Do any of you have suggestions to make these kids care about their grades and work harder in school? Dark Horse

You could complain to the administration that your kid should get a better grade so that he can get into a better college and keep complaining until they raise it. Not totally kidding - it happens way too often in the district where I teach, where we are suffering from a severe case of "Lake Woebegone" Syndrome - all of the children are highly above average - not to mention "Administrators without Backbones" disease. (I personally think they've lost other parts of their anatomy, but this is - sort of - a polite forum. ) I'm not sure what would be worse - kids getting C's because they're not working hard and that's what they deserve, or kids getting A's even though they deserve C's because the parents complain. I admit, I do worry from time to time about the sorry state we'll be in when some of the slackers I teach are adults. and in charge of important stuff like the care I'll get in the nursing home. But haven't us old folks always complained about the sorry state of the younger generations? OK, running stuff: 6 wonderful miles today, starting in a snow show and ending while watching a glorious sunset. Temps in the mid 30s. Windy. Hard to imagine I ran the same route in shorts just a week ago. Keeping just ahead of the 1,000K pace bunny! Eliz

Wow, lots of interesting and thought-provoking posts. Dale, I'm glad to see you post here. I think your tough attitude probably works for you and your family. You are a highly successful professional and you followed a long arduous program of schooling. Your kids are probably chips off the old block, so to speak, and what worked for you may well work for them. At the very least, you have the moral authority to back up your position. I on the other hand have not followed a straight path, perhaps because I emerged from a family that underwent some turmoil, and I do not feel I have the knowledge or moral authority to tell these kids what they HAVE to do. Sure, I try to guide them: I take them hiking and camping, served as the local scoutmaster, go to their sporting events when I can, and encourage them to participate in activities I believe will be good for them. We have never had TV in our household, because I wanted them to become readers: they both have. Perhaps because I'm not entirely sure about my own choices, I give our boys much latitude in how they spend their time. I'm not happy about some of their choices. However, I am a hands-off guy in general: I like people to make their own choices, and learn from them. Call me a Jeffersonian, or perhaps a disciple of Emerson: one of my favorite pieces of writing is Self Reliance, of which the following is an excerpt: "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on the plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. ... "Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. ... "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. ... "If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances." I'm not saying my attitude is best. But it is mine. Dark Horse

magnificient quote! we do make our own choices... My path to my present place-through school was very serpiginous. This probably started with my sliding through high school with average grades at best, despite having the smarts to do better.( I made honors occasionally, was in a gifted program at middle school-based on test scores, but I never had to work hard.) The work was always there but I rarely studied. I barely graduated high school. There were lessons learned, albeit slowly. I didn't have to get great grades as a kid. My parents just wanted to make sure that I passed. And that's all I did for a long time. It became apparent to me as an adult that I'd better get my crap together. I worked harder at college and very hard in graduate school. My grades improved by leaps and bounds. I was told my my HS advisor not to apply to medical school as I would not get in. He truly believed that. I worked harder than ever after that... My kids will be able to make all the choices they want. College is not an option-it is an expectation. My wife and I have been setting them up for this as being necessary for years. They will pay for a portion of their education. They will be better off than I was. After college, they can choose to use their education or not. What works for me or others, is irrelevant. You must find what 'works' for you. What will you be happy with at the end of your life? If you're ok with what you've done, then don't worry about it. Most of the time kids will grow up with or without us, but I believe it's better for them to learn values and lessons from us. You've been away a while and I expect homelife has been difficult. I want to say again how lucky we are as Americans to have men like you that sacrifice your time and risk your life for our ideal of freedom. Thank you, Sgt Horse. PS-I owe you all a Red Sox game this year...please send me your email address. to: dtoce 1 @ cox.net

Dale, You know, I didn't intend the Emerson quote to stand in opposition to your opinions. I'm not surprised you like it. I'm simply not sure enough of my own opinions to impose them on others, even my own kids (most of the time). Let me tell you a story: This past weekend, our two boys went away for the weekend with their church youth group. On Sunday, while my wife and I were at church, she got a call on her cellphone--after the service, thank goodness--from our older boy. He had attended a session about poverty in the Third World, during which the speaker showed a video of children suffering in abject poverty. Apparently it was a real tear-jerker. So far, so good, but then the speaker handed out pledge cards asking the kids to commit monthly sums of their own money to support poor children in other countries. Our older boy, who is tender-hearted and literal-minded, was calling to get the number of his bank account so he could arrange for automatic monthly withdrawals to support these foreign kids. The church speaker wanted him to pay $33 a month, when his paper route--his only source of income--earns barely double that. He said, "Dad, I can afford it! These kids really need the money!" We refused to let him do it. I was outraged that a speaker would approach kids in this manner. These kids were removed temporarily from their parents' care, then propagandized in an emotional manner, and finally solicited for money when they were vulnerable. It turned out that at least one of our youth group leaders felt the same way, and he forbade our group to give any money to this cause. My wife and I both talked on the phone to our son. She told him, "We don't know how much of this money ever gets to the kids; we don't know anything about this program. It's better to give the money locally where we know how it is being spent. If you bring some information home about this program, we can look at it." Our son became agitated and said, "No! I have to do it before the end of the weekend!" Apparently part of the speaker's game was to get the kids to commit their money immediately, before they got home to Mom and Dad. I told him, "This is simply inappropriate, what they are trying to get you to do." I offered my son the best advice I could. But--and here is the point of my story--even now, I don't truly know which contains the greater wisdom: the cynical experience of age, or the pure heart of youth. Dark Horse

