Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy underachievement

DD10 is making B's. I know for a ND kid, B's are above average. For my kid, they are the blatant symptom of boredom and carelessness. It makes it exceedingly difficult to advocate for her.

Please help me to alleviate my mommy-guilt. Are there ANY other MG or HG kids on this forum in public school making B's?

No mine makes F's, And D's b/c he is bored. This is a major issue in that the school doesn't recognize his giftedness. He just doesn't value grades and is not a game player. It is so frustrating.

I'm so sorry, vicam! I teach one like that - a GT identified graduating (well, he might not graduate) National Merit semi-finalist who reads Latin fluently but is failing everything (except Latin). He loves to learn but hates anything he perceives as busy work. It's heartbreaking.

Vicam and Zarkitty,

I began homeschooling a few weeks ago...reason...DS who is already grade skipped once was not getting bad grades (although I don't know how not) but was refusing to do assignments and creating such a disruption to his teacher that she recommended he stay back until he was more mature. He is working 2 to 5 grade levels above here at home with no sign of struggle, still trying to find the appropriately challenging level but there is NO way the school will want to place him ahead and if I send him back I see poor grades ahead for sure as well as a lot of detentions and such.

"He just doesn't value grades" -- we have that in our home too. I have trouble deciding how much to enforce efforts to boost grades. For us it began earlier when this ds was 8 or 9 and had "vocabulary homework" -- which became a family joke. He knew all the words (of course) and was supposed to copy the definitions and then write a sentence for each word. To complete this extremely boring assignment meant he had to put down whatever book he was reading (I remember for example, once it was "A Tale of Two CIties" and my son pointed out he was learning plenty new vocab from the book). Most of his lower school homework was like that, a complete waste of time for ds, and he knew it.

Now this same child is 15 and in high school, and he makes mostly Bs, sometimes a C here or there when he has dropped the ball a few times too often in that class. Usually these grades result from combinations of A's and several much lower grades, from homework not handed in or not completed carefully, or some such thing. I have trouble with the idea of pushing him to make straight A's since it would still mean giving up some of the reading he does for pleasure to focus more on some kind of "busywork" -- OTOH in life we all have to deal with some degree of busywork. I don't know what the right answer is on any of this.....

Here in NYC though parents seem to be focused on getting kids into "top colleges" (usually defined as HYP) which I understand requires a very high GPA (certainly higher than my ds has). I can't get too excited about it. My ds works hard enough on the things he really loves, and my hope is all will work out well for him in the end. I think college will be better because there will be more opportunity for him to study the things he really loves, with less focus on "busywork."

As for "mommy guilt" -- I hope you Zarfkitty will give yourself a free pass on this. The B's might make it more difficult for you to advocate for her (I am sure they do), but in the grand scheme of things, I think the B's are understandable, and nobody's fault. I wonder what the psychologists at DYS say about underachievement? Maybe they have something helpful to add to this.

DD's B's are rarely from lack of mastery or even poor teaching in and of itself. After copious repetition of the same skill, she tunes out and makes careless errors. This is a problem in math and reading, both of which are classes that have heavy teach-to-the-state-test components. Another problem is that these copious, repetitive assignments are worksheets that have only 6-8 state test style problems on a page. Perfection is required to make an A. The only "A" is 100% correct.

For perspective, compare her SAT10 percentiles of 99 and 94 in reading and math respectively, and her "A" average in above grade level EPGY math.

She's so fed up with school that I predict dead-average results on the state tests.

We need to create an underachievers tribe here -- lol! My 9y/o dd, grade 4, is getting As and Bs. Her Bs are in the subjects where she tests HG (verbal areas like reading and spelling). It does seem, in our instance, to be a mixture of erratic grades (Ds-A+s wind up as a B on the report card), something that just isn't clicking in this area for her, lack of interest, and a conscious decision to appear "normal," in her words.

That's my boy. F in science b/c it's just too simple, No igneaus isn't just frmo volcanos but there are plutonic and volcanic types with size of crystals depending on rate of cooling. Now if they did that in 3rd grade he would pay attention.

She's in 5th grade. The fall semester was better with less focus on state test prep and more focus on learning for its own sake. Since January it's been test prep all day, every day. She's already taken 2 out of the 3 subject tests, so hopefully the next units of study will be more enjoyable. We'll see.

FWIW - in view of the different school and university system and not needing grades for advocacy.

DS16 was always an A's and B's student. A's on the subjects he loved, B's on those he loathed. He has finally reached a happy place due to the fact that he is at the point in his schooling where he can elect only the subjects he is truly interested in, hence all A grades. The exception to this is English which is compulsory. This is a subject that fell into the loath category but interestingly enough now that his results over the next two years count he has stepped up to the mark and is achieving here as well.

Thinking back DD was similar in some ways except she had the results game down to fine art. She is not as driven and was happy to only do what was necessary to get to where she wanted. Therefore she knew the minimum she had to achieve in each subject area to still get the marks required to attend the university she wanted. By that I mean she didn't aim for the minimum just knew what mark she couldn't afford to fall below. Now that she is at university, doing what she wants, she too is happy to give it her all.