<p>I seriously- am not that interested in grades.
Wasn’t in high school either-
Older childs liberal arts school with no grade inflation- didn’t emphasize grades to the point you had to make an appt with your advisor to see them.
If you fell below the line, a letter came home.
While my D did sign a release so I could contact the school to see her grades- she is first gen college & I didn’t see the need.</p>
<p>What I am interested in is , what they are learning, what sorts of things they discuss, what sorts of projects or other things this interest leads to.
But I ask them about their grades, about as much as I ask friends with interesting jobs , what their income is- which is to say, I don’t. ;)</p>
<p>My DD’s school doesn’t send us the bills; they are sent to the student (seems reasonable as certainly not ALL parents are paying the bills. Hard as it is to believe, there are students who do pay their own tuition).</p>
<p>We have agreed to pay our DD’s tuition, so she forwards the bills to us and we pay them. She always informs us of her grades; she knows that is a condition of having her tuition paid in full by us.</p>
<p>Thank you, blueiguana. Honestly, Babyontheway, we all have 18+ years of childrearing experience and there are plenty of things we all thought were the case when we were all expecting our first which turned out to have changed.</p>
<p>Do you really have to make it conditional? It just seems so instrumental and authoritarian, like you have a business relationship without a lot of trust. Or that your kids somehow need to have money attached to their letter grades to succeed. And why would you have to attach bill paying to it- why wouldn’t they just share it with you? It just doesn’t sound like that would be necessary with your kids. </p>
<p>More generally, I truly do not understand why anyone would even bother sending their kids away to college if they need this level of monitoring and external control like this (because they either lack intrinsic motivation or can not be trusted). I guess I am not sure the point. </p>
<p>And so do some parents also attach to bill paying other conditions, like say, the rule that you have to call home x times a month? or other kinds of behaviors? </p>
<p>And if you find out the grades, what do you do then? Does bill paying get stopped if the grades aren’t what you decide they should be? How do you know what they should be? And then kids are discouraged from taking risks, taking the most challenging coursework because they can’t get a B? Grades are not always under one’s control. </p>
<p>I totally understand taking an interest in your kids’ education of course and through interaction you’d come to learn how they are doing. But that is an entirely different animal than what is going on here.</p>
<p>Starbright - I can only speak to our situation with our oldest student (who is the only student to have reached college age) so I’ll start by qualifying my response to one student. Every family has to decide what works for their child individually.</p>
<p>Our oldest son is gifted and learning disabled with executive function difficulties. The gifted far outweighs and he has learned coping skills for the executive function difficulties. I won’t go through the long story. Suffice to say, we agreed WITH OUR SON’S DECISION to start at community college, and continue with his part time job (where he was well liked by managers and employees). He ‘pays back’ his college fund for classes that he chooses not to succeed. We agreed a C was ‘success’. A D or below usually needs to be repeated for a degree. A D or below was repaid to his account. This way the money is there if he does decide to take those classes towards his degree and succeed at a later date. Please note, he is not paying US back, he pays back his college fund. When he is ready, be it next year or four years from now, to get serious about his education, his fund is there for him. It was not a punishment but something agreed upon upfront. He does not have to take a full course load. He chooses his classes. We encourage him to take things he is interested in. The goal is to have things we can celebrate as success. Believe it or not, we focus on the two classes he did quite well in last semester, not the ones he didn’t. We give him credit for paying for car maintenance, insurance, cel-phone, maintaining a work schedule on his own… These are things many students his own age are not doing yet. What you view as success is different for different children, even in the same family.</p>
<p>He could have certainly gone away to school, spent $15-$20k, but given his academic history there was a strong possibility he may not have done well. At that point he would have been a student left with a feeling of failure. He would have come home from school on academic suspension, with a strong probability of not finding a job in a bad market. This didn’t seem like the best option to him, or us.</p>
<p>Our middle student will graduate this year, has the same amount of funds available for college, and it’s his choice to go straight to university. We support his decision. In the top 10% of his class with good SAT scores, he has a history of academic success and wants to study engineering. We have every reason to believe he will do well, however that is his responsibility. He is an individual. He has never avoided difficult classes for fear of GPA risk in college admissions, I can’t imagine he would do so in college…he really won’t be able to avoid difficult classes in an aerospace engineering degree.</p>