P.S. Dale, about your Nietzsche quote: "That which does not destroy us makes us stronger." Perhaps you mean it at least partly tongue in cheek. As I'm sure you know, the quote is wrong. There are intermediate states between destruction and growing stronger. It is quite possible, and happens all the time, that people are confronted by challenges that do not destroy them, but merely cripple them. Rather than becoming stronger, they are permanently weakened, and as a result fail to achieve their potential. You are strong, and therefore your kids are probably strong, too. They are hardy stock, and the Nietzschean approach may work well with them. :-) But other kids are not as strong. They may need gentler management. For example, I'm worried about Jlynne's threat to toss her kid out of the house. Maybe it's the right approach. But maybe it's not. Or perhaps I should say, maybe it's the right approach for other kids, but not for her kid. Not my business, and I don't pretend to know. I do remember, when I flunked out of college after my freshman year, and came home a nervous wreck with my confidence shot, my father wanted to charge me rent to live in my own bedroom. My mother stood up to him and said, "No child of mine is going to pay rent to live in my house." I'm not saying my mother was right and my father was wrong, because I don't know. I respect both points of view. Given a low-stress year at home, I got a job, pulled myself together, and then returned to school. About your mediocre grades in your youth, and subsequent commitment to excellence in graduate school and a demanding profession: I am reminded of the late Archibald Cox, the famous constitutional law scholar who was fired by President Nixon in the "Saturday Night Massacre." I studied constitutional law under Cox and had dinner with him one night in the late 1970s. He told me he got "gentleman's C's" throughout his undergraduate career at Harvard College in the 1930s. In those days, grades were not as important if you came from a good family, so Cox got into Harvard Law School anyway. He took his legal studies seriously, and graduated first in his class. By the way, despite our dinner together, Professor Cox gave me a C in his course.

Great stuff here. DH, let me say that deeds committed with the pure heart of youth, cannot be in vain. I'll also add that even if little of the money goes to those that need it, the fact that the money was given with a pure heart benefits the giver as much, if not more, than those that receive it. My cynical experience of age, however, would have forbade it as well. I also agree that the way the solicitation was handled was inappropriate at best. Kids.....love 'em. BTW, no run for me today.

I agree, interesting topic and input today. I don't have much to add that would be helpful - I got straight As in high school, and did well in engineering school. My daughter, age 14, always gets straight As. She pushes herself pretty hard, so DH and I don't really have to. Lucky for us she takes after me - DH said he didn't work very hard in high school because he didn't see the point. His parents struggled to motivate him, and never had much success. But he turned out OK. If kids have a good heart and a good moral compass, they'll probably do fine in life, despite poor grades or study habits. Oh, yeah, since this IS a running forum... 3 quick miles at the rec center track after work at 9:30 avg pace. There was a police officer there with what looked like a recruit - the guy was kind of overweight and out of shape, and he was running a timed mile. I lapped him like 5 times. But on his last lap the cop said, come on, sprint the last lap - and the guy picked up his pace and passed me. So I picked up my pace and ran with him, encouraging him to keep up the pace. He thanked me when he finished. I hope I was actually being helpful, and not annoying.

DH, I've also got a son who has always seemed to lack motivation, does the least he can get away with, etc. Now he's about to graduate from college and I still don't think he has any idea what he wants to do, or at least any realistic idea. I've always had a hard time understanding this because I was always highly motivated and knew what I wanted to do. Plus, going through engineering school in the 60s, I had a guaranteed job from the day I started. In fact, I've never had to "go looking for a job" and don't know what that's like. In my son's case, I also have trouble distinguishing what he can help from what he can't. He definitely lies somewhere along the autistic-spectrum line (for that matter, so do I), but he's still going to eventually have to make his own way in the world. Unfortunately, the job climate in this country in general and this state in particular is not too encouraging. We just hope that he does like he has in the past and surprise us on the up-side. Regarding some of the other comments, I've also heard it said that "anything you do before the age of 30 doesn't count." This just means that it's OK to make a major change of direction in your education or career when you're young without hurting your future much. That's basically what I did and it certainly worked out well. So that's my big hope for my son and others: that they just try something for a while and then find out what they really want to do, and perhaps what the value of a good education is.