You receive an email from your daughter’s high school Science teacher.
After getting a 65% on the last test, her grade has dropped down to a C-. The teacher is graciously offering an extra credit assignment to be submitted in one week, which could bump her test grade up to 75%.
What a relief! So, you go tell her about the deal, and although she’s not as relieved as you thought she would be, she agrees that she should do the assignment.
A week goes by and you get another email – your daughter did not turn in the extra credit assignment and so has missed her chance to raise her grade. You’re baffled. It was only a couple of days ago that you had asked her how the assignment was going, expecting her to say what assignment? but instead, she’d said it was fine and she was halfway done. Now, when you confront her about it, she says she didn’t realize it was due today.
Have you ever had such an experience with your kid, one so riddled with hints of apathy, immaturity, or outright rebelliousness, that it leaves you wondering why don’t you want what’s best for you??
As someone that’s been in the private tutoring industry for over a decade, I’ve been lied to about schoolwork countless times by many students. For example, I once had a student that suddenly started getting 100’s on his tests, after failing all of the previous tests from that class. At first, I was proud and impressed, but when I asked him to do the easiest type of problem from the same unit, he couldn’t even do the first step, which, might I add, was typical of the skill level I had seen from him in our previous sessions. So, I started out by asking him if there was anything he’d like to tell me about his latest successes in Math, and he said no. Then, I began taking more direct approaches, but his responses still wouldn’t budge.
Behaviors like this were always so baffling to me, especially in cases where they’d know I knew the truth, and they’d still somehow attempt to defend themselves. So, I decided I was going to get to the bottom of why some kids self sabotage and how in the world do they justify it to themselves?!
- How they justify their self sabotage to themselves.
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How to build trust with your teenager.
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Strategies for teaching self accountability and for holding them accountable.
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What I said to my “cheating” student (above) that got him to lower his guard and resolve the issue amicably.
- Understanding the ideal student mindset, and a way to effectively explain it to them.
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