O/T, do all kids go braindead at 14?

So, where do you draw the line between the work required for an A/P class and being bored to death in the regular classes?

10-4 on the belonging part. Jonathan really enjoys going to the swap and hanging out with "The guys". The fact that a bunch of older guys he respects accept him as one of their own, just blows him away. Fitting in is a huge part of being a teenager. That's why Cliques are so prevalent. I do find that the more I take the time to actually talk WITH him and not AT him, the better things go...or at least he pretends to listen and nods his head a lot.

 

Root, he's HAD the frontal labotomy. Its called puberty.

 

I guess I have cooled off now....He's a good kid. If this is the worst that happens, I'll still be way ahead of the game.

 

Teens to mid tweenties in my observation of others kids (none of my own) are ...well...interesting....

I think tha the introduction of hormones sends common sense and hte ability to think into a tailspin. Around by the mid twentys they get it figgured out it seems.

I had a college professor say he thought that kids were hard wired to rebel at puberty. He may be right. I believe that there is a metal awakening at that time and major personality and socal development going on. I think all other abilites go on hiatius for a bit to varying degrees for different kids whil ethey sort all that out and find there place.

A friend of mine has a 14 year old daughter and she's really a good and smart kid, but damn!! her logic is all F'd up sometimes (most times?).

 

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starion88esir , I know you probably think that the guys on a car forum are not the ones to ask for advice. You see, I know a lot of these guys on a personal level and I respect them as fathers and friends.

I am very involved in both of my kids lives, as a matter of fact, I miss a lot of good car events, hamb shows etc. so that I can follow their school events. We all sit down for breakfast and dinner together. They don't take their plates and leave the table.

We talk on a regular basis and we have a lot of family outings.
I ask these questions because the guys that have already been through this may have made some mistakes and gained some wisdom through these problems.

I wasn't a very good son, so I am trying to be a better father.

Root
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Good job, peer pressure. Everyone still ultimately makes their own decisions, due to outside influence or not. Life is full of pressures, if you can't make it through them in high school, how do you plan to make it in the working world?

 

Then just move along sonny, if this is just a car forum to you.[/quote]

Was I advising a kid to do what I did? No, I was offering insight to a parent as to what I did when similar situation. Good job at selective reading.

 

What Stevie g said, also in the fiftys my dad kept telling me that when i grew up and had kids he hoped that i had at least one son that was just like me, it happened.
That was long before bill cosby came out with the saying.

 

You're not alone...I could post a link to the LBCC board to my rant about my 13 year old last week. I started dealing with the dropped assignments/near failure last year

 

I'm not saying that you don't, because. I don't know I just offered it up as a suggestion. I think that's awesome, my mom insists she talked to me when I was younger, but I was there to, and those weren't talks, just lectures about what I should do. Never asked, didn't listen. Seen it from a lot of parents.
I wasn't a good son either, and never had a father, so my goals are definitely the same when I have a kid.

 

You know it sure doesn't look it that way to an outsider but I hung with the band in school and it's true. "This one time at band camp..." is more than a funny line from a movie. There's a whole creative group dynamic going on in band, don't let the unifoms fool ya.

 

Ain't that the truth!

Probably,"school not enough of a challenge",if as you say,he is a good student.

Probably,the "no child left behind" bullshit is a contributor to the no challenge aspect of the scenario!

The public education system,at least in Georgia,has,and is,going straight down the tubes!

It is manifesting itself as the academic syllabus being geared to allow "no child to be left behind"!

Root,you are on the right track,striving to be a better parent than what you had.
That is pretty much your best option,and if the kid is a good egg as you say,the challenges you provide for him he will remember for the rest of his life.

Not to say challenge him tyrannically,but in a way that he will not realize that this is what is happening,(make any sense?).

My three boys are all presently in college,(whew!),and believe me I thought there were times when I wanted to "cut my losses" and take them out!

They are aged 23,due to graduate in Dec. as a mechanical engineer.

The twins are 20,and pursuing an art education major,and a wildlife biology major.

They began to think that parents "possibly" knew what they were talking about at times.

That was soon after they stopped thinking primarily with their peckers!

 

Keep talking to him. Don't expect a lot of feedbac from him though. Let him know you have his back,but that doesn't mean that he won't have to deal withe resut of his choices. Talk to him often. Keep the line open. I almost lost my son to my own hard attitude,but we saved it somehow. He's now 28 a Hamber and a stand up guy. It's a hard fine line to walk. I really had a hard time watching him make the same mistakes I did,but he really takes after the old man. Try to get your son to prioritize his commitments and make some time for fun. Good luck.

 

A lot of good advice has been given, sounds like there are a lot of great dads on here who have been through it and then some...

