My teenage daughter not concentrating in school, not doing class work, and forgetting HW

I would seriously try to find out who she is hanging around with in school.

True story, I'm a teacher:

In 9th grade my son a had friend (a girl- not a gf). She was my student. She was a wonderful, hard working, polite girl.

Midway through the school year she stared hanging out with the "wrong" kids. She deteriorated quickly to the point where by 11th grade it was hard to believe she was ever a good kid.

I'll never forget my son- he was so sad when he said to me- she used to be so nice and get good grades, now she doesn't care and isn't even friendly all because of her friends.

It's sad. Your daughter is at a very important part of her life.

Maybe she has had enough of the system and wants to go her own way in life? Ask her.

Thanks. Good thought. It is something I have also been curious about. I did speak to her teacher about whether she is socializing a ton in class. He said he didn't take it like that so much...she is just not doing the work when most of the class is.

But you are right to ask the question since there could be other kids she is hanging out with outside the classroom (lunch, sports, etc). I know her friends well, but do not know everyone in the school she is close with.

Well this is LRC so the answer you're going to get from the majority is that it is because she is a woman and therefore inferior.

The first problem is probably that her school work was/is dependent on you.

The way my parents did it was: they did nothing other than occasionally ask if we completed our work. We got report cards 4 times per year, and that's when my parents saw our grades. Any small grades in between (like a single test or quiz) wasn't a big deal. If you get one bad quiz grade but you work hard enough to overcome that and get a good class grade, they didn't know or care. I could imagine being extremely stressed as a kid if my parents knew and critiqued my grades on a daily basis.

If we got good grades (usually the case), then they would take us out to dinner a couple times a year and call it a celebration dinner for getting good grades.

If we got bad grades, then they punished us. Usually we got grounded and we weren't allowed to play video games. The typical time period for a punishment was 2-3 weeks. The time was cumulative, too. So if you got a bad grade and you accidentally broke a neighbors window in the same month, that could be two 3 week sentences for a total of 6 weeks. In middle school and freshman year, I would typically get punished once or twice a year. By sophomore year their strategy was successful because I didn't want to miss out on anything due to being grounded.

We didn't have phones. We didn't need them. Although I can see how taking away the phone would be a big motivating punishment these days. How long do you take away the phone if she got bad grades on a report card. I imagine anything less than a week would be meaningless.

Worked for my parents: Raised 3 engineers and an actuary.

As someone who is a Special Educator, I would suggest the following-My thinking is that perhaps the schoolwork is too hard for her but since she is at the stage that she is, (teenager) it might be hard for her to admit that she needs the help. I would definitely not go with punishment as a way, but rather with positive reinforcement. I've worked with dozens of students and positive reinforcement goes a much longer way then something like detention. In addition, regarding friends, she might be friends with someone who has a stinkin' attitude about school and schoolwork and it's rubbing off on her. Good luck!

To clarify:

I did not care about doing well in school, or sports, or music (I played an instrument because my parents made me) until senior year of high school. I was never great at sports or music because I didn't work hard at those and there's no metric by which you can tell how hard a kid is working for a parent to judge by (although my parents just wanted us to participate, so it wouldn't have mattered.

I did well enough in school though primarily because I feared the punishment if I didn't do well.

lrc vette wrote:

Well this is LRC so the answer you're going to get from the majority is that it is because she is a woman and therefore inferior.

This but unironically

You have robbed her of her independence—really. From a young age you should have had her having significantly more say in the decisions that she makes. Ideally she would decide to do or not do her homework for her own reasons, not to rebel or get back at you or anything like that.

Molly wrote:

As someone who is a Special Educator, I would suggest the following-My thinking is that perhaps the schoolwork is too hard for her but since she is at the stage that she is, (teenager) it might be hard for her to admit that she needs the help. I would definitely not go with punishment as a way, but rather with positive reinforcement. I've worked with dozens of students and positive reinforcement goes a much longer way then something like detention. In addition, regarding friends, she might be friends with someone who has a stinkin' attitude about school and schoolwork and it's rubbing off on her. Good luck!

I'd agree that positive reinforcement is better than punishment, but I'd also consider the polar opposite of the bolded as a potential cause of her problems. The pace of high school can just be boring AF for smart people.

I thought I was an idiot in high school because I just couldn't force myself to pay attention to much of anything. I had the same kinds of issues as your daughter. I survived high school, and I'm now in my second year of medical school and near the top of my class. I couldn't even recognize it myself at the time, but looking back, I now realize that I wasn't dumb when I was in high school. I was just bored. High school was analogous to a track team that never does anything in training but run a mile per day at 11 minute pace. Eventually anyone with any talent is going to zone out.

To me, the most important thing right now is to avoid pushing in a way that is going to make her hate school. One can recover from a bad freshman year, but if school becomes a major source of stress and family tension, she's not likely to try. I would loosen the reigns a bit. Try to keep her from outright failing, but don't micromanage. Then when she's ready to be a serious student again, be there to help.

More fatty meat, fish and eggs, less carbs which cause brain fog and blood sugar swings. If she goes keto then concentrating in class will be quite easy. I wish I had known this when I was her age.

I teach mostly high school freshmen. It's not abnormal for kids to struggle around this age. The first thing I would check in with the teacher is to find out what she's doing when there is class time to work. Is she on her phone? Talking to friends? Zoning out? Zoning out usually is a sign that kids aren't getting the content and avoid it instead of getting help. If it's something else, it's usually a lack of interest/enjoyment that leads to them doing things that seem more fun to them.

It's time to start teaching her how to manage her organization. Make peace with the fact that initially it will not be efficient and she'll make mistakes. There are a lot of ways you can structure it but below is one that I've recommended to parents in the past and seen a lot of success with.

