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- My son had a difficult time in school the last two years and almost failed.
- He pulled it together and passed, but I decided I'd approach this year differently.
- I'm taking a more hands-off approach and letting him learn to manage his own schooling.
In Florida, where we live, third grade is the first school year students are issued grades in their four core subjects. Near the halfway point of my son's third-grade year, I was worried that he wouldn't pass, so I scheduled a teacher conference. I already knew that my son was more interested in the social aspect of school than the hard work that he needed to put in, and his teacher confirmed this.
My son's father and I had several serious talks with him afterward, and I spent the rest of that year on edge. I'm a teacher myself, and the possibility of my son failing an entire grade felt like a failure on my part. While he ended up pulling his grades up enough to pass, the experience took a few years off my life. After that, I thought that for sure he had learned his lesson. I wrote it off as an adjustment period to being graded.
Midway through the following year, his school requested a conference with me. I was surprised when they told us he was again in danger of failing due to his scores on a benchmark test. It felt like deja vu. I just didn't know why my son didn't care about doing well and how to make him want to.
I told my son he had to self-manage his schooling from now on
At the start of fifth grade, I told my son that I didn't want to go through the same thing every year. Just like he had done previously, my son pulled it together and passed both third and fourth grade.
Now that he's in fifth grade, I reemphasized that I would be handling things differently. I told him that this year, he'd have to learn to self-manage his schooling. I would no longer be micro-managing his homework, or making sure he's turning in his classwork by following his grades and getting in touch with his teachers. He knows what he needs to do when he's at school. He has proven that by pulling it together in just enough time to still pass. This year, I told him that he needed to do that from the beginning, not the halfway point.
Rather than obsessively checking his grades like I used to, I occasionally ask him how he's doing. When he reveals he has a grade lower than one he knows he could've gotten, instead of getting upset and trying to intervene by making him redo his work, giving him yet another lecture, or sending an email to his teacher asking for a second chance like I used to, this year, I'm taking a different approach. I'm simply asking my son why he's getting these grades and what he might do to raise them. He usually says something that implies he knows he has to do better.
He has to want to succeed for himself, not for me
From now on, instead of issuing consequences for poor grades, such as losing tablet privileges, I want him to 'feel' the grade.
While getting good grades is a reward for working hard, getting poor grades should also serve as a reflection opportunity on what you could have done differently. While it's hard for me to see him feel that he should have been focusing and putting forth full effort in class, I think letting the punishment be the feeling those kinds of grades leave him with is the only he'll learn. His motivation needs to become intrinsic.
However, he knows that with good grades will come rewards beyond just a good feeling. At the end of last year, he earned all As and Bs on his report card, something he had never done before. I was happy to reward him with a party, and it was wonderful to see how proud he was of himself.
I don't want to see him fail, but I have to give him the chance to learn a hard lesson
Though I have been more hands-off, I haven't entirely thrown my hands up and left him to figure everything out on his own. I always tell him that if he's behind on his work or confused about a lesson, he can ask for help.
But instead of looking over his shoulder and forcing him to do his work correctly or constantly checking for understanding, he has to learn what he needs to do on his own, such as knowing his own due dates and managing his time wisely. It may be a hard lesson for both of us, but it'll set him up better for the future than if I were to to these things for him.
I teach middle school, and I know what's ahead. It's only going to get harder, and he will have to become more independent. I want him to learn now, while the pain of learning is less consequential.
I used to say I would never let him fail, but I feel differently now. While I certainly don't want him to fail a grade — or even earn a few Ds and Fs on his report cards — maybe that's what needs to happen for him to learn that the amount of effort he puts in really does matter.
If worst came to worst, it would be excruciating for me to watch him be held back or have to do summer school simply because he didn't want to put in the work during the school year. But it would definitely be more excruciating for him if he had to watch his friends move on without him or had to spend his summer making up classes instead of going on vacation. And I think it would be so painful that he would figure out what he needed to do to never let that happen again. Letting my son make his own mistakes in school — and hopefully learn how to do better next time — is something I think would be far more effective than any lecture I could ever give him.