Just a couple of observations:

It's not his fault he appears to be going brain dead. The human body only has so much blood, and most of his is not going to his brain right now.

It sounds like he's having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new responsibilities, AP classes, extracurricular stuff, etc. Cutting programs is not the answer, IMO. He needs your guidance to improve his time management. The more effort he puts into performing up to the level of his new workload, the better off he will be when he gets to the working world. We all know the workload does NOT decrease as we get older.

Spend time with him, be an example to him, and talk with him, every day. He'll act like he doesn't need it, but he'll thank you when he's older. Best of luck.

 

I don't know what it is man..a few years ago my niece and nephew would call me every other day to see what was up and could we go somewhere..now its the farthest thing from their mind, moping around all sullen and rarely smiling unless they are with friends and making fun of someone..we went through this right?...I was in the Boy Scouts, camping, running around at night, in our underwear, chasing snakes and armadilloes with flashlights..then I got my first car, I was happy....

 

try teaching them something! and then have the state up your butt if you don't perform.....we do get to send them home to you, though!

per&#183;form /p&#601;r&#712;f&#596;rm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[per-fawrm] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
&#8211;verb (used with object)
1. to carry out; execute; do: to perform miracles.

hang in there, buddy! i'm not to where you are, yet, but we all look forward to the day they mature and come back to hang out with us

 

lost retainer could be from puking up creme de menthe and 7-up in the toilet ... always puke outside with mouth hardware and try to remember where !
my dad said to all of 6 of us boys in private early on that " I spose ya might want to take a drink ... so before ya go out drink 2 large glasses of milk".. sure we believed him then of coarse all 6 of us in our own time frame puked a horrible gagging urping foul pile!!!!!

and he knew it and just grinned

 

...now you know why tigers eat their young...

 

if hes not in shop calss try to get him involved. it helps out alot they are not stressful like other classes. no homework usually you just kinda hang out work on things and feel good when you do something right. I almost dropped out of high school, then i started taking more and more shop classes. I got me motivated to go everyday my first 2 years i missed about 40 or so days each year. my last 2 when i had my liscence and could have not gone, i missed 3 combined. Im not almost done with my associates in automotive technology i have a 3.1 GPA and have all but one of my ASC master scertification test done. IM taking a year off when im done to pay some bills get some work experience then im going back. Of all things im going to be a shop teacher becasue if it wasnt for that i would be where i am today. if you get him involved in things that he really likes and is good at hell appreciate things more and have alot more self respect. But hes gotta be a kid these people who take AP classes and do everything under the sun get burned out.

My Ex was Suzy high school the epitimy of what the perfect highschool student should be. National honor society, every club, class president top 20 in her class. Alcoholic college student who can barely spell her own name. pressure gets to you thats his biggest problem right now. he doesnt know his ass from a hole in the ground hes so spun around.

 

This makes you officially old, Roothawg.

What next? Are you going to complain about his taste in music???

 

CT scans show HUGE areas of "dead spots" in adolescent brains. No kidding. They will eventually kick in-if you don't kill them first.

 

hell yea !!!

 

Sounds like he's discovered the joys of marijuana, women, and masturbation...

 

Just my opinion as an educator in Georgia:

It depends on what part of Georgia you're living in. It's the same-old, same-old. Rural areas are going to hell. Affluent areas as usual excel and go beyond what's expected. And let's just not talk about Atlanta that would be a whole thread in itself.
So I'm not really disagreeing with you, "academic" school is going down the shitter. The technical and arts programs are actually going very well and improving. I'm not just saying that as a business teacher either, which is considered part of the "technical" side of school. Do academic teachers have to try to work business, agriculture, or welding into their english class? Nope. Do I have to find a way to incorporate their vocab words into my legal studies and accounting classes? Yes. Why? Because "academic" teachers don't do their fucking job. Here's a real life example involving the school I did my student teaching at. A school wide goal was to increase the enrollment of minorities in advanced social studies courses. How the hell do I do that when I teach computer applications, web design, and accounting? And who's gonna get cut first? The people that teach kids creative and real world skills.

Sorry for my rant.

I'll definitely agree with that. It really seems that the technical and art portions of school are a lot less stressful. Shop is a great suggestion too. It builds skills and most importantly provides a break from the normal routine of sitting in class.

 

Happy Birthday, Root. hehehehe

 

my son is just starting to get stupid.lucky for me and my wife,our daughter has been done with this phase for about a year now.all i can offer is keep a good eye on he and his friends,and do ALOT OF PRAYING.

