| Newhope, teaching my kids to get the grades consistently and to do the homework even if it was boring, irrelevant, too simple, etc were the most difficult things I tried to do. I did not succeed. I can see that my oldest son who is certainly the classic underachiever still has a problem in doing things thoroughly. He is a 75%er which is just not good enough for many things in life that he wants. It's a long, hard lesson for him.
Also, though "lazy" may not be the case for some kids, it sure the heck is with many of them. My husband sees some of these kids at work too at their first jobs. Many of them quit or are let go because they do not want to do the mundane work since they feel they are destined for bigger things. Some may be brilliant enough to get there without going through the paces, but there are sadly many underperforming bright people who are disappointed in themselves as they did not get where they felt they should have in life.
I have found that my son who has to work hard to to well in school has much stronger study, notetaking skills than his brothers who really whizzed through courses. Because he HAD to do the mundane work while the stuff was still in the early stages of difficulty, he knew what to do when it got hard. The older ones really were unprepared to handle boring, distasteful, and necessary work when it was presented at high difficulty levels. Some kids are able to swallow the bile and suck it up when it happens, but too often they just fail. It's just too easy to continue blaming the material, presentation, the interest factor, etc when it really does come down to being too lazy to do the work needed to learn that kind of material.
I strongly feel that a parent should try to find a good match with difficulty level, interest and ability for his/her child. If a school/curriculum/program is such a terrible match, a search is in order. However, if the child cannot consistently do good work at a level where it is easy for him, there often are other problems here. Laziness certainly can be one of the reasons. Some parents have learned later that just cranking up the difficulty level of the work is not the solution. If there is no interest there, the kid is not going to find the more difficult subject matter more palatable. The laziness is that of not wanting to do something that does not interest him. Unfortunately, in life we have to work on a lot of non interesting things and have to do such things very thoroughly. It is an important thing to have the ability to do what is in your best interest to do, even if it is not interesting. |