<p>I have one that was driven to learn everything at first - he came out of the womb asking questions and taught himself to read at two because he had to break the code. However, he only was really interested in learning what he wanted to learn. So while he sailed through school with mostly A’s, from time to time he’d completely blow off some assignment (a poem he wouldn’t do in Freshman English brought his grade from an A to a B. We were so cross with him - a D would have been infinitely better than a zero!)</p>
<p>In our case, DH is very smart (MD, MBA) and I am the “creative” one from which my spawn originated from. DD13a is a very type A kid. Has had one B in high school and that made her crazy. Determined not to ever have another. DD13b is a much harder worker and does well in school, but has had a couple of B’s. Those grades didn’t bother her too much. Both kids have what I consider to be well-rounded lives. I have always had high expectations of them both, but like SansSerif have just encouraged them to always do THEIR best. Not their sister’s best, or a friend’s best. I think it’s really both nature and nurture.</p>
<p>D1 used to say to me when she was in grade school, “what’s wrong with getting a B? It is still above average.” I had to tell her that it wasn’t acceptable because she could do better. I am pretty certain if I didn’t pus, D1’s GPA would have been lower because there would be no reason for her to work hard. Once she got to middle school and high school, I rarely had to say anything.</p>
<p>We never had to have a conversation with D2. She grew up seeing her older sister getting straight As, and she just assumed that’s what was expected of her.</p>
<p>I think when kids are young, they tend to do least amount of work just to get by, it’s up to parents to instill work ethic in their kids. As much as my kids loved ballet, their were times when they wanted to quit or not work as hard.</p>
<p>With all that being said, if my kids couldn’t get As after putting in a lot of effort, I wouldn’t keep on pushing either. It’s not worth it to out that much stress on them.</p>
<p>I would say that it is more an environmental thing than anything else. We interpret drive as something that seems to be in the nature of an excelling student, which I think is flawed. </p>
<p>If you look at school performance by race, for instance, you’ll find very few Asian American students slacking off in school. The top students in my graduating class (according to rank which is based on gpa) are Asian American. And unless I’m wrong in assuming that Asian students aren’t inherently more driven, then it must be the environment at home… Aka parents…</p>
<p>Surely there are exceptions</p>
<p>Fascinating question. I’m going with innate though. My oldest child, D, is completely driven. She has perfect grades, is competitive if not elite in athletics, and expects perfection from herself in every other area I can think of, from having a neat if not always spotlessly clean room to never ‘bumming it’ for school to what she eats. She has high expectations for herself. Her siblings are also good students and great kids, but not driven like the oldest. I’ve wondered about this frequently too.</p>
<p>just because you have a 4.0 GPA doesn’t mean the kid did everything perfectly… some schools give varied amounts of extra credit, grade differently, etc.</p>
<p>I think some people have a combination of traits that make them the perfect GPA person - it includes a love of learning (natural curiosity) and being a perfectionist. My daughter fits this bill and she is not a competitive person - she just wants to learn everything and also do everything perfectly (she does things slow and steady - everything must be just so). I was also one of those people - although I am slightly more competitive and less perfectionist. I don’t think either of us are externally motivated (no tiger moms) - if anything, I try to get her to let things slide a little. Both of us are only like this for intellectual things (no sports interests).</p>
<p>At high schools like the one I attended…it is a variable combination of innate ability and drive. </p>
<p>Part of the latter included the willingness/ability to give up one of the following:</p>
<p>Friends/family, Academics/ECs, or sleep as few even among the top 10% had enough of the innate ability/time management skills required to conquer the sheer quantity and high academic rigor of the assigned homework, assigned readings, papers, and tests/quizzes required. </p>
<p>Even after going through undergrad and taking some post-undergrad courses at two Ivies…still feel the LAC/university experience wasn’t remotely comparable to what I experienced in HS. </p>
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<p>Not necessarily. While there were certainly plenty of Asian-American kids at my HS who were tippy-top students…there were also plenty of slacker/rebellious Asian-Americans graduating in the bottom-half of our graduating class…including yours truly.* :D</p>
