Bad Grades

When your child comes home with bad grades, you feel like you've failed as a parent too, so when we got an interim report that my older son was getting a D in math we hit the roof.

"You either don't understand it or you're not studying," I snapped. "Which is it?" "I am studying," he insisted. "Then you must not understand it." "I do understand it."

It turns out that he has failed a couple of quizzes and a big homework assignment. We told him he would have to take responsibility and ask what he could do to make up the grade. Turns out he can redo the homework assignment but not the quizzes.

I asked him to go check if he had a quiz this week and he came back and said he didn't. Then I checked a couple of days later and then it turns out he had a quiz THE NEXT DAY after our big talk.

We had to have a second talk about lying this time and this time I was mad. We had another serious look in which he admitted that he hadn't told us he had a quiz because it was the Pythagorean theory and it was "really long and boring." If he told me about it, I'd make him go over it again and again, he said. So we took away his computer and his Legos during the week. He's agreed to study more and study better and keep track of his quizzes and I told him he has to win back my trust.

The parenting experts say parents should help encourage children to build good study skills and that punishing them or yelling at them for bad grades doesn't work. Duh. But what does work? I obviously don't have the answers.

I'm hoping I can find out though because I'm hoping to bring that F up on my parenting report card. I'd like to feel that I'm at least getting a C.