Chef_Troy ([info]chef_troy) wrote,
@ 2009-03-05 12:24:00
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Until someone makes me a "wearily clutching my forehead" icon, "angry" will have to do.
Every time my son gets a bad grade on a test or something, he calls me at work from the school counselor's office to tell me.

I am not exactly glancing at the clock every day hoping against hope that today will be the day that I get another one of these calls.

I think he does it because he wants to get it off his chest, because he thinks I'll cool down about it between now and when I pick him up, and because he wants a witness in case I reach through the phone and dope-slap him.

Today's call was a special one. Instead of a bad grade on one test or one piece of homework, he was calling me to tell me that he has a 60 average in biology class for the entire grading period.

That's right, folks, my scary-smart son is flunking a class.

Apparently he tried to call his mother about it first, thinking this might be the call that finally got me to set him on fire with my mind, but she couldn't take the call. When she later called me to find out what was up, I told her, and her reaction was "It's those goddamned video games. They're nothing but a distraction. Well, you know what we're going to do? We're going to pack 'em up. They're going away. We're disconnecting the Wii, we're confiscating the Xbox controllers and his DS, and that's that."

My silent reaction to that idea was "Well SHIT. I'm not flunking biology -- why the hell can't I still play?" But I've been giving it some thought, and the truth is that video games ARE a huge distraction, and there are several other ways I could more profitably be using that time, so I'll go along with it.

My brother's family has a policy of "no electronics during the week." Starting Sunday at dinnertime, nobody -- including the grownups -- plays video games or uses the computers except for work (I'm not sure about the television). The ban lifts right after school every Friday and lasts the weekend. Apparently it works well; I may suggest to Mrs. Chef that we do the same, rather than instituting an outright ban.

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[info]debrafortune
2009-03-05 06:48 pm UTC (link)
Have you asked him if he knows why he's struggling with the class? I mean, just to be a devil's advocate, if vidoe games were truly the culprit, wouldn't he be suffering in all his classes?

Can you get a biology related age appropriate game? There must be something educational you could get him to play (on weeknights, or whenever) to trick him into learning the material.

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[info]chef_troy
2009-03-05 07:08 pm UTC (link)
Earlier in the grade period, he was sick for three consecutive days. Apparently those were some seriously heavy days in biology - he missed not one but two quizzes and some homework, too. He was supposed to make up all that work, and in fact had assured us that he'd done everything he needed to catch up in all his classes -- but today the school counselor informed me that he admitted to her that he hadn't made up some of the work, which torpedoed his average (which apparently stood at a 70 when the interim progress reports came out - I don't remember seeing that particular one).

Of course, any sensible person would look at a barely passing grade and think, "Crap - I'd better step it up for the next couple of weeks." Instead he seems to have just gone limp. Which I can sort of understand without condoning it.

I suspect that the video games are at least a partial red herring here, for the same reason you mention. Frankly, his mother hates video games, and I think she's smelling an opportunity to clean house without looking like the bad guy. He and I DO both spend too much time playing them, though, so it's hard to argue the point.

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[info]aeire
2009-03-05 06:57 pm UTC (link)
Check with him to find out why he's not passing - I barely slipped through my biology class, and it was because I outright -refused- to dissect shit. I didn't want to take animals apart. They didn't offer me an alternative, so I ditched class for a good three weeks while they tore things apart.

The next year, I took earth sciences instead. Frankly, earthquakes, volcanoes, weather and conservation technology was way the hell more interesting to me anyway.

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[info]aeire
2009-03-05 06:59 pm UTC (link)
...and really the only reason I'm saying this is that there were several classes that I really, really sucked at in school, but there were always these underlying -reasons- why I wasn't doing well at them.

If he's sharp with everything else, then there may be something more going on than just not understanding the material - and with biology, it's...yeah. It's hard for some kids to handle, just because of the nature of the course.

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[info]chef_troy
2009-03-05 07:15 pm UTC (link)
These are good points, and I'm going to keep Mrs. Chef from eviscerating him before he has a chance to explain. One bit of bad luck for him is that she's feeling ill today, and that's going to make her extra grouchy about everything.

He likes biology, and he's been maintaining a B average in there up to now. I really think he got behind the eight-ball when he got sick, and then he convinced himself he couldn't catch up because he didn't want to do the work.

I have to take a portion of the responsibility here, because the district provides an online tool to track your kid's grades on a daily basis, and I haven't been using it. Frankly, if I'm going to be honest with myself, part of why I'm so pissed off at him is that this means inconvenience for ME -- I'm going to have to give up video games, and I'm going to have to e-mail his teacher and have a goddamned conference and I'm going to have to watch his grades online all the time because apparently I can't trust the knucklehead to ask for help when he gets overwhelmed.

