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Today’s podcast and blog are questions that Dr Leman answers in his latest training, 3 Easy Steps to No More Homework Tears. These are just 2 of the questions he answers in the training. The training also include 3 Steps to set you, the parent, up for success.

Summary or draw them in paragraph

LISTEN HERE

Question #1:

Hello Dr. Leman.  Here’s my question.  I have a young man who’s a freshman in high school and he has Hashimoto’s Disease and he also has the non-hyper ADHD.  He seems like he’s in slow motion all the time.  We’re on his case to get his work done using the reward system.  He loves technology, loves to be on the computer.  We use that.  He has to earn his time.  

However, he is very sluggish about getting his work done.  When we don’t push him, his grades go down.  When we do push him, it’s a struggle.  He seems like he says it’s exhausting for him to get good grades.  He tries, his grades come up and that wears him out, then he shuts down for a while.  We go through this cycle constantly.  

We’re wondering if you have any advice.  Thank you.

Dr. Leman’s Answer:

Yes, I do have some advice.  You may not like it but nevertheless you’ve asked the question.  You push your kid and he minimally gets by.  You don’t push him, then he doesn’t do well.  He’s a techy.  He loves technology.  He’s got some medical disorders that don’t help the situation.  But let me assure you this sluggishness, his purposive behavior serves a purpose in his life.  It’s one of the ways he’s trained you to make him do things.  My question is what are you going to do five years from now when he is not under your roof?  Are you going to be there to push him as well? I’d rather solve that problem now.

The reward system – reward and punishment is what we’ve used for years.  It does not work.  Every bestselling Leman book that parents have loved and profited from is anti-reward.  Rewards work for a short period of time.  Will kids work for rewards?  Yes, they will.  But it runs its course.

Here’s the bigger problem.  Would you have a kid that has good grades or just minimal passing grades as I imagine your freshman kid is getting?  Or would you rather have a good relationship with your son or your daughter?

See, I don’t think what you’re doing is creating any kind of good relationship with your son.  The focus seems to be solely on grades.

Here’s the dilemma I see.  You can push him and he produces minimally and then you back off and then he fails.  You have a budding perfectionist on your hands whether you know it or not. I know he doesn’t look like a perfectionist.  He’s a procrastinator.  He put things off, and he does so because he fears your evaluation.  He fears judgments. He fears criticism.

I would strongly suggest – and your kid by the way is classic example of a kid who needs tutorial help–get him tutorial help, and that tutorial help should not come from Mom or Dad.

The biggest thing of all is: would you rather have a kid who minimally gets by with school grades and you have this screaming and yelling and cajoling every night of the year, or would you rather have a good relationship with your son?  That’s the question.

I think above everything else, relationships matter more than anything else.  You need to get yourself out of that scheme where you’re always pushing him and he’s reacting to that because sooner or later he’s just going to bury himself down, and you’re going to have made your problems ahead if you don’t get out of the reward-punishment syndrome.

Every Leman book ever written that parents love, award-winning bestselling books that have been premised on rewards and punishment no longer work.  If you’re a person of faith, let me throw this at you.  There’s only one way to bring up a kid, and that’s as an authoritative parent.  Authoritative not authoritarian.  God is not authoritarian.  God is the supreme authority.  So, permissiveness spawns rebellion, so does authoritarianism.

You run the risk with reward and punishment of slipping into that authoritarian based parenting which is bound to backfire on you.  I wish you the best.

Question #2:

“My daughter is a freshman in high school.  At this time, the school sends me an email notification every time a new grade is posted.  I have the option to opt out of these notices.  Should I stay on top of her grades by checking every time a new grade is posted?  Or should I ignore all test grades and simply wait until the report card comes in nine weeks.  She does occasionally earn F in her homework and tests, but has never brought home anything lower than a C on her report card.”  

“I don’t want to be a micromanaging helicopter mom, but I don’t know what I would do if I totally ignored her grades for such a long period of time and then would get a report card with shockingly low marks.  I’m not sure that she would continually keep a B average if she knows I’m not checking her grades regularly.”

Dr. Leman’s Answer:

Well, that’s an interesting question.  I think it’s interesting and good that your school is sending you emails on grades.  If that were me – and your point about nine weeks is well received-that’s a long time to sit in the weeds and see what’s going to happen.  I would make a little header on the refrigerator that says ‘email of the week’ or ‘email of the day’, if you prefer.  I don’t know.  A week would probably make more sense.  Just take those emails when they come, print them out, clip them out to appropriate size and put them in a little box that says ‘email of the week’.

Here’s the key.  If you do that, don’t comment on it.  Don’t make one reference to it.  Why am I saying that?  Because you say, and I’m quoting you, that if you think that your kid didn’t think that you were checking on grades then she wouldn’t be able to pull that B average.  Well, quite frankly, I don’t believe that, but since you believe it, I’m just trying to respond to what you’re saying.  I think it would be a good idea to just put that up there once a week.  If you get sent more than one in a week, you can post one behind the other.  But I’d just find a way, put a magnet on them to hold them there.  When the week’s over, get rid of them.  Then, we start a new week.

In that way, she knows that you know what her grades are, but you’re not saying a word about it.  That’s how I’d handle that.

Announcements

3 Easy Steps to No More Homework Tears Training

Tired of bribing or threatening your kids to finish their homework? Do you fret over how to improve their grades?

Here is the latest training from Dr. Leman–3 Easy Steps to No More Homework Tears. Click HERE for more information

Ends Thursday, Dec 18th

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