"Mom, C's are great!"

MmeZeeZee
Sat, 15 Jan 2011 11:39:44 +0000

Hm. I’m a parent and someone whose grades were always lower than test scores. My opinion is this.

First–He is old enough to decide whether to take medication or not. He’s what, 15 or 16? This isn’t something that you can do to him, in my opinion.

Second–A lot of people could get As if they wanted to and tried harder. Unless he’s in some amazingly competitive private school, chances are the classes really aren’t that hard. So you could make an argument for A LOT of children that you should just try to medicate them and see if it helps.

Third–Those drugs are powerful. They can cause depression, weight gain, ticks… Cs are a big deal to some, but not to him if he doesn’t want to go to university. For a child that is struggling and stressed and unable to function as a normal person (many ADHD kids drop out… Cs are not an option for them), it is worth the risk. For a kid with Cs and community college ambitions? I dunno. He has a goal and he’s working towards it, that’s more than most ADHD kids can do.

Fourth–I don’t know if you can convince him that C’s aren’t fine if they are consistent with his career goals. Real life might make him second-guess his choices, but I know people who did poorly in high school, then totally rocked community college and state college and ended up in grad school in the Ivies. They saved a lot of effort and money that way.

Obviously that’s a big risk but your son is a big boy now. If you don’t let him fail and see the consequences of his actions, he will not learn. Will. Not. Do you really want to teach him that the answer to not pleasing other people is to take drugs?

Again, ADHD is really serious. I wouldn’t second-guess medication for a middle-schooler that was literally getting sent to the principal’s office four times a day because she could. not. stop. talking. or. moving. And there are kids like that, and they deserve a chance.

But we can’t medicate every mediocre kid that doesn’t live up to his potential. There’s enough Adderall in the water already!

My mom said to us, “At 18 you’ll be out of the house. I might help pay with tuition, whatever I have left at the end of the month, but other than that it’s up to you.”

We knew that for years and she was making plans for our rooms, LOL. That was a huge motivation to look at jobs.