<p>Also, knew plenty of Asian-American kids growing up who ended up as high school drop-outs, struggled to graduation with D-s and 900 > pre-1995 SATs, arrested/locked up for various offenses, etc. Unfortunately, those are the types of kids no one…especially the more successful Asian-American kids/parents want to talk about. </p>
<p>As with everyone else…not every Asian-American is a 4.0/2400 SAT type who’s elite university/LAC bound per common stereotype. </p>
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<li>Personally…I was more the rebellious type…though it did partially manifest itself as slacking…because the prevailing HS culture was Type-A “elite/Ivy college or bust” on steroids. Hence, the idea among HS friends and myself to tell the jerky contingent within the top-25% of our graduating class that our “college plans” were to head west to become Beach Bums in California. :D</li>
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<p>I didn’t mean to lump all Asian students into one category. I personally know Asians that are not in the top of the class. But it’s undeniable that a large proportion of the top of my graduating class are Asian.</p>
<p>My vote is for innate. I had one graduate with a perfect GPA who is driven to do her best at all things she tries. The drive isn’t for just school work, it’s just the one she has god given talents for. One of mine strove to do the minimum work possible to get an A and often didn’t quite make it.</p>
<p>I think it’s primarily innate. I have three kids and two push themselves to do “just well enough” whether it’s sports or grades or really anything and the third is driven and competitive…he’s been like that since birth. My h is more like the first two and I am more like three.</p>
<p>It has to be some of both. My mom was an immigrant, as were her siblings, and my sisters and I were the only ones of our generation to do well in school, go to college, etc. My parents stressed the value of education, my aunts and uncles did not with my cousins. </p>
<p>My kids were all given a good start with structure, emphasis on doing their best, completing homework, etc. My 2 D’s are 4.0 kids, my S was happy with A’s and B’s. My youngest D is maintaining her very high GPA while playing 2 varsity sports, with other activities limited to the time between fall and spring sport seasons. She has the inner drive to want to do all of it.</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s not as “innate” as it appears. I knew a high school student several years ago who was at the top of his class and graduated with about 15 AP courses. Everyone was in awe of how brilliant he was. However, he told me one time that his mother yelled at him if he made even a low A on a test. I was so sad for him. He may have been brilliant, but he was being pushed, shoved, by his parents, and his life was miserable.</p>
<p>I agree with compmom that perfect GPA may not always be a good thing. It can in fact create an unnecessary amounts of stress and anxiety that will just teach a child that in order to succeed (or at least the way this society views success), you have to be perfect and that means you have to be stressed out and anxious all the time. Doesn’t apply to all students with perfect GPAs of course but does apply to many as I’ve witnessed through observing some of ds’s friends.</p>
<p>My ds has had the perfect grades for the first 9 years of school and I assumed he was like me - being innately driven to get the absolute best grades I could, even in subjects I hated. </p>
<p>Come to find out, he was getting perfect grades simply due to his innate intelligence and high IQ without putting in much work and when that wasn’t enough in 10th grade, we were quite shocked to find out he actually did not possess that innate drive for perfection. His GPA is still very good (3.8-3.9 unweighted) but he is not taking all highest level classes and is very selective of what he does or does not put his work in. He wants to enjoy what he is doing and enjoy learning but that’s not possible with the outside pressures where students are expected to get all As no matter whether they are even remotely interested in the subject. He is taking AP English with some clearly STEP oriented kids who couldn’t care less about writing but they are in this class because “it will look good on the college transcript”. Is it really a good thing that we are teaching our kids to forgo their true interests and passions and allow them to overwork themselves and deprive themselves of sleep that is so important to their development? I am not so sure.</p>
<p>There are of course kids who will easily do well in every subject, those that are immensely gifted academically. I am still conflicted about all this but I am really starting to see my son’s perspective more and more clearly. </p>
<p>First, we teach our children that the only way to succeed is to overwork and overstress yourself and then we are surprised to find out that the pharmaceutical industry is booming an the prescription for anti-depressants are at an all time high.</p>