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[info]debrafortune
2009-03-05 07:21 pm UTC (link)
I was soooooo happy when her high school put together online assignment tracking for parents. Unfortunately, the teachers often didn't use it in a timely manner so I'd end up fighting with her about assignments that "didn't get turned in" according to her teachers, only they had been... ugh.

Edited at 2009-03-05 07:22 pm UTC

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[info]chef_troy
2009-03-05 07:30 pm UTC (link)
This system distinguishes things that haven't been graded yet from things that were given a zero, fortunately.

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[info]aeire
2009-03-05 07:45 pm UTC (link)
I'd call it a good time to maybe give him a lesson in time-management as it were, planning, that kind of thing - and let him know that it's -okay- if he comes to you guys for help if he needs it.

Half the time the reason I never said anything until it was too late was because I was super embarassed about falling behind and didn't want to look really stupid to my parents - I mean, to a kid, your parents are your GODS. You don't wanna look dumb in front of them - that's the last thing you ever, ever want.

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[info]waterlilly
2009-03-05 09:11 pm UTC (link)
I don't think you ought to be punished for his bad behavior, but only you really know if you're really abusing the games or not. At any rate, you still have a job and a marriage and you're not flunking biology, so there's no point really in doing this to you.

My advice as an experienced parent: ground him to his room after school. Make sure you have confiscated all his game controllers. Don't bother to take the console, it's useless without the controllers. Password him out of his computer, if he has one. Strictly supervise "for school" computer use, but otherwise, it's off-limits. Do not allow him to get his fix by watching you play, either.

This way, you aren't being punished for his bad behavior. This is also a really good opportunity to talk with him about why he gave up on biology and what other choices he could have made, and get his input on where he thinks he went wrong. You also have a really good opportunity to show by example how an adult can choose to have the games available and still use time wisely.

But you especially need to address what he thinks is going on with him. Punishment without discussion of what happened here is pretty useless. "All or nothing" bans tend to do nothing but create more resentment and create the will to sneak around and work around the ban. That's not helpful. Also, keep in mind that if you throttle the games, he'll just take up something else to escape into.

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[info]xengar
2009-03-05 11:08 pm UTC (link)
I figure that since everyone else is offering you un-asked for advice, I should offer my two cents as well.

It may have nothing to do with the problems your son is having in school, but the cause of most of the problems I had was . . . that I was, as you put it, scary-smart. I was bored in a lot of classes and didn't have to put in much effort to keep up, which showed up in half-assed homework but high test scores. The real problem showed up later, after this theory was floated and I was moved into more difficult classes; I had never really had to study before and wasn't good at it. If this is what's going on with your son, then I would guess that he got caught up on the learning from those missed days, but but couldn't muster the motivation to finish the work from them.

For example, I was reading at a college level, according to the standardized tests, by 6th grade, but was slowly drifting into lower and lower English classes because of my scores. It became a self reinforcing spiral because the slower and more carefully the concepts were put forth, the less I had reason to pay attention because I already knew it. When my parents got my moved up to the top level class as an experiment, I was actually interested in what was being taught . . . and flunked because I had gotten used to already knowing what I needed to without effort on my part. It seems telling to me that it is Biology that is the problem, as that is another class that I skated by in. Does your household perhaps watch a fair amount of Nature/Nova/Discovery Channel/etc?

If (and notice that all through this I've emphasized that my case might not be relevant) he is the way I used to be, then trying to change his study habits (ie: taking away the video games) won't help much. I'm not sure how one goes about imparting studying skills because, as I said, it's something I'm still trying to improve and I've been out of college for a decade. But my guess would be that this is what he needs

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[info]doorinward
2009-03-06 02:01 am UTC (link)
Your brother is more lenient than I am ;) I ban the things from the house outright. Computers are an exception and the primary use for those (aside from school because we do use a cyber charter) is educational games/work.

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[info]zyada
2009-03-06 02:02 am UTC (link)
If it makes you feel any better, I nearly failed biology myself, although for different reasons than what your son is having problems with.

Thinking on what happened to me (a story in itself), and this, I think we are hurting a lot of kids by saying good grades = smart = good grades. There's a LOT to grades that have nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with other skills that may be even more useful when the kids are grown. Things such as doing work that's boring, even when you think it's lame; perseverance; following through; taking good notes; communicating; and in your son's case, not letting yourself get overwhelmed by having too much to do. I see far more how important these skills are in the workplace than any particular subject that I studied and I really doubt that there are that many jobs out there that don't need these skills. Like xengar, I didn't have to work at learning until I was far older than most people, so I skated by in a lot of my schooling on instant understanding.

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