With teenage children now a reality in my life, school is probably the most talked about thing in their lives. Not only are they going through the trials and tribulations of their social life, the academics are challenging them each and every day.

My kids are both in the Gifted and Talented program in their respective schools. My daughter, a sophomore and my son in 6th grade. When my daughter was in middle school, I watched over each and every grade through out the school year like a hawk. If she missed turning in homework, I was all over her to get it turned in. Forgetting to turn things in such as homework she worked so hard to do, was her biggest downfall. She was unorganized and as an organized person, this drove me insane. She is extremely smart but her organizational habits were greatly affecting her grades. This pattern went on for the entire three years of middle school. Now it was time for high school. We had the talks about being more organized and staying on top of things but to no avail, we were dealing with the same exact issues. I was at a loss. It didn’t appear I was helping at all. As a matter of fact, I was starting to see a pattern of complete dependency on her part and this wasn’t good.

Solution: Pure and simple. Let them fail when it doesn’t count. A very wise teacher of my daughters in middle school tried to tell me this when she was in 7th grade. Did I listen? Heck no. She needed to have the great grades she was capable of, however, what I’ve come to realize is that they weren’t entirely HER grades. They were partially mine. With a full time job, a household to run and a family to care for, going back to school was the last thing I wanted to do. So, I had to let her go and let her learn from her mistakes. I wished I would have listened to that wise teacher over 3 years ago but I didn’t. We had to learn, my daughter and I, together to be responsible for our actions. She had to learn that if she didn’t turn things in, her grades would be affected. I had to learn that if I didn’t let her fail, she’d never be ready for the real world. This learning process has had an affect on her overall GPA; however, she is now working very hard to bring that GPA back up to where it needs to be to get into the college of her choice. But SHE is working at it, not me.

With my son just starting middle school this year, I am letting him learn the consequences of his actions. He’s had a few lessons to learn but by learning them now, and on his own, he will be more organized and responsible for when the grades really count. The best thing of all is that it is working.

I am absolutely there to support my children in their academic life but in a different way. I’m there for homework, projects and to help them decide on what classes to take the next year. I do occasionally check the online grading system but it’s at a minimum. I try to wait for the old fashioned way of knowing their grades…when the report card comes home. Instead, I have them check their own assignments and grades so they can see how they are progressing and if they’ve made some mistakes along the way then they have the opportunity to fix them. It has absolutely lowered my stress level but most importantly, increased their ability to be more independent and successful in their life.

James Joyce (1882-1941) once said “Mistakes are the portal of discovery�. I say, “How true, how true�.

The Working Mom’s Success: This success is fairly old but it’s important to share because the success has continued on through out my children’s lives. I am not an avid reader. As a matter of fact, my reading consists of magazine articles and maybe one or two books a year. When I had my first child back in 1990, I made a promise to myself that I would not let my children go through their lives without knowing the joy of reading. I knew it had to be joyful because everyone was doing it. I’d hear some of my friends’ talk of a novel they just read in such detail and with the clarity of a movie that this made me, in some ways, jealous. Every time I tried to really sink into a book, I’d get through the first few chapters and then give up.

So, from the moment my children were born, I would read them children’s books. This became a nightly ritual during feedings or just relaxing before bed time. I became almost obsessed with them becoming the readers I never was. I succeeded. They read and read and READ. At bedtime, I don’t deal with arguments about not wanting to go to sleep because of some TV show. I deal with arguments that start with “just one more chapter….P-L-E-A-S-E?� I guess I created monsters but to tell you the truth, dealing with “reading� monsters is a wonderful thing!