- that once I "owned" and got involved in the process, he checked out and let it be me who was frustrated, worried, etc.
My DS15 absolutely needed me to 'be his frontal lobes' in 6th grade, and gracefully transitioned to a light hand on the tiller in 7th and total independence for 8th. I can't promise that this had anything to do with me, maybe I was just lucky, but I can say for sure that the old saw just wasn't true in our case.
I 'owned' his homework in 6th grade, but I never worried, got frustrated, or had any emotion except "Wow - i so needed this when I finally met challenge, but I was already in college and living away from home when the x hit the fan, so I didn't have any support, I'm so glad you are reaching this point now and we can work together on it."
I had figured out on DH that the more I took emotional responsibility for anything the less others tend to feel the need to. After all, it's your DS who doesn't get the goodies unless he does the basics, so why would you worry. I don't think that getting bad grades is a bad thing - better than having a child who get's straight As all the way through High School without trying or learning Self Mastery and then goes off to college unprepared to handle setbacks. But it's bad if it lingers and continues.
What helped my son was finding a binder with a 'homework to do' and a 'homework to hand in' file folder in the front. That simplified things. If that hadn't worked, I would have insisted that DS scan his homework to an email and email it to the teacher before he goes to play, and then ALSO hand in the homework like anyone else. This is just to show the teachers that he is 'in the game.'
As for the 'I'm learning anyway' treat that argument as an 'ego-saver.' It feels less bad if one 'didn't try' if one feels like failure is inevitable. Tell him that good grades matter to you, and that if he can't understand why that is now, you are confident that he'll understand it later, when he is older. For now he needs to trust you on this. (The reason is that decoding what other people - like future bosses - want is a skill that needs time to develop, and turning in the homework is the only way to figure out if one is correctly interpreting the teacher.)
All this presupposes that the academic fit is 'not perfect, but decent.' By high school I think it's reasonable to expect you child to do what they can even when the material is dull as dirt, but in 6th grade, I think a child is still a bit too young to be expected to do it all on 'will power' alone. It always helps if the material is interesting and developmentally appropriate.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
