Should I be on top of high school daughter

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Forum -> Parenting our children -> School age children

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amother

Orchid

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 5:00 pm

My daughter's in high school. She doesn't have enough patience to study and doesn't do well. How much do I need to get involved ?

trixx

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 5:12 pm

Get involved. Teach her study habits and how to do homework. Get her a tutor if necessary (to be on top of her). I wishhh my mom had taken a more active role in my schoolwork. I'm smart and always aced without studying but until today cannot meet deadlines like a normal person.. I wish I had been forced to develop proper study habits. Like now I'm online instead of actually doing things that need to be done lol

yksraya

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 6:13 pm

High school is old enough to be responsible for school work. I would say let her have the full responsibility and suffer the consequences if she isn't responsible.
she knows quite well that you want her to be more responsible, so trying to help her won't work at this age.

imasinger

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 6:18 pm

I'm a big believer in helping kids accomplish their work. Appropriately. That means, not doing it for them, but giving them the tools to succeed.

Some kids just give up when they get bad grades. It doesn't make them more responsible. You have to know your DD, and know what will work for her. Figure out how much structure would be helpful, and how much is too much. If she is the type that will ultimately gain more from your sitting on her, then do it. You can set a time for homework and study, and forbid anything else until the goals are reached. You can reward her when she has done everything she needs. You can trust her self-reports, or you can insist on seeing the finished product. You can find out whether she would work best on her own, with you, or with a classmate that you can facilitate her arranging study sessions. You can stay in touch with her teachers, and find out what they say is happening in class.

Kids generally begin to shine when they believe that they can succeed.

amother

Orchid

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 6:34 pm

Tried helping her study all through grade school. She gets moody and refuses help. Also asked her if I should have someone else help her out, but she's totally uninterested she just starts blowing and I can forget about her even trying her best.

amother

Plum

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 6:41 pm

amother wrote:

My daughter's in high school. She doesn't have enough patience to study and doesn't do well. How much do I need to get involved ?

Such a good question.
My high schooler is much more competent than what her grades show. Yet she resists assistance at any turn. I often wonder out loud if she's got homework and she tells me she's done it in between classes. In past years she's missed many homework assignments. I've learned to let her have her path. If that means lower grades, so be it for now. She knows I would hire a tutor if she would be open to it. One day she'll have to figure out why she was so resistant. At wits end

imasinger

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 7:04 pm

amother wrote:

Can the school be the "bad guy", and help you out by insisting that she get some tutoring?

Kids at this stage often will respond better to someone else than to their mother.

yksraya

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 7:08 pm

imasinger wrote:

Can the school be the "bad guy", and help you out by insisting that she get some tutoring?

Kids at this stage often will respond better to someone else than to their mother.

or they can get labeled or feel extremely embarrased by it.

imasinger

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 7:09 pm

I'm thinking of tutoring outside of school hours. How would that be more labeling or embarrassing than being a really poor student? Wouldn't the other kids notice either way?

yksraya

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 7:12 pm

imasinger wrote:

I'm thinking of tutoring outside of school hours. How would that be more labeling or embarrassing than being a really poor student? Wouldn't the other kids notice either way?

the stigma involved in needing help at sucha age. She's in high school, not in second grade.

trixx

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 7:20 pm

Why can't you just force her to have study hour when you take away phone and computer, and for half hour she will be uninterrupted in a side room together with her school supplies.

Just bc your kid is in high school doesn't mean you can't be a mom and crack down.
No going out with your friends until you've studied for an hour. No extracurricular until you've studied.is this helicopter a little... Maybe... But not if you don't do it anywhere else. Sounds like intervention at this point is too little too late

I don't agree with "let her fail"... Why? Why can't you teach her responsibility? If after you've drilled into her study habits, time management etc and she still does her own thing, that's a diff story. But to take a kid who is lazy and never taught better and say" let her fail" you are setting her up for a lifetime of failure. If she doesn't learn this skill now then she should just keep failing at college, sem, juggling housework kids and cooking?

amother

Orchid

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 9:11 pm

Thanks all for your responses. She is the real happy go lucky with lots of friends. The question is should I be on top of her and have her sulk every time I make her study which ends with no studying or should I let her be the happy go lucky and study as much as she has patience for or with friends and just hope for the best? Or another option is speaking to her principal but I'm afraid of it having an effect on her happy nature and having her go through the embarrassment. The question is will it help? She not a dumb kid in the least bit. Very bright. I would say that she is probably one of the top in her class as in teacher's respect and middos.

yksraya

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 9:19 pm

We all want what's best for our kid. Of course you want her to study more and be more responsible. But sometimes the best thing we can do for our kids is "let go" and daven for them to have success.