<p>We have a younger son, who is also an individual. We will treat him as such and help him make a decision that is right for him when the time comes.</p>
<p>BOTW, you’re going to just have to trust that pronouncements made when you are an expectant about how things will be, shall be, should be, must be will come back to bite you in the ass. Trust me on this one. You have no idea what the future holds. None.</p>
<p>I think what you are saying is that you won’t make him open up the school website and prove to you that he really got the grades that he said he did. </p>
<p>Certainly you’ll want to know how he is doing. You’ll ask and he’ll share, or he’ll share and you’ll be glad that he did. But you probably don’t feel a need to validate he is doing as he says.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry to hear that. I think that’d be considered extenuating circumstances where close monitoring would be warranted.</p>
I understand your sentiments as you’ve never met him, but don’t be sorry. We’re not. The very same neurological pathways that make some things a struggle for him, make him gifted at others. Our job has been to help navigate what has sometimes been a difficult, but amazing journey. It is a series of zig-zags, but moving forward is the key. I knew by the time he was two years old, and still do, he sees colors the rest of us can’t.</p>
<p>What I’m saying is that each student has different needs and you figure it out as you go along. Parenthood is the wildest ride you’ve ever been on…buckle up! ;)</p>
<p>Peace and blessings as you start your amazing journey!</p>
<p>DS went straight from a lousy Calc AB class at podunk HS to Honors Multivariable Calc at a T20 school (via self studied Calc BC AP exam). He wanted a challenge and see if he was good at math. Was in way over his head initially. I think he’s better now but is still working his tush off. I’m assuming he will pass the class but if he doesn’t, it won’t be for lack of trying. I’ve always told the kids that I don’t care what grade they get as long as they are trying their best. DS was always upfront about that. DD, coming up, might be another story :). Different kids, different needs.</p>
<p>Blue, I don’t for a minute not appreciate differences in kids. I think most of us parents know what that is like.</p>
<p>What I struggle with is how you as a parent, not as a student at a particular school in a particular major, who has not taken particular classes with particular faculty, can possibly know in advance what should and should not be the correct grade to be achieved (whether for the gifted student with an LD or a straight A student). </p>
<p>The one with LD probably needs a lot more of your involvement, but why must success or failure be attached to money? And why not just take their word for it? Why would they have to prove it to you with documentation? I guess those are the part I fail to appreciate. And maybe these features are not even applicable in your case. </p>
<p>I also just don’t see the distinction between C and D (or say an A and a B etc.) as quite the choice that you do (I don’t think its just a matter of motivation). Especially when LD (and a host of other unpredictable variables) are involved. Been teaching too many decades to believe its all just up to one’s willpower.</p>
<p>Absolutely. For 50K a year, we expect a certain GPA. Not paying that kind of money for my kids to goof off. If my company were to pay for my tuition, they wouldn’t reimburse me until they saw my grades. Each company is different with their standard, but they all have a minimum standard.</p>
<p>When kids first go off to school, for most of them it is the first time they have so much freedom. Many straight arrow, 4.0 students would sometime go wild. Frankly, I had no assurance D1 wouldn’t be one of those kids. So we monitored her more the first year, when we verified we could trust her, then we stepped back. </p>
<p>How often have we seen parents post on CC around winter break - “Oh, I can’t believe Johnny didn’t go to classes and didn’t turn in his assignments all semester.” “Oh, I can’t believe Suzy is going to fail 2 of her classes.” They didn’t want to “monitor” their kids because it would require time and effort.</p>
<p>I’d say in general that the parents who pay 100% of COA (or whose students are on full ride scholarships) need to do a lot more “monitoring” and “grade review” than students who pay a significant portion of college expenses from summer jobs, school time jobs, and from childhood savings.</p>
<p>I’ll probably get flamed for saying so, but I think if a student works all summer and 100% of their earnings goes to paying college tuition, they are unlikely to “forget” about going to class. Or if they do, they probably don’t care very much for college and will go down a different path in life. Of course, I’m exempting LDs from this statement.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, this view is one I developed as an undergraduate when I saw many students who partied and those students who were highly focused on school. </p>
<p>PS - After graduating, did any of you ever dream about not going to class? Several times post-graduation I’ve dreamed that I signed up for a class and forgot about it until midterms, and would fail the class because I hadn’t attended class or done any homework. I got a good laugh the first time I had the dream and realized I graduated a year and half earlier.</p>
