My little sister just sent me a copy of her report card.
She got all A’s and perfect behavior in all her classes except 2 of them.
I believe she sent this to me, because she thought I would be so excited she got straight A’s that I would just give her a reward…. She is sadly mistaken.
For those who don’t know, my little sister is 13 years old and very smart. Smart to the point that she finishes her work so quickly that she gets bored. Like me, when boredom sets in she can cause quite the scene. Our personalities are exactly alike so, I presented her with a deal. The deal was for perfect grades and perfect behavior and she would get a pair of shoes that she wanted.
My response:
“Great job! I see you got straight A’s. however, I also see two non perfect behavior marks (equivalent to B+’s)”
Her response:
(Upset emoticon face) I don’t care!
My response:
“The deal is still on, turn those 2′s into 1′s and you get your shoes :-). A deal is a deal”
Her response:
“OK”
My response:
“The lesson learned here is this… In the real world as in when you’re an adult and working for a living. Bonuses, paychecks etc… are only issued out when you meet the requirements. To give you anything when you didn’t meet the requirement completely would not be indicative of life.. As an adult you don’t get stuff for just showing up. you get stuff for producing… I say that to say this, I am very proud of your grades. Great job, but I think and know you can do better in the behavior department. “
Take away
kids / people live up to your expectation. People these days give their kids stuff just for showing up. Back in my day there were no trophies or ribbons after 3rd place. Then we got soft… Now everybody is a winner. This attitude is complete bullshit and sets your kid up for failure. If I don’t push you and Im supposed to love you and be family… Who will? You learn to ride a bike via taking the training wheels off and busting your ass aka failure! You have to know defeat to respect success. Let your kids fail then they will grow.
Here is what some of my Facebook friends had to say:
Mr. Brewster
You are right. Ricky Bobby said if you ain’t first your last, shake and bake! An though it was funny, it’s the truth. Who remembers who lost all Superbowls? No One! But you remember who won. Same thing. Continue to lead sir.
Mr. Mascaro
That’s real you gotta push these kids these days, to many distractions these days.. i do the same wit my nephew.
Mr. Fuller
I’m going to use this for my soccer teams ha, you should see some of the stuff i deal with sometimes about this very subject! ha
What are your thoughts children and failure? Do you think we are too soft on kids now? What are your thoughts on my approach? Are men harder on kids than women?
Dominique Brown
Dominique Brown is the CEO of DNB Financial Planning, landlord, financial educator and non-profit owner. He enjoys working out, helping others and everything finance. His sole purpose for creating this website is to share his passion of personal finance and to help you simplify your finances. I love questions.. So feel free to ask me anything!
Follow Me:
To be honest I do believe this is quite harsh. A 13 year old is going through a massive life change, if her intelligence is as high as you say then within a couple of years she will naturally see the massive problems with the education system she has always relied upon and the grades might naturally slip. This of course depends on whether she is “academic” smart or more “practical and logical” in her intelligence.
In general I find the idea you get marked down for behaviour is a strange one, especially when it comes to teenagers.
Alex,
Interesting.. However I’m not seeing correlation between the education system and her behaving properly.
No matter your intelligence level, schools are quite boring places to be. In these situations reasonably smart kids, especially if they are not being intellectually challenged, will often decide to be a bit creative with their actions, hence misbehaving.
There is nothing worse than boredom.
I would go down the route of saying “I know you are bored and that’s why you want to have fun, and you have done the work so you might feel you deserve to. Maybe once you have completed your work, if you feel a bit fidgety ask your teacher for something more to do. Then I promise you extra fun at home.”
Grades aren’t important, education is, having fun is. If you seperate your relationship between education, intelligence and grades and speak to her in a more understanding fashion it will make you appear less controlling (teenagers hate controlling, non-trusting parents).
Alex,
“Then I promise you extra fun at home” See, the problem with saying this is…. I don’t live with my little sister and I just met her for the firs time in 13 years. If, I lived with her or knew her for longer than a few months I definitely will try a different approach, however I don’t have that luxury. Secondly, I’m not being controlling at all, this is a deal her and I equally set up around the 2nd time I spoke with her. We were talking about her school and she said, “I can get perfect behavior if I wanted too” , so I took her challenge and added an incentive to it. So, the decision to take the deal of perfect grades/behavior was her doing not mine. Keep in mind, I’m her long lost big brother who she just met for the first time in 13 years. I don’t know her well enough yet to offer any intrinsic motivators, so I’m settling for extrinsic motivators until we have a better bond.
Sorry for the misunderstanding Dominique I think I totally overlooked that fact. In that case everything you said made sense :).
Please ignore my prior ramblings :p.
I definitely appreciate the comments! I wouldn’t consider it rambling at all. You were concerned and expressed your honest opinion. I wish more of my readers did the same :-)
I see you are teaching your little sister life’s lessons. I’m not sure why she didn’t receive an A for her behavior. I remember students in my class when I was a teenager who misbehaved at times but did really well in class. It turned out they did pretty well in life, too.
I think she gets bored and distracted in class easily by her peers. Peer pressure is a mutha f’r as a kid in the inner city.