but I put that on me. Thanks for clarifying. I do agree with Dora about maturity being a factor. So I do believe something can click in a person's head and turn their attitude toward school around. It happened to me in my second year of college. But it doesn't happen with everyone, and some kids didn't make it out of their freshman year. Poor study habits kill some students when they're away on their own at college. They're things best learned in high school.

I had a driving instructor who said the best way to learn how to control a car during a crash -- was BEFORE the actual crash. That made sense to me. Just wish more HS Teachers understood that principal.