<p>I am not advocating letting kids slack off and not do any work at all but I also think we are teaching them all the wrong lessons if all we emphasize is that perfect GPA. IQ at the expense of their EQ is not good for anybody, society included and that’s been a trend that is documented more and more.</p>
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<p>My parents and relatives of their generation were all immigrants and yet, were variable in stressing the value of education. Your parents sounded very much like my parents…except my parents emphasized that learning was to be prioritized over grades if push comes to shove and aren’t enamored with those who emphasized grades/GPA at all costs. </p>
<p>However, they would never accept a transcript littered with Cs or below as they felt I had what it took to do better…a reason why there was much conflict in our home during my HS years. </p>
<p>On the other hand, some of my older aunts/uncles actually went so far as to disdain straight-A “Nerds/Geeks” for being “too studious/academic”. However the learned influences/attitudes only influences children to some extent so there’s some variability in play. A reason why one aunt had 2 Ds who were topflight academic/career superstars and yet, a S who floundered to college graduation with a sub-par GPA and struggled throughout his life employment wise. </p>
<p>One younger friend from a multi-generation American family had a family which strongly valued education much like our parents did. </p>
<p>The younger friend was the older son who was content with Cs if he had to really push hard to get As and Bs…an attitude which was so alien to me as that mentality was the polar opposite to the one I had been raised with from family and schooling environments. Contrast that with his younger sister who is a perfectionist and graduated near the top of her undergrad class. </p>
<p>Both are gainfully employed…though the friend had to radically change his “Cs are just good enough” mentality as it doesn’t go over too well in the companies he works for…especially his current household name tech firm.</p>
<p>I would guess that a great many kids, though certainly not all kids, could be pushed, starting at an early age, into becoming straight A students. Our S is a strong student and a perfectionist and I attribute that to: 1) His mom worked with him and pushed him when he was very young so that he could read many of the Dr. Seuss books by the time he turned three, and because of that he became a very avid reader; and 2) I told him when he started school that if he did very well the teachers and other kids would be nicer to him than if he just performed at an average level, and he found that to be quite true (it wasn’t so true when I was a kid at school, but times have changed!). So he was provided social rewards and social status by doing very well, and over time his motivation to perform well grew ever stronger, and then he was provided with even more rewards in a sort of positive feedback loop.</p>
<p>I think we should also consider the MOTIVATOR. Employers have spent years researching how to get the most out of their employees by determining what type of “reward” they best respond to. Everyone is different. Some will perform top notch for their own personal satisfaction, others need to hear words of praise from a boss, loved one or peers and many need a physical reward (plaque or in the case of students a report card)</p>
<p>I would just like to add that there are some skills that can be taught and encouraged that will make it easier for those with innate drive, and may also help the rest. For example, simple things like always writing down assignments, using a calendar, and practicing good time management.</p>
<p>I was able to get nearly perfect GPA in HS & college. Was able to do it without working too hard; couldn’t keep it up in law school among peers–got B+ with tons of work and B- with minimal work; settled for B-s. One of my brothers was able to keep nearly perfect GPA his entire life (including med school) because he’s extremely brilliant & driven. The rest of sibs all kept OK GPAs but it worked OK.</p>
<p>We know a couple of gifted/LD students who will go the extra mile to get those straight A’s because at an earlier age they found it humiliating to have to repeat a year or go to special education classes. We also know some siblings of disabled students who become academic perfectionists.</p>
<p>In short, I do think that straight A students are a diverse bunch, but seem to be intent upon getting approval from others and find that they are smart enough that with a little extra work, and perhaps a little aversion to taking risks, it is feasible to excel in academics. </p>
<p>I also know some students who could probably get straight A’s if they were so inclined, and whose parents attempt without success to hound them into doing so. Their priorities seem to be elsewhere. So, I am not so sure a straight A student can be created by parents, except perhaps by finding a way to make a bright child insecure about their abilities.</p>