Update

It’s summer break – we made it through another school year. Toward the end of the semester since my research project officially ended before the end of my son’s school year, we had some struggles. While I was collecting data for my research project, he complained about talking to me every night about his school progress. After the project ended, I stopped collecting data. His grades dropped again. Had he become dependent on my checking up on him?

He fluctuated between handing in assignments and seeming disconnected and not handing in his work.  He also continued with the pattern of making excuses about why he wasn’t doing well in his classes. We haven’t made it to the point where he starts taking responsibility and quit finding any reason possible why he isn’t doing his school work. He continues to talk about going to college, but doesn’t seem to understand what that involves.  He told me that he didn’t want to work as hard on his school as I’ve worked on my ILT classes.

It seemed for a while that he had a clarifying moment toward the end of the year when he got his ACT scores. His overall score was high enough (high 20’s) that he could apply to any of the state colleges, but, his grade point average is low enough that they don’t have to accept him.

Where do we go from here? He passed all of his classes and is on track for graduating next spring. He has decided to take a very heavy load his senior year and refuses to rethink his decision. He is taking psychology and philosophy and says that those are the classes he is really looking forward to. We will continue working with him this summer and we should be able to tell within the first several weeks of school whether we helped encourage him and motivated him. Nobody ever said this was going to be easy.