Help with a child in school.

[cstone]

I'm glad the meds worked for you. I am very hesitant about any kind of regular medication for teenagers. There are just sooo many examples of kids who have been prescribed into numbness and psychotic behavior. At a minimum, the drugs do not allow for the young person to develop natural coping skills to normal stress in life.

I would never say never about good medical/pharmaceutical care, but I would urge caution at an age where the human brain is doing a great deal of growing and developing.


Not a criticism, just my $.02

[def90]

I'm glad the meds worked for you. I am very hesitant about any kind of regular medication for teenagers. There are just sooo many examples of kids who have been prescribed into numbness and psychotic behavior. At a minimum, the drugs do not allow for the young person to develop natural coping skills to normal stress in life.

I would never say never about good medical/pharmaceutical care, but I would urge caution at an age where the human brain is doing a great deal of growing and developing.


Not a criticism, just my $.02

Absolutely true! I only used them on days that I knew i needed some extra help/focus. The issue here is recognizing that there is a problem and working towards an effective treatment and finding a solution that works for that person vs grounding someone from electronic devices. there may very well be a way to fix it without drugs, I am more productive at certain times of the day such as late evening/early night, some times forcing someone into a schedule such as "you are doing homework at 4:30 sharp" is counter productive.

sent from a soup can and some string..

[cstone]

I personally think that "school" is a pretty artificial environment. Everyone gets up, goes to a building and is segregated by age or ability into a group of 20 to 30 people where a specialist trained in pedagogy leads the group through instruction and exercises to supposedly increase the basic knowledge of the group in a particular area. Regardless of the performance of the individual students, the group routinely moves on to the next level each year where some new material is introduced while older information is reinforced. This process requires 12 to 13 years of an American's life. At the end of that time frame, the student is either prepared for some type of gainful employment or moves into another specialized environment where more knowledge is introduced to further prepare the student for gainful employment.

Given what is spent each year in the US on all forms of education given in a school setting, I seriously wonder if this wasn't someone's sick idea of warehousing young people till they can perform useful service for themselves and society.

Anyone who has served in the military is probably familiar with what I believe is the most effective method of training: See, Show, Do. Every task is demonstrated, explained, practiced, and tested for proficiency. The military teaches HS graduates nuclear physics in less time than it takes the average HS student to read and discuss Huckleberry Finn (which apparently is no longer done in most American HS).

Different people learn through different styles and at a different pace. When the student is ready the teach will appear. When the person finds what they want to do, they will be motivated to work and learn. Helping our kids to find their goals and persevering through the rough patches is a big part of parenting.

[XC700116]

If this is all relatively new (her behaviors) and it's only 2 classes out of how many that are the problem, I'd wonder about a couple of things with those classes, subject, methodology of the teachers, etc.

I'm NOT saying it's the teacher's fault, but a little further in depth thought process to it may reveal something you can use to spark her motivation. Or possibly there's someone in those classes distracting her, like a boy she's got a crush on, or a bully, or any number of things, could be as mundane as where her seat is in those classes.

I had problems in a math class all of a sudden in my 8th grade year. I was ALWAYS great at math and science subjects, I couldn't even put my finger on it, but it was the only class I was seated near the back of the room and turns out, it was my vision giving me problems and subconsciously since I couldn't see everything on the overheads and blackboard, I'd disconnect from the class mentally and go off into my own little world during class. Got glasses and it was like a whole new class for me. Strange, and I had no fricken clue that was my problem, but found the vision thing due to a hunting trip of all things.

Just saying it could be something other than her attitude and it's worth investigating.

[rocktot]

What kind of school is she going to? This could be some other type of situation here. Who are her 'friends'. Is she performing below her intelligent level? Is this odd behavior? Something else might be going on.

[Milt]

cstone,

Your observations about public 'education' are correct. Our 'education' system originated in Prussia after Napoleon humiliated the Prussian military. It was deliberately designed to produce people fit for one of three economic/social roles: the great majority were to be workers or soldiers, able to read and do basic arithmetic sufficient to effectively follow orders (but NEVER to question the legitimacy of those orders); those selected for the next level were given more advanced mathematical, linguistic and scientific training along with limited analytical skills to prepare them for technical positions (engineers, administrators, lawyers, physicians, military officers, etc...); a tiny minority were prepared to become part of the ruling class by receiving what we might properly term a classical liberal education, including a deeper knowledge of history, philosophy and logic. That ruling class was to have a monopoly on critical thought and even its members were never to question the basic tenets of Prussian imperialism.

This ghastly obscenity was imported by 'progressives' who wanted to reform the excessively (from the progressives' perspective) self reliant and independent American people into good, pliable sheep who would not object to the imposition of a progressive utopia. Unfortunately, the plan was ultimately successful (when was the last time you heard any 'mainstream' types seriously question any of the unconstitutional programs foisted on us by the feds?) and we are all paying the price as this unworkable collectivist wet dream implodes from its own internal contradictions.

