It's never a good sign when the world's (maybe not) most perfect teenager calls me during school hours. Yesterday was indeed such a day.
When junior started year 10 or the preparatory year for the Diploma program, I was at a meeting at school. His advisory for his personal project advised us parents to back off a little and give the teenager some space. Constantly nagging them about their schoolwork would, in her experience, stifle the teenager and lead to poorer performance.
When my teenager called me yesterday between his penultimate and last lesson of the day, I could immediately hear in his voice that something wasn't right. It turned out that he had had a meeting with his Individual and Society (I&S) teacher. My son's grade in this subject drops from a 6 to a 4, which in his world and mine is a disaster. During the conversation, it emerged that all his grades are falling, but that it is mainly 4 subjects that are affected.
The offspring asked me to return to our previous arrangement where we jointly go through his schoolwork. He also wanted to increase the review from once to twice a week.
I put together a timetable where he can continuously fill in upcoming formative and summative tests. This timetable helps him plan which days and what to study for the exam.
He could see right away that he has to study a chapter of math every day for the entire Christmas break as he has a big summative next year's second week of school. In addition, he needs to do a Spanish assignment every day during the same time period. I explained that if you ignore school during school hours, you have to "pay" in the form of all school holidays.
It will be interesting to see how long his motivation lasts. Last night I could have made him read Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus without the slightest protest.
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