-danny

 

I just graduated from high school this June, and know where your comming from. I too was a good kid that got decent grades in middle school. when I got into high school, I was bored out of my mind. I failed biology both semesters, along with almost every year of english courses past my freshman year. the only classes I ever liked where shop classes, and art. in art class I would draw pictures of t-buckets, and '32s, and what i wanted my '27 t to look like, pulling a teardrop trailer in the mountains, and would get credit for it. Shop classes where great, every one in class thought I knew every thing about cars (I didnt and still dont!) and my shop teacher was building a t-bucket as a project. those where the only two kinda of classes I got A's in every time. I never smoked pot, or did any drugs, or went to keggers, or any of that. I just simply hated having to go and do somthing boring every day when I could be out doing somthing productive on my hot rod or somthing.

Finnaly, my seinor year, I hated school so much, that I skipped the first two and a half weeks. I hated school so much. I would get F's because I never did my home work, yet I never studied for tests or my finals, and have never gotten anything below a C on anyone of them.

I then applied to SOAR, the alternative school here. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I had teachers that cared about me as a person, there where only 35 kinds in the whole school, I made some new friends that shared my intrests. There was never homework, but it wasnt a free ride. I still had to work to get my grades, and stuff, but I felt like a person here, not just 10945 (that was my ID number). the other cool thing was, there wasnt the drama of whos in whos pants, who is going to be the best on the football team, and that crap. We even did fun things that people enjoyed. We went rock climbing and repeling, splunking, made a hot air balloon that we sent out in january and tracked for 80 some miles before it came down, went canoeing, and my personal favorite, made cardboard canoes that we had to build, and race 45 yards out and back. I had a blast, got credit, and graduated on time.

jordan

 

Hey Root,

As a recent graduate of college in the education field, I'd like to add a bit to the discussion.

Yes, they are brain damaged - to an extent and using the term loosely - but studies prove that during the ages of 12-14 (or so, give or take) the adolescent brain stops growing, and focuses itself more upon the primal intent of reproduction. So yes, girls are at fault for partially what is going on right now.

Also, as studies prove, these same adolescents stop thinking with their whole brains, and now only think using their frontal lobe, which again, drives the primal instinctive type behaviors. I'm getting almost daily 'shock treatment' as a middle school teacher here in Tulsa.

I'm teaching 6th grade math at a middle school which is 99&#37; at or below the poverty level, and that in itself makes for an altogether different reaction by kids to different situations. The school where I am teaching wears uniforms, as all Tulsa schools do, but the kids are starting to show their gang related colors now that the weather is turning colder, and I'm learning now that being called 'gay' is worthy of a fight that can get both students suspended for 10-30 days.

With regard to homework, I just finished grading papers - which I spent all weekend doing, btw - and collected up and stapled together the lost or missing assignments ALL of my students are missing. Needless to say, out of about 65 students, I just put together over 50 packets and the average student in those packets is missing 3-5 assignments - most of which are homework that they forget to return. Well, progress reports go out over the next few days, and some parents are going to get a wakeup notice in the mail that little Johnny is failing and why.

Not all teachers don't care, but there are some that do not. The school where I am located 'replaced' all but 8 teachers out of 40 last year because of the apathy they had for their jobs. I'm there because I care, and the idea of being able to turn around a program that has been a disaster for the last 7 years would just be a feather in my proverbial cap. However, I love the kids, and am really attached to just about all of them.

Oh, and I've also got 4 kids of my own, a boy 7, 2 girls 13 and 14, and a son who is about to turn 16 in 4 weeks. The 7 and 14 year olds live with us, and the 14 year old's brain is currently jammed between 2 gears. The things she does, says, and thinks are amazingly thoughtless, and we often think she needs the kind of safety net the 'Baja Cowboy' had when riding. We've come to the realization that she knows it all, and when the world bites her on the ass, we'll have to pick up the pieces and hopefully then she'll start to listen.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, if it sounded that way.

Good luck!

 

Root, kids tend to do the same things their parents did at that age! Just ask your parents.

A few words of wisdom from my dear old dad. Dad's favorite line was: Don't let the little head do the thinking for the big head. His second favorite line was: Accept responsibility for yourself. What you or your friends do (or don't do) is your responsibility, because even if you were not involved, if you were there, your guilty.

Kids have to learn the life lessons themselves. We did, they do. Our hope is that the damage caused before those life lessons are learned does not cause perment problems. All you can do is keep the comunication lines open and be there when they need you. Much as it doesn't seem to be happening, they are listening to what you say and watching what you do. They will tell you so around age 25. Been through this twice. Gene

 

Its just part of life, if ya talked to him he'd say "huh"!!lol
Remember what mark Twain said"When I was 14 i couldn't beleive how dumb& stupid my dad was, when i was 21 i couldn't believe how much the man had learned in 7 years"
He"ll be ok live with it.Be happy he's "normal"
JimV