That system is antithetical to the ideals of a free society as envisioned by the founders of our republic. It is also alien to the natural, free human spirit; so thoroughly soul destroying that I have come to regard it as a serious form of child abuse.

To the original poster - your best solution would be to home school your child, providing her with healthy values and a real education instead of subjecting her to the foul agenda of the government-run indoctrination centers mistakenly referred to as 'schools'. The fact that she is not doing 'well' at complying with the government school crap is a sign that there is still hope...

[Dave]

Absolutely true! I only used them on days that I knew i needed some extra help/focus. The issue here is recognizing that there is a problem and working towards an effective treatment and finding a solution that works for that person vs grounding someone from electronic devices. there may very well be a way to fix it without drugs, I am more productive at certain times of the day such as late evening/early night, some times forcing someone into a schedule such as "you are doing homework at 4:30 sharp" is counter productive.

sent from a soup can and some string..

Crap, everything in your posts seems to describe how I am at things. Never was prescribed anything since my mom didn't want me on anything, but both my dad and sister are ADD and sister is autistic. I was always upsetting teachers and counselors at my high school because I scored a 34 on the ACT, 1500 on SAT, 98 on the ASVAB but had a 1.997 GPA at graduation because I had a hard time getting my homework done. Time in the Army got me able to focus better, but now being a few years out I find myself slipping again.

Punishments never worked on me either. I could find ways around it when parents were not around, like when I was at work or not looking since my bedroom was in the basement. Plus, I knew they couldn't ground me forever, and I was actually content to read books from the library.

[Danimal]

First I have to say that I am not a parent so take what I say with a grain of salt. Now my mother, girlfriend, sister in-law, grandmother and several other relatives are teachers so I have a perspective that is school success based.

There are a lot of good comments in here, but there is something that I feel has been overlooked to a degree. If a child is a good kid and in general does what they are told, then the real issue is that they are not retaining information. Punishments only work if a child does something knowingly that is breaking a rule that is set for them. Most children are smart and more than capable of performing all assignments given to them at their grade level with very little effort. What is generally lacking is the ability to understand what they do not know, and the motivation to seek it out and learn it. You have to teach a child good study habits as well as effective study techniques in order for them to learn successfully.

There are issues with the school system, but all the teachers that I know do a damn good job teaching and their level of professionalism is actually very impressive. With that said, the class sizes are too large for them to have the time to individually take each child aside and fix study habits, and usually it does no good because they are not there to enforce the rules they set for at home studying and completion of homework. The parent has the responsibility of making sure the child completes all tasks to a satisfactory level.

What I would do: contact the teacher and ask for a metric that shows proficiency for the upcoming assignments. They usually will have something that shows exactly the level of proficiency that they expect for a given assignment. Then take time aside to teach your daughter how to study and make sure she understands what proficient work looks like. Most likely she just does not understand what is expected of her, and does not understand the level of effort she needs to put into every assignment. I would devote an hour every school night for her to work on homework under your supervision. You will only have to do it until she starts cranking out proficient or better assignments, and by then her grades will have improved, and she will have structure to her studying that allows her to succeed through the future. You will want to get a handle on this now before high school.

The main idea is to teach the kid to seek out what proficient work looks like, and then give them the positive re-enforcement to motivate them to achieve that standard. Learning is all about understanding what is expected and displaying it in a proficient manner.

[Lurch]

Thanks for all the advice. Home schooling is financially out of the question and I have varying thoughts about home schooling anyway. She seems to be doing better with remembering to write stuff down so she remembers it and her grades have improved. She is evening trying to finish stuff early so she has time for other things beside school work.

[def90]

Crap, everything in your posts seems to describe how I am at things. Never was prescribed anything since my mom didn't want me on anything, but both my dad and sister are ADD and sister is autistic. I was always upsetting teachers and counselors at my high school because I scored a 34 on the ACT, 1500 on SAT, 98 on the ASVAB but had a 1.997 GPA at graduation because I had a hard time getting my homework done. Time in the Army got me able to focus better, but now being a few years out I find myself slipping again.

Punishments never worked on me either. I could find ways around it when parents were not around, like when I was at work or not looking since my bedroom was in the basement. Plus, I knew they couldn't ground me forever, and I was actually content to read books from the library.

That was me as well. Went to a tech school for electronics/audio engineering and graduated with a 4.98.. would have been a straight 5.0 but my last teacher said that he couldn't give me the max grade simply because I missed the maximum days allowable for the period. I was good at school but fitting into the school structure just wasn't going to happen. In high school i averaged b's and c's, i always aced the tests but my daily/weekly homework was always missing.

I have learned that I simply don't fit into the 9 to 5 environment. I have also learned that if i have a period of inspiration at 10:00 at night on a tuesday then that is when i am going to get stuff done.

Otherwise, threats from my parents about studying and so on pretty much just went over my head.

sent from a soup can and some string..