"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.
