So I think this is true for most, we all want to raise a respectable child who has their own drives and ambitions. A child who becomes independent, confident and freaking AWESOME.
I mean isn't that the goal of every parent, I can't have a goal to raise an intelligent child because intelligent is too broad a term. I want them to love to learn, that is what I want, to love to learn, even if it's just all the names of the smurfs.
So here I am with my son having entered Middle School. I am of course a nervous wreck because not only did he enter Middle School this year, he entered a new school system with NO friends. So here is the dilemma, ready, set, go.....
My son is normally an A, B student with little to NO studying on his part. He is a highly intelligent boy who learns quickly and bores just as quickly as he learns. Last report card he went from A to some B's and from B's to some As. My son is funny because he always points out if it is an A+, A, A-, B+, B, B- because those two or three points matter so much. (Insert eye roll and I do so because I was that kid.) So moving forward with the story, so as not to bore the crud out of people reading!
There are people reading right.... (crickets)
Anywhoooo, his grades are slipping, and not just a little, I am talking going from a B to a C in one semester in reading and falling fast in his History Class. The most surprising is the History Class because they are working on Ancient Greece and my son loves all that stuff. The last two tests he got a 70 and then a 60. I asked the teacher about this right away and she said he seems to be loosing interest. She wrote all the questions to the test on the board with all the answers, well how the heck can you screw that up? Well he can, that's who.
So what is going on with this prepubescent boy?
Truth is, I don't know. Is it just a phase? Maybe....
How do you get a kid to care about his grades, and care about them in a way that isn't obsessive where he puts so much stress on himself he becomes depressed and in a way that is healthy and he wants to strive to do a little better next time?
I ask you this because my parents never focused on our education. It was never stressed a lot. Occasionally they would say things like, "I want you to have a better life than this so school is important." So as I watch my son's grades slip I wonder, how do I stress things to him. When I was a kid, I didn't really study, well, I read my notes if you call that studying. I had a teacher that told us that if you didn't learn it during school and your homework cramming over your books isn't going to teach it to you. I am also the kid that never read her book because I have narcoleptic tendencies when I read. I will literally fall asleep while reading anything school related with in two seconds. Actually, anything longer than a page that is non fiction will usually induce bouts of sleeping.
So anyway, he is acting like a weirdo at school, trying to find his place, and that's okay, but now I have to get him to care. You know what class he ended up loving? Sewing, he was so proud to show what he made, now he is in Shop class and he is doing the same thing. So how do I get him to be passionate and stick with things? To focus and find drive? I am baffled and willing to take suggestions?
