Community Chat

[occasionalrain]

I'm against using food as an incentive or reward.

Rewarding good grades, without a plan to improve them encourges cheating.

It's better to ask how you can help them improve their grades. Learning should be it's own reward. To accomplish something is a good feeling.

[jaxs mom]

I'm not sure how grades have anything to do with this. But I don't see my kids as my personal maid. I grew up like that, and I did not continue it in my own home. Everyone pitching in as best they can, yes. My personal maid, no. 

[Mominohio]

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Are you kidding me?
What has cleaning the house to do with improving one's grades?
I see zero connection between the two. I'm sure any last shred of respect or affection that 16 year old had for her parents was extinguished during that exercise.
Watch for headlines: "Estranged teen kills parents".

-p.s. Can't help but wonder if the teen were a SON, would the parents have issued the same assignment?

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@x Hedge@Lindsays Grandma@occasionalrain@Mominohio@chrystaltree

@x Hedge

WOW... very astute of you! 

The consequence SHOULD fit the “crime.”

Sometimes, assigning an unrelated consequence can even trigger ADHD in a child. (Madelyn Swift “Discipline for Life.”)

For instance:  BAD: “if you don’t eat all of your dinner, you will go to bed 15 minutes early.”

GOOD:  “After you finish your dinner, you may have ice cream.”

So in this case...(teenager) “After your grades have come up, then you can have social time.”

Discuss: how are we, as parents going to know this

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Can't even remotely agree with either of these two posts. Although the last two 'good' examples of positive reinforcement are fine, but as any parent knows, that only works some times, with some circumstances and with some kids. It's never a universally working solution.

[Noel7]

@Lindsays Grandma

After talking to her teachers (did they even bother?) they should have had her tested for a learning disability.  There's no shame in that and students can be taught other ways.

Did they even bother to get her a tutor?

They had her clean the house... my guess is they did that because they were too lazy to do it themselves.  They were certainly too lazy to look into what her problem was.

[Noel7]

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Grades do not come easy for my daughter.  I really do try to support her and help her.  I can remember how hard school was for me, I wasn't the best student.  And in this day and age, it's tougher (academically and socially).  I'm not a parent that expect all A's.  I never want to put that type of pressure on her.  We got her 2 tutors, one just for Math and another for the other subjects.  Would I rather not put out the money for that? Yes, but my daughters education and self-confidence is more important.  IMO, what those parents did seem more like a punishment rather than saying "let's figure out what happened so you'll be prepared next time." 

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@ScrapHappy

You are a good mom.  Your daughter's problem MAY have been a learning disability or ADD.  They can be genetic and it can run in the family.

A learning disability has NOTHING to do with intelligence, in fact its definition is for people who are at least of average intelligence.  It is also a problem for some people who are genius.

You did the right thing

[Lipstickdiva]

I think there is more to the story than this.  Unless you actually live in the house, you really don't know what is going on and to judge or criticize someone elses' parenting is overstepping.

My guess is the parents had a reason for doing what they did.  Perhaps this wasn't to inspire her to get better grades, it was a punishment for her not getting good grades.  And maybe they know why her grades suffered and this is how they dealt with it. 

That aside, when I was growing up, cleaning the house and doing chores wasn't my mother's "job."  We all did it together.  We all had to clean the house and before we were allowed to do anything on the weekend, the house had to be cleaned.  If we had something to do on a Saturday, when we came home from school on Friday we cleaned so we had the weekend free.

When we began summer break, the first week was spent spring cleaning our entire house which included washing all windows, wiping down walls, doing woodwork, etc.  Then we had the rest of our summer to do what we want. 

There is nothing wrong with making your kids do housework and chores, for the most part.  Obviously you can be excesive about it.  And as much as I grumbled when I had to do that, I'm glad I had to because now I know how to clean.          

[Lindsays Grandma]

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I think having a teen clean the entire house was excessively punitive bordering on child abuse.  Caring parents would have made an effort to find out why her grades were low and corrected the appropriate short comings.  I'd say the parents were lazy and looking for free maid service.

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Comments like this show a complete lack of understanding of real abuse.

She wasn't beat, or starved, or chained in the basement. She wasn't sexually abused, humiliated in public or removed from friends or the community on a permanent basis..

She was ordered to do manual labor in a home in which she lived and in my opinion bears some responsibility at that age, for helping to keep. 

I would have instructed her (had she been my daughter) that this was being done as a time for her to think. She needed to think about the importance of her grades. She needed to think about what her future might entail if she didn't do well in school and the kind of work that would lead her to perhaps have to pursue because she didn't have an education. Something (possibly) like hard physical labor that she would be doing that day. 

I'd tell her that in cleaning the entire home, she could see just how hard her father and I had worked to provide the home and the things in it, and it didn't come easy or quickly, with much more sacrifice than she would be expending during her day of solitude and thought. 

I would have increased the experience with removing all forms of electronics. No music, no television, no social media etc. 

There is nothing as therapeutic as work and solitude. It forces you to get inside your own head, gives you time to think yet physically burn off frustration, anger, disappointment etc. 

What parents consider 'punishment' today is a joke. Many kids today have no idea what hard work and sacrifice is in the least. We do them no favors in letting them skate through without consequences for things they need to be held responsible for. 

Of course none of us know this family, or it's true dynamics, but the fact that she left at 18 isn't necessarily a bad thing. Kids are supposed to be raised to be independent and go out on their own. I don't believe you are really doing proper parenting if your kids want to keep living with you in their adult years. They need to be productive, independent members of society, taking care of themselves, and some do it sooner than others. 

I'm sure she will look back on her life and find she has many many days that were harder, so much harder, than that day she had to clean the house from top to bottom, and she might even get some of the things her parents were trying to make her realize by giving her the day to herself and the means to work through some much needed thought processes. 

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I appreciate your opinion, I would not have looked at it that way, always appreciate different viewpoints.  I remember when they took her cell phone away, the grades shot up very fast.  Her interpretation of cleaning the house was that she was being treated like a slave.  She is in her twenties, living with her boyfriend and has a one year old baby.

[Noel7]

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Too bad her parents weren't better role models.  Ending up with a boyfriend and a baby is often a form of rebellion.  We've seen examples of that in the public eye, for sure.

[CrazyDaisy]

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Too bad her parents weren't better role models.  Ending up with a boyfriend and a baby is often a form of rebellion.  We've seen examples of that in the public eye, for sure.

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Thats a jump, A woman in her twenties that has a boyfiend and a baby is not making a life for herself, rather a product of bad parenting.  Cannot say I agree with you assessment of the situation however you can have that opinion.

[LTT1]

@Mominohio

My offering here is such a minor thing because really, I think creating a child’s work ethic starts practically at the moment of birth...and in this situation the girl is a teen old enough to have a baby.

Your explanation is really a “tie-in” with mine... as a mom you would ask why and then explain the consequence.

To the person who said the parents are lazy, that is what it looks like to me!

As a teacher of students with special needs, I was so very often wondering where the parents were and did they care?

I think as a parents we do need to ask — is the low grade because the student “can’t” or ”won’t?”