<p>I don’t think my kids’ school is the only one that requires freshman mid-semester grades to be posted on their accounts. So, this week the mid-semester grades will be going up for freshmen (some other classes do it, too). I think most parents have agreements that if they’re paying, they get to see the grades.</p>
<p>I respect that you do not share my position as a parent. It is not your place to. When my student simply stops going to class in the middle of the semester because he doesn’t like it, then it isn’t for lack of trying. Or, he liked the class, was going, but not doing the work associated with the class. When he goes to campus for class and we obviously don’t ask to see work there’s not much support we can give until after the fact. So we back up and talk about ways that he could have better handled the situation. We discuss drop dates, where he can find these. We remind him that he can talk to us or that he can go to his advisor at school at any time and drop classes without our consent, he’s an adult. We might be frustrated, but hey that’s his right. We encourage him to look at classes that he wants to take simply out of interest, design, art, things he traditionally likes. He again chooses to stop going to half his classes during the semester after the drop date. We find out after we ask about grades at the end of the semester. Would you not be frustrated? We again ask what do YOU want to do. It’s YOUR choice. He takes a semester off. We encourage one class to stay in contact with students his age. He does not sign up, or accept our offer to assist. We don’t push. He is currently planning for a Spring term.</p>
<p>We didn’t feel the need, and actually felt it important NOT to check his grades because he was living at home. This is much different that a student that is away at school and you have no idea of the schedule they are keeping. Our son does not party, works a part time job, and was going to campus. We encouraged HIM to check his grades. That was enough.</p>
<p>I certainly don’t expect another parent to hold my same position. I don’t expect them to hold the same position even if parenting a similar child. I do not respect being judging for guiding my young adult in the best way I know how. I believe it honors the person he is as an individual, celebrates his successes, and is working to teach him responsibility, while keeping him connected to education. Whenever our son has come to us with academic concerns we have offered the best help we could short of doing the assignments, however he must ask for help. We encouraged study groups, on campus tutoring, engaged in conversation about classes, and talked about ones he seemed to want to share. This is a constantly evolving effort. We are not perfect. I do not need another parents validation, or in this case your appreciation of my parenting decisions.</p>
<p>I still have that dream. I hate it. In my version, I only remember the class right before finals. In the dream, I am berating myself for not having at least dropped the class. I wake up with a start and am flooded with relief at the realization that it’s just a dream. I also have a similar dream that I am giving report to the oncoming nurse and she asks me about Mr. Jones in room 108. I reply, “oh, he wasn’t my patient.” She says, “Yes, your name is on the board next to his.” HOLY *#$%. I had a patient whom I never checked on, never gave meds to, never took to to his procedures, etc. Same concept-anxiety about not taking care of your business.</p>
<p>My husband never has dreams like that. He thinks I’ve got “issues.” Lol, I probably do.</p>
<p>For us, it would not be about any particular grade. If we saw a trend that suggested our child was not attending class, not making an effort, and generally wasting her time, then we would not be willing to fund that that. Grades would give us a general (but not absolute)idea of how she was conducting herself. I think most parents have enough sense to understand the difference between someone who is in over their head in a particular class vs. someone who might be having emotional or mental health issues vs. someone who is spending too much time partying and not enough time in class. Grades are a starting point. When they go south, you don’t automatically cut off funds, you find out what’s going on and take it from there.</p>
<p>Well, BOTW, I was full pay, my parents paid every penny, and I never missed a single class till the spring of my senior year when I underwent minor surgery. My H was full pay as well. We took our grades and class attendance very seriously thankyouverymuch. Again, when you get older, you’ll learn that “philosophies” don’t necessarily hold true.</p>
<p>That’s great that you were focused on college…my opinion when I was an undergraduate student was if I looked at 1000 classmates whose parents pay 100% of college and 1000 classmates where the students contributed a significant amount of their own money toward college, a person would find that the students who were paying for college on their own required less parental monitoring than those whose parents were paying 100% of tuition.</p>
<p>Excluding unusual circumstances like LDs, this makes sense. The person or people paying for college are the ones most invested in a positive outcome.</p>
<p>I think a person’s internal motivation and self discipline directs their commitment to attending classes moreso than who is footing the bill. </p>
<p>And everyone has those anxiety dreams in various forms. The one about about not knowing you signed up for a class and then finding out you have an exam is pretty common, and can go on episodically for years…</p>