MagentaYenta

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 9:23 pm

amother wrote:

How long do you plan on sparing your child embarrassment? I would think it would be embarrassing for an adult not to be able to formulate a grammatical sentence or to do a basic math calculation.

My seven were a broad spectrum of bright, some were less motivated than others, and one or two had difficulty in grasping some subjects. I never did homework for any of them. But I did review their homework after it was completed. Sometimes I used open questions to get them to see that they could put a bit more effort into that nights work. For those that truly struggled with a subject there were tutors. (Which weren't considered an embarrassment in our neck of the woods.) All went to public schools that had great guidance counselors who could be consulted and as parents we did our best to understand their differences in learning styles. One of my math challenged DDs was math phobic, but if the math was applied to an area she enjoyed, it made a difference in her progress.

Sake

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 9:25 pm

I was your dd. My father gave me 2 choices, get my grades or go to work."Coincedently" the wife of a good friend of my father a Doctor in the community called my mother and asked if she had a girl to help out in the office for the summer.

Zehava

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 9:36 pm

I was your daughter. I was gifted, often bored in class, and could not be bothered to study, because for the life of me I couldn't find one single way whatever we were learning was going to help me in life. Ok some things could have helped, like sewing or quickbooks. Then again, if I hated these things so much in HS why would I get a career in them as an adult. I didn't get my diploma since that would have required me retaking everything I've failed throughout HS, an impossible and pointless task. I figured it would be way easier to take the GED if I ever need one.
Guess what op. I'm a wife, a mother, and do freelance work for a marketing company. Guess what else. Everything I'm doing right now, I learnt through trial and error. Cooking, cleaning, childcare, and even the freelance work I do. The subjects I was supposed to study for, they never would have helped me.
That said, yes looking back there were reasons I couldn't be bothered to study BUT at this point it makes zero difference in my life.
I say leave her be. Risk versus benefit. You risk her losing her trust in you versus the dubious benefit of getting straight As in subjects she will probably never need. In her adult life, she will need her mommy way more than trigenometry. Just my two cents.

amother

Natural

Sun, Nov 22 2015, 10:05 pm

My dd sounds so much like yours. A very bright and happy go lucky kid. Great social life and loves to have a good time. She participates really well in class, but hates to write notes or study. Some subjects come very easily to her, and she gets great marks. Things like chumash and navi do need more studying though, and since she hardly has notes and hates to study, she really doesn't do well in those subjects.
During finals last year, I mostly let her manage her own schedule. I figured I'll allow natural consequences to do the work. Well, guess what? They didn't! She had to retake several finals, and she hardly seemed to mind. "Don't you see?" I'd tell her. "You're not saving yourself any work! You just have to work twice as hard because you take the tests twice!" Of course she kvetched about going in for retakes, but she was far from devastated or embarrassed.
During the summer the principals called me in. They were really sweet, telling me how much the teachers enjoy her in class, how great her input is... BUT that she really needs to develop better studying skills and learn to be more responsible. They basically said that I must set her up with someone who will do her homework with her. Not so much as a tutor, but simply someone to be sitting with her for 45 minutes twice a week to make sure that she's actually studying and that her notes are up to date...
There was a girl who supervised her for some extra curricular project who was graduating that year. The two of them seemed to get along well. She got a teaching job, but was available in the evening and agreed to work with dd. B"H it's going well so far. She still doesn't write notes in EVERY class or do ALL her homework, but overall, much better than last year. Mid-terms are coming up soon and then I'll actually be able to see the results of her bi-weekly after-school work. As I explained to her, "Once you prove that you've developed proper studying/note-writing habits, you won't need to go anymore..."

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