I’m not in the mood to read the article, but nonetheless I’ll say that ds1 did 3rd-5th grades in a multi-age team-teaching situation (the three teachers worked as their own team rather than with their grade-level team). Anyway, as a result, these teachers had a lot of autonomy. One thing they instituted was 3x/week morning run club. Running first thing got out the willies and made for a fabulous rest of the day. I am a fan of more physical activity in the schools.
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I agree kids need more physical activity. In school but also outside of school. A lot of boys spend too much time on video games.
By physical activity, that can be sports, but also taking walks in the neighborhood, playing at the park, etc.
@Youdon_tsay - I love the idea of an AM run or walk club!
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This is exactly my point. If my kids didn’t turn in homework I would make their life miserable. I literally would take everything away from them. I would not be resigned to that type of behavior.
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Jumping in to say not turning in homework, doing well on tests, can be hallmarks of adhd. I think it’s really important to get to the cause of the behavior. Pure irresponsibility and laziness? Or another reason? And what’s causing that kid to be irresponsible and lazy if that’s"all" it is?
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It is not that easy to motivate a kid to go for an A when a B+ is simple to get. When you say “did not fly in our house” do you mean there was punishment of some kind if your son got a B instead of an A? Did you monitor every bit of homework? Even in HS?
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We bought a membership at the local country club by school for our college athlete. If he has a few extra hours, both in and out of season, he’ll go play 18 holes of golf, walking and carrying his clubs. He needs the physical activity(beyond practice, lifting and games) to help him better concentrate when he’s been studying for hours.
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H & I are big proponents of regular exercise, movement, play, etc… For both genders really, but we were gifted with two boys. Older S sort of made us get into the habit. After 2 weeks of age, he would NOT sit still. Always had to be moving and seeing something new. We hit every public playground & church playground in the city. He’d run laps (by choice) around our basement. Of course that continued with younger S. If it was raining, we’d go to our science center. Back then it was a pretty sad place, but it was always empty. They had a big play area where the kids could just run!
Once sports hit, playground time became less. But we’d also walk on the trail, bike on the trail, etc. In HS older S was cut from the HS soccer team and quit travel. That’s when we started taking them to the gym. We wanted them to be active, but also familiar with gyms and the proper ways to lift.
I always tell my kids that I don’t care if they run marathons, become championship weightlifters, soccer players, etc. They just always have to do SOMETHING that they enjoy. Older S gravitates to the gym and dabbles with running from time to time. Younger S also likes the gym, but he also likes social sports. He’s joined an adult soccer league, and also loves pick-up basketball. All fine by me!
Hindsight 20-20 we also got lucky with older S’ kindergarten teacher. I would volunteer with reading groups, and once the teacher told me how older S wouldn’t sit still, BUT he would still do his work. From the waist up, he was completely focused and doing what he should. But from the waist down, he would run all around his chair. He was pretty funny to watch. The teacher said he wasn’t bothering anyone and doing his work, so who cared.
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We were similar. We told our boys (and would’ve done the same for girls) that they had to play some organized sport each season. Didn’t matter whether it was a team sport or solo. Between them, we had soccer, baseball, basketball, football, flag football, cross country and ultimate frisbee. Oh, and a foray into cricket!
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More activity built into daily life (both school and outside of school) could benefit both boys and girls. Studies show girls, on average, get 15-20% less physical activity than boys, and even prior to puberty (e.g. age 8) lower physical activity is correlated with measurably worse health indicators such as higher body fat percentages and lower cardiovascular fitness.
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The way we approached grades in our house was we expected our kids to try their best. And if their best was a B+ then we were fine with that, but we could tell if they were studying enough.
For example, our youngest decided to take AP Calc BC senior year even though there was no intention on being an engineer in college and Calc AB would have been fine. She didn’t get the greatest grade in that class, but we didn’t come down hard on her. Ironically she got a 2 on the AP test, but that converted to a 3 or 4 for Calc AB which was enough for her never to have to take math in college.
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The young men I know who would be labeled as struggling, all played organized sports from elementary school through high school, some with great success.
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@mom2and -I’m glad you asked! I was so much a non helicopter parent that when another parent asked a question about the parent portal ( we were at HS back to school night junior year) I hadn’t even realized that there WAS a parent portal. We did get reports emailed to us every quarter and I did look at those.
My kids ( boy and girl ) had expectations. If they were capable of getting the top grade then that was expected. My S actually did have an occasional B+ in very tough classes. We would talk about the grade. Sometimes it was just a really tough subject and we were ok with that. It was not because he wasn’t doing the work.
@GKUnion -we pay for our S’s gym membership because he needs the activity for his physical/mental health. ( he works but doesn’t earn much money).
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My S hated organized sports mainly due to some negative experiences in elementary/ middle school. Coaches who ignored all but the most talented players, a few kids who bullied, a little league where if you weren’t good enough for travel team by age 11, you were out. It was really unfortunate.
He started HS as an inactive, overweight kid. But when he started his junior year, he decided to change. Started walking and riding a bike in the neighborhood. There was a free gym in our community center and he started using it and got into shape.
At 29 he runs, bikes, goes to lots of fitness classes and walks a lot ( lives in a city, doesn’t own a car).
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Similar story here. Our son also hated organized sports due to bullying from the group of boys who dominated the school teams. Instead, he played chess and stayed far away from them. He hiked in Boy Scouts, and we had a pool so he swam casually, but he never played an organized sport and was not at all fit when he went to boarding school. In fact, he feared the mandatory sport requirement at BS because he didn’t even know how to play the games. He ended up joining the crew team because crew did not require previous experience. He stuck with it and ended up at the top of the varsity roster by senior year. I’ve posted many times that crew was the best thing he got out of high school. He had to work far harder on his body than he did on his school work. The level of fitness he achieved by rowing was instrumental in his ability to successfully compete for a service academy appointment, and maintaining a high level of fitness is just part of his life now. (That the Army requires it of him doesn’t hurt either.)
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Anyone who thinks only girls are mean in middle school are mistaken. My S also experienced issues when playing sports in middle school. He had already begun skateboarding and snowboarding by that time, so that’s what he began focusing on. Now in his 30’s, he still snowboards and skateboards, but less often. He has been pumping iron religiously, even when on the road for work (as he often is). It’s been amazing both physically and mentally, and it is something he can do his whole life.
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You are so right. Everyone talks about “ mean girls” but plenty of boys are bullied by mean boys.
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Could it be as simple as girls tend to be rule followers and boys tend to be more adventurous? Rule followers tend to do well (e.g. follow the speed limit and you don’t get tickets) early on but the adventurers make the stride in leaps (e.g. dropping out of college to start a very successful company).
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I don’t think those are gender specific traits. But some people do.
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Perhaps I’m extrapolating - I’m the mother of 3 boys and sister of 2. I’m the girl I relate to. No cousins either but I do have 4 nieces!