Precisely. DD is a frequent flyer-- 3X, and nowhere near what she apparently "needed" in terms of difficulty bump. My 13yo is taking a full slate of honors and AP classes this year with her junior and senior peers, volunteers, acts as a peer tutor, serves on the boards of a pair of agencies, plays piano, is involved in a high-time commitment extracurricular(1-2 hours a day), and STILL spends upwards of 10-20 hours a week on chatango and palling around with her compadres, who are 2-6 years older than she is. We allow that because... well... it beats the alternative of having an anxious, depressed child who is fixated ONLY on her grades.
She's still pretty fixated on her grades, actually. The B in AP physics is keeping her up at night and definitely making her "avoidant" in that area. (Everything else is double nines and up). Thank heavens she's found a peer group (unofficially it's the HG+ RPG gaming group).
ETA: It occurs to me, though, that being "insanely" (as opposed to 'slightly') overbooked and overscheduled has HELPED this enormously. She's so busy that she quite literally doesn't have a lot of spare minutes to indulge in this particular negative set of thoughts, and therefore (I'm hypothesizing, anyway), not much time to actually get mired in it to start with. Since that short-circuits the entire process, we can nip leanings in the bud pretty easily by just pointing out that she's wasting time that she doesn't have.
Her schedule would seem actually CRAZY to other parents of 13yo kids, though. It's like we've built the procrastination in for her this year or something.
Whatever works, right??
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 10/10/12 09:02 PM.