For middle school and freshmen, I recommend parents check in once a week. When you check in, do it with with your daughter. Make her log in, pull up her grades online and write a list of missing work. You can sit there and supervise and talk about it, but she is the one doing the leg work. Some teachers will let kids make up missing work. Have her email the teacher to ask whether or not the assignment can be made up and CC you, so you get the response. Most teachers will reply all and attach an electronic copy of the work if it can be made up at home. Develop a consequence for missing work - something like lose phone for 1-2 days for each missing assignment or no social activities until missing work from the previous week is made up. It'll work best if you sit down with your daughter before starting this and come up with a fair consequence together. The goal is by sophomore year, you can stretch that out to every other week and just check once a month for juniors/seniors. While it seems intuitive to check in more frequently with kids that are struggling, they just tune it out and feel like they are being nagged all the time.

Last thing, what does your daughter love to do? Make sure she has some sort of extracurricular activity at school to participate in even if it's some obscure and random club. Every kid needs a reason to want to go to school.

Not what you’re expecting I’m sure, but get her ferritin tested.

Mounty Pylon wrote:

Worked for my parents: Raised 3 engineers and an actuary.

So...three people who are good at following instructions? :0 :0

I might say to OP that you're definitely being to strict about school work/grades. Just let her know that you know she's smart and you expect her to make some sort of effort in school.

Johansson wrote:

Not what you’re expecting I’m sure, but get her ferritin tested.

And B12 levels; see my post above

Lots of good advice here. Let me offer some more information/response to some comments...

1. In regards to her not understanding the work. I have not focused a ton on this idea. Mostly due to the fact that the work she is not doing is pretty easy classwork. It's not obscure math problems, but related more to social studies "reading & answer" type work. Honestly, most of the issues resolve around work that is not super complex. Also, for instance, she had two major incomplete assignments I found online last night. After finding the paper in her backpack (which the teacher returned to her), there was one sentence filled out. The rest is not done. This was "reading & answer" questions. The teacher emailed me this morning that she was the only one to turn it in mostly blank (even though they worked on it in class for 3 days).

2. Maybe I am being too involved, which has taken away her ability to do it on her own. But I swear this has not how it's always been. I have let her be independent in her decision making and school work since a young age. It has just been the past 2 year's that I have had to become this nagging father (which I hate).

3. The teacher stressed to me that he believed she was very smart and could be an AP student. He thought her lack of completion/missing work was strictly related to her "not paying attention" or "being distracted".

4. To another poster, maybe she is bored of the work. Again, an interesting thought. Not sure how I come up with a solution to that other than continuing to explain the importance. Also, she has been very blunt before and said that school was just boring. Of course, what kid hasn't thought that or truly believes that. I know I did, but I worked hard to ensure things were done.

5. I have really tried not to punish a ton. I'm not perfect in my responses or conversations with her, but from a consequence standpoint, she has really had it easy. Her mom doesn't like hard consequences, which has swayed me in that direction as well.

6. The longest I have taken her phone away is 1 full day. This has been meaningless in my mind as well. Her mom thinks I'm unfair if much longer. I have now, however, told her for each piece of missing work, it will be 3 full days (which she received last night)

7. To "hs teacher". Your comments are exactly what I'm trying to do. Thanks. However, to be honest, I'm doing it daily and not weekly. Maybe this is too much. Maybe it's making her really despise it all. However, I had to start doing this due to the fact that 1 day without me watching/checking/organizing, things go haywire.

8. She is involved in afterschool activities, which I was hoping would actually help her stay motivated to do well in school. It doesn't seem like it's working though.

9. She can be pretty lazy. Just in general. Amazing kid, but the lazy bone is there. I've honestly wondered if this relates to her just being lazy and not wanting to do things that seem "boring". Of course, that could be me being a jerk.

10. Her mom views things differently. She thinks maybe it's ADHD. She also think I nag too much. She thinks taking away her phone more than 1 day is not right. She thinks I'm not taking into account other things she might have going on in her life at this age. I try to have an open mind, so she could be right in some cases. I'm trying to take all things into account when pursing the right solution.

Grades that are sliding downhill can often be indicators of other things. I would check to see who her current friends are. Who she is hanging out with. Perhaps teachers and school counselors might know.

There is also the possibility of drug use both over the counter and off the street. Issues with alcohol? Cigarettes/vaping?

I did not study much until I realized that since my parents were messed up (alcoholics) and I would be living a pretty bad life unless I exploited one of the few things I had going for me. The realization occurred around 15 or 16 and it started with trying to get girls to notice me. My comparative advantages were few. Read her passages of Barbara Ehreneich's Nickel and Dimed. Unless you can manipulate symbols, modern life in our service economy is not very pleasant.

Some of my cousins, step-sisters, and nieces didn't choose the study route as it can be dull or painful. The problem is that they "chose" a career whether they knew or it or not when they became babymommas at a young age. Yes, this is what my Mom did, and yes, my Mom got knocked up by a loser like my sisters and cousins babydaddys, but I did notice that suddenly these girls' life had a purpose and like it or not, they got respect from society too and of course, money!

Of course, my poor daughters have gotten this "need to study lecture" from me as I have been saddened by these events in my family.

I was slightly concerned until I saw that she's still in middle school. To be honest, when I was in middle school, I had this strange compelling to not try at all in school, since I knew middle school wouldn't really matter for college admission. Therefore, I did similar things to what your daughter is doing (missed hw, etc) . When I got to high school I was able to pretty easily "turn it on" in terms of schoolwork and ended up developing good habits and getting into a great school. I wouldn't worry too much about your daughter as of now, so long that she is staying healthy and productive outside of school.