Me vs Pre-teen Apathy
October 13, 2009
Filed under Parenting and all it's glory
Tags: apathy, Genius children, parenting
This could alternately be titled “My son is making me want to throw myself in front of a bus”.
Let me start by saying that I adore apathy… when it’s appropriately placed. There is something wonderfully freeing about just not caring about things that other people stress and drive themselves mad over. Religion? I don’t give a shit. What other people think of me? I don’t give a shit. How many women David Letterman, Bill Clinton, or anyone else screwed when they “weren’t supposed to”? I truly don’t give a shit. Is my car clean? I don’t care. Are the holes in my shoes? Don’t care. If I keep eating sugar in such large amounts I’ll be diabetic by the time I’m 40? Yawn… so what. Did I just cut you off in traffic and now you’re screaming and flipping me off? That’s actually pretty funny.
It’s when apathy is misplaced, and put where it can do serious potential damage to your future- that’s when it’s a big problem.
My 11 year old son is brilliant. I’m not just saying that out of blind parental pride. He really is. Actually, it’s fucking terrifying as to how smart he is (and some days, I wish he was a mouth-breathing drooler, because dumb kids are FAR easier to raise than smart kids… hands down). He is hilarious, and creative, and one of those oddball ultra-brainy types that has a bottomless pits’ worth of trivia and knowledge to toss out at random….
BUT because he’s too smart, he also has the manipulation skills of an adult (and not just an adult… but his manipulation tactics could put the most devious junkie stripper to shame). He has learned the art of lying- and will look you right in the eye with a smile and his brown eyes opened as “doe-eyed” as they can get and spin you tales of bullshit a mile long to get away with whatever misdeed he has done. He runs his teachers in circles. He can turn a classroom into a circus within 30 seconds if bored. He plays people as if they’re puppets (and sometimes actually is able to pull the wool over on me and Brad- which is astounding to all). I never really understood how someone could be “too smart for their own good” until I had Sullivan. I now get it…. all too well.
One of the problems with really smart kids is that they see through the “life’s rules” bullshit- and they don’t care to participate. Sully is one of those kids. Last year, they tested him to be in the gifted classes for junior high this year. He barely tried on the tests, and had one of the highest scores in his school (and the only reason he tried AT ALL is because I asked him to “do it for mom!”. If I hadn’t said that, he would have just sat and doodled on the edges of the paper). So this year, he has started off the year in the gifted classes. The homework that is supposed to take the kids at least 2 hours to do only takes him 20 minutes. When I give him practice tests at home for vocabulary (to which his vocab words are things like “Australopithecus”- and yes, I had to ask him how to spell that) or geography, he aces all of them. The work isn’t too hard for him. The amount of work isn’t too much for him. He is fully capable of breezing through his classes in his sleep.
So why is it he’s making 2 D’s and an F? Because the child doesn’t give a shit. Oh… he’s making an A in gym, and a B in math… but his strongest subjects- Reading, Language Arts and Social Studies (all the gifted classes), he’s flunking. He was reading at a high school level in 4th grade. He’s been studying cultures and sociology at home in his free time since he was a tiny tot. But these are the classes that he’s bombing out of. And it’s making me want to scream and pull my hair out.
Because of these grades, we have a mandatory 2 hour homework time at home. I don’t care if he’s done in 5 minutes… he has to sit there and read ahead or do extra credit for the rest of the 2 hours. He is grounded from the Wii, and his computer, and any movies except our National Geographic specials until the grades are up. And every night when proclaims “I’m done!” with his homework, I sit with him, go through it piece by piece, and make sure that it all is in fact completed.
So how, again, is he flunking these classes that are too easy for him and teaching him information that he already knows? Because he doesn’t bother to turn the homework in. Seriously. He’ll take the time to do it and put it in it’s appropriate folder to be given to the teacher the next day… and then he just doesn’t turn it in to her. Why? BECAUSE HE DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT!!!! He doesn’t care that his grades are crap and that he could get kicked out of the gifted classes. He doesn’t care that because of his shitty grades, he’s no longer allowed to do anything but read and draw in his free time. He just doesn’t care. We can’t get a coherent reason as to why he doesn’t care, because he’s so manipulative that he’ll give us mountains of excuses and explanations that he thinks excuse the behavior, or he’ll tell us what he thinks we want to hear…. and if it were any other kid, those excuses just might work. But we all KNOW that his excuses are nothing but stale and rank hot air… but he’s not giving up the truth. Period.
He’s not openly rebelling, because he gets upset that we’re upset about his grades. This isn’t an angsty pre-teen “fuck you, mom and dad! and fuck your establishment!”….. this is just 100% apathy towards the results of his lack of work. I’ve tried to talk to him about how doing well in school could open up alot of great things for him as an adult, and that it’s SO hard to get into the gifted classes so he should look at it as an honor, and all that bla bla “>bla bla parental babble. But does that stuff ever really get through to kids? Of course not.
So I’m at a loss with what to do with him. If he gets himself kicked out of the gifted classes, I’m sure his father will hop on a plane from Kansas so that Sully can actually see the rage in his eyes. And I KNOW that the regular classes will be so boring for him that he’ll quickly make ALL F’s instead of just 1. But I don’t know what to do with him. I’m bending over backwards to help him, his teachers are bending over backwards to help him… but how do you make someone give a fuck about something when they’re determined to not give a fuck?
