Motivating a child to get good grades

[PrincessFiona]

Alex is 15 and a freshman. He has always been lazy when it comes to school. In middle school he managed B's mostly because (I think) the teachers were good about letting him turn things in extra late.

We are at our wit's end.

He is making mostly F's. You read that right. And he doesn't seem to care.

The only thing he cares about is the internet, which he is on constantly. He shows clear signs of internet addiction including staying on our internet all night long on school nights if we forget to unplug the router. In fact, we had to start unplugging the router because he was staying on all night long. The only other things he cares about are his iphone and being able to take driver's ed. We already didn't renew his iphone minutes a month ago, so it has been essentially dead for a month (this is why we don't put the kids on our plan. We can hold cell phone minutes over them.) I also let him know that he won't take driver's ed until his grades are all B's at least.

Nothing has helped us. Nothing. I just got an email from his AP human geography teacher that he has a 51% for never catching up when he was sick and that if the work isn't turned in asap she will let the grade stand and let him fail. Human geo is a graduation requirement so not only will he have an F on his transcript, but he will also have to repeat the class (as a non-AP class).

As an FYI he also currently has an F in GERMAN!

Please help me! This child is capable. In fact, in elementary school we were told he was extremely bright. He just won't do the work. I don't know what else to do.

Kris

[Meenah]

I'm so sorry Kris. I would take away all Internet use until he gets his act together, If he needs the internet for school, block everything fun he does on the computer. Probably much harder to do in reality, but it is my only thought.

[Meenah]

I remember hearing Dr. Phil talk about kids and control, he said that "all of the children in one family may have a different currency, and once you know what their currency is you regain control". You know his currency is the internet!!!

[PrincessFiona]

I hate that everything school related is on the internet/schoology. This particular class (AP human geography) has all assignments etc on schoology. In order to complete anything, he has to have internet access. AND. Our school district gave all high schoolers their very own laptops for the year. sigh.

We stopped trying to take away the laptop at night and started unplugging the router. We also started making him come upstairs out of his room to do his homework on the computer.

It's hard to turn the router off because Amanda and Aidan (and sometimes Andrew if he's home) need access. Also, Thomas and I like to use the internet too. Sometimes we forget about the router and then it's ridiculous.

I am truly at my wit's end.

Kris

[moonlight]

We have a family friend that was having issues like this with their daughter. They decided not to put her in traditional high school because the likelihood of her doing the work was slim. They found and enrolled her in a alternative high school that focused on long educational projects, much like real life work projects, rather than regular high school home work and exams. Maybe he would be interested in looking at other educational opportunities. Sounds like summer school is already on his agenda this year. Military school might even be a suggested option? lol kidding. sort of.

[SuzySunshine]

Maybe someone more tech savy can answer but can you put two routers on the same system and then you can unplug him without affecting anyone else? Just don't give him the password to the main router? Is his school laptop a PC or a Mac? Mac has really good parental control software that lets you set times they can't log in...and its part of the OS, its not something you'd have to install on a school computer.

[diggitydot]

Motivating a child to get good grades

Oh, hon -- it's going to get ugly before it gets better.

He is incapable of self-regulating, so you may have to cut him off cold turkey until he gets his shit together. Once he shows you he has his shit together for a while, maybe begin allowing SMALL chunks of privileges back into his life to see if he can handle them.

He's not an idiot. The consequences of potentially failing classes or not graduating aren't immediate enough for him to care right now. He won't care "right now" until the consequences immediately impact his existence in ways that matter to him.

While it sucks that the school does SO much shit online, all "fun" online activities will probably have to be yanked from him.

[PrincessFiona]

Cheri, it's a mac.

I'm interested in the idea of setting up two routers on the same system...or maybe two accounts on one router? How on earth would we do that?

Kris

[SuzySunshine]

I can't help with the Router thing but I can help with the parental controls thing - is there just one user account set up on the laptop? Can you set up a second? Meaning does the school allow that?

You need to be the main user. Go into System Preferences and go to Users & Groups. Click the padlock in the bottom left, it will ask for the password and then click Unlock. Then click the "+" sign, Fill out the New Account form with Administrator as the Parent account and click Create User. Then on Alex's account click Enable Parental Controls on his account, you'll get a message saying this account can then not administer the computer, click ok and then Open Parental Controls. Then under Time Limits you can set how much/day he can use it (probably not practical if he's using it a lot at school) but you can set the Bedtime limits. The computer will log him out at a designated time and without your administrator password he won't be able to get back in until the wake up time you set for the morning.

Hopefully someone else can help with the router thing...

[poky]

Depending on the router, you should be able to set it up so that HIS connection is off, and nobody else's is (or maybe even set up times just for his computer) - I know that from most router configuration screens, you can see who's logged in and such, but I haven't explored past that, since we don't need to worry about that. It'd be more of a hassle to do than just unplugging the router, but wouldn't inconvenience anyone else, at least. I don't know anything about setting up parental controls on macs, but that sounds like something to look into, too.

[PrincessFiona]

Seriously? Thank you so much, Cheri. I will try this!

Kris

[Vanquisher]

Your son would hate me. Hate me. I know you likely do not have the time for this (I don't either), but I'd be helicoptering the shit out of this. No internet that isn't school related, and I'd be sitting right there.

1st period. You have this, this, and this. 2nd period. That, that, and that. And so on. From the minute he got home at 3:00 or whenever until bed, he'd be sitting by me doing homework. No iphone (minutes or not). That's mine. And we'd be having serious talks about his bullshit attitude and why it's a nonstarter. Also, does he realize he's looking at summer school as well?

It will suck for him and for you, but I'd be like a fucking prison warden

[PrincessFiona]

He is missing school today for a glitch that we had last night, and he is sitting at the table doing homework as we speak after I woke him up and badgered him to death. He doesn't want to fail and I think that's scaring him.

I checked his grades and he actually pulled the F in German up to a B- At least he's not failing GERMAN anymore.

I'm so frustrated with him.

Kris

[PrincessFiona]

Heidi,

That's the point that I'm at now. I have confiscated anything of his that might be considered "fun" and I'm sitting in the living room next to him while he does his work. I'm up for 'warden' suggestions though. I'm not good at that. I know he needs it now, and I have to find my inner warden. He is continuing this behavior in part because I'm not good at being the heavy and dh is gone. I need to step up my game.

Kris

[Sheherezade]

I think you can set up two routers on your cable connection. We have done that in the past but not directly for the purpose you are suggesting - we just had a lousy signal in one end of the house so we plugged in a router near our entertainment center when we went cable TV free. I think it was completely independent of the initial network.

You could also purchase a dual band router. That would allow you to set up two separate networks on the same router at different frequencies. It's supposed to be a good way to get around lots of traffic, too.

I haven't done either of these - but it sounds like a good solution to me too if you can keep the second network secret from him (might be hard with all the kids).

I think freshman year is HARD. I agree with DD. He is too far from the consequences that matter and what matters in 9th grade is figuring out what your social life for high school is - for better or worse. It was around that time that my son released that being "smart" wasn't "cool", and he started downplaying it a lot. Luckily, he kept at the work, but he'd ACT like a gangster which drove me batty, batty, batty. I think 8th and 9th grade makes kids all kind of weird.

I'm SURE he will straighten out. I would be worried about keeping him from doing too much damage to his record, though. Do you have a high school senior or junior that could tell him how important freshman year ends up being? We get a packet of advice from seniors when our kids enroll as freshman and it always surprised me how common that piece of advice was -- don't let everything slide freshman year. I think a lot of kids do and then they realize later it makes 10-12 grade so much more tense.