| Sylvia Rimm Q: We've threatened our underachiever with taking away private school and sending him to public school because of his poor effort. Is this a bad threat? We are at our wit's end. My husband said he won't take him out of the school, but we are trying to scare him into working harder.
A: Your son undoubtedly knows that your scare tactic is insincere, so he may even be testing you to see how far he can push you. It's all right for parents to remind kids they've invested a lot in their private school education and they expect an equal investment of effort from their children. At least that reminder won't threaten them with something you don't plan to follow through on.
If your son is underachieving in an excellent private school, he probably needs an evaluation and counseling to help determine the cause of his underachievement. You could discover a learning disability, an attention problem or underachievement that comes from poor self-confidence. Sometimes children underachieve as part of sibling rivalry -- feeling as if they can't do as well as a sibling can discourage them from putting forth effort. Other times, children do poorly because they're competitive with classmates and feel like even if they worked hard, they couldn't do well. Most crucial to turning around underachievers is discovering academic strengths that get them excited enough to truly work hard. The discovery that hard work really can make a difference in their accomplishments can inspire them to take on other challenges.
Underachievers may get into problem patterns if (1) adults have done too much for them in the past or if (2) they've been given so many choices early -- they believe they should be allowed to choose what they will do, and sometimes they refuse to do what they are assigned because they haven't made the choice. I've described the first group, who received too much help, as dependent underachievers and the second group as overempowered, dominant underachievers. I ask parents and teachers to use counterintuitive responses to reverse underachievement, which has been a long-standing pattern as it has been for your son. That means that for the first group, although you're tempted to continue to do too much for them, you have to firmly and positively insist on them becoming more independent. For the second group, you may intuitively begin overpunishing them when they stubbornly refuse to do work. That isn't very effective for too-powerful children who often dig their heels in. You will have to negotiate with them in a positive, but firm way to inspire them toward work. My book, "Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades" (Great Potential Press, 2008), will be very helpful in providing you with practical strategies for helping your son after you've identified why he is underachieving. It delineates dependent and dominant strategies that both teachers and parents can use.
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Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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