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Awkward Confessions about my parenting

   One of my kids was failing his math class for most of the year and I just now noticed!

In my defense, this kid is 17 years old and was able to keep a B average or higher all of the other years of high school. I guess I patted myself on the shoulder too soon for a job well done. It's his Junior year of high school, and he signed up for WAY too many AP classes. I told him last year that Junior year would be the hardest and to try to only take his favorite classes at the AP level, but he signed up for about 4 AP level classes. 

Unfortunately for him, he doesn't even really feel like he's struggling with the content in the class he is failing. He just didn't feel like doing the work and it piled up on him. 

Time to put my parenting hat back on! 

What would you do? Yeah, I probably didn't do any of that. Instead, I let him negotiate with me. He took advice from his older sister who went through the same thing with the same teacher and the same class. We let her drop the class because it was just too much. There were many sleepless nights and tears and frustration that she was so far behind and could never catch up. Our 17 year old son is in a better position than his sister, because he seems to have a natural understanding of AP Calculus B/C, and we didn't want to teach another child to just give up and quit when the going gets rough. So how are we handling this with him? We made an agreement that he would complete 4 missing assignments each day and could play all the video games he wants as long as he completes his 4 assignments. If he doesn't, we're going to cancel video game fun time. 

Probably too nice of us. But with Child #3, I'm trying to teach him to solve his problems in a way that motivates him to keep going. And I'm getting worn down and maybe a bit more understanding (lax). If you get behind on your work, you don't just quit your job, do you? And you don't ground yourself from vegging on Netflix when you're at home. You let it pile up and get to it when it becomes the top priority. 

He was literally crying that his dad has more free time and can sleep in later and play games. "You have more spare time than me Dad. You just go to work and can come home and do whatever you want!" We see that he is overburdened with the amount of school, plus homework, plus job and doesn't have much time left for fun. And he's right. When you look at it that way, his parents actually do have less school/work responsibilities. Being a kid is just not what it used to be!


Comments

Redford Writes said…
I do have to add, almost a year later, that this same kid now considers his failing grade in math one of his crowning successes in life. It turns out that he was able to pull out a 4/5 on the AP Test and when he did, his teacher responded by grade adjusting his grade for the year to an A/B -- an A for one one semester to reflect his 5 on one half of the test and a B for earning a 4 on the other half.
April 8, 2024 at 11:14 PM
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