Help? Anyone???? Because I’m out of ideas.
fuck, that’s tough. i think you’re telling him that he should be honored about gifted classes and that it may open doors for him in the future sounded good. but that’s me hearing it with my “adult brain” so it sounds nicer to me now that i am oler. but i’m sure if i were his age i could care less…. just cause i was never interested in school. but i can’t speak for Sully. i’m stumped!!! i wish i could give you some good tips.
what exactly are the excuses that he’s using??
Oh…. I’ve got the perfect example that happened last night… and I had to leave the room I was laughing so hard. This is how he rolls:
Part of his homework last night was to do these spelling flashcards for extra credit. The spelling word on the front, definition and using it in a sentence 3 times on the back. Simple, right?
So I’m going through his homework with him to make sure it’s all done, and I ask to see the spelling cards. He pulls the stack of cards out, shows me the first two, and then shoves them all back into the binder’s pocket really quickly. I pull them back out and start going through all of them. Only the 1st two of them were done, and the whole other stack of them just had the words written on the front so it looked like he had done them.
Boom! Caught- right?
No way. He looked me right in the eye and said “Oh man! I don’t know what’s going on! How did that happen?!”. I asked him “How did what happen?!?!? You didn’t do the work!!”. He says, “Yes I did! I did all of them! I don’t know why the writing isn’t there!”.
I’m not kidding. He was trying to convince me that the writing on his homework actually DISAPPEARED , which is why his homework looked like it wasn’t finished. As if it was some gigantic conspiracy, or some evil magic or something. Fucking unbelievable, right?!
The funniest part was that he was mad at ME because I caught him in the lie.
He tries to pull stuff like that all the time.
And then the rest of the time, he just says “I don’t know where it went”.
geeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzz!
He’s crazy.
hahahaha, that’s great. not the most brilliant excuse coming from him, i’d imagine. but still, it’s fucking priceless!
I was in gifted classes all throughout elementary and loved them. I was even in a couple GOOD ones in Middle School, but there comes a point in education, when honors classes can become a bad thing. It seems to me, if you love the subject, don’t take honors.
At most schools, the standard classes encourage you to reflect, give an opinion, do creative writing, and the honors classes are mostly history memorization and analytical writing. When I went to high school, I was pre-accepted to honors english, but I quickly switched to a standard class because it was so mind-numbing. Reading and regurgitating. It’s possible he wants to write stories instead of spelling words that .1% of the population actually uses. Maybe it’s possible he will do better in standard classes? Even though it doesn’t have the fancy title. From personal experience, I LOVED my english and history classes, they kept me interested, and I always got As.
You should maybe see if he can try a regular class and see if he likes it, and if not, he can transfer back.
I totally get what you’re saying… but his classes at this school are amazing.
I’m in pretty close contact with his teacher in the gifted class… and she’s AWESOME!!!! They do all the crazy fun projects to balance out the harder work load. They have tons of opportunity to be creative and open… and I don’t know if the regular classes at his school are like that.
He might not have much choice but to get in the regular classes if he keeps this up, though!!
Wow… I’m in awe because he sounds exactly like a kid I knew… uh, ME!
I was always far too smart for my own good, from a young age.
Reaching levels of aptitude beyond anything my teachers had ever seen in most of my Provincial (I’m Canadian) tests in Elementary school.
I didn’t care. Even throughout high school I didn’t care. I think that BECAUSE it was so easy I felt that there was no point in trying. I could sleep through every class, barely do the homework and still manage to pass with semi-high marks after ace-ing exams.
I WISH I would have done all that I could have, because my brain is now wasted on menial office jobs and serving at a local music venue in my city.
Try to instill in Sully that he has the ability to CHANGE things, because of his intelligence and because of his unique outlook on all that is fucked up about the way our world works right now.
I don’t know what else to suggest, because obviously nothing worked for me… I wish it had.
Good luck lady!
Him and I talk about that all the time. He’s a little soap-box preacher with all the things he sees that are wrong with the world (I wonder where he gets that from… haha!). So I talk to him all the time about how much of a difference he could make if he really took educating himself seriously. I tell him that he doesn’t have to love school… but he loves to learn, so that should make him want to do well in school- right?
Maybe it will start to sink in more when he’s older.
Sounds like he’s bored. Perhaps he needs to skip a grade or two. You, as the parent, have the power to make something like that happen, even if your school’s principal/counselors don’t seem on board. You can advocate for his needs and the school has to listen to you!!!
Hope that is helpful.
Oh, another suggestion might be to look into the magnet school in your area.
Yeah! Magnet schools rock, I go to one.
I looked up magnet schools in our area, and it was slim pickings. But one of the fantastic things about the school he’s in now is that they have a inclusion program that is just for Asperger’s kids (which he has), and it’s helping him like crazy.
And his teachers and I talked about skipping him a grade or so a few years back… but because of the Asperger’s, he’s socially awkward enough. And we thought it would be far tougher for him socially to be in classes with kids older than him when he was already dealing with social struggles.
It’s quite a pickle.
Ohhhhhhh! I didn’t catch the Asperger’s stuff. Well that changes things. I am a Special Education teacher and I’ve worked with plenty of Asperger’s kids. Have you considered getting him a super-smart private tutor with experience with Asperger’s kids (or who even has Asperger’s) to see him once or twice a week and help him to organize and motivate? If he can find a “mentor” in this person, it might motivate him to perform better. Also, have you guys done an ARD for him? Does he have any accommodations in his current school situation?
(ps I hope you feel comfortable talking to me about this. I know you don’t know me, but I’m happy to share anything I know about teaching kids with learning differences if you like.)
(pss It sounds like his Asperger’s program is a really great thing and maybe he just needs some time for it to kick in. Try to remember that his junior high grades aren’t reviewed by colleges, so you guys have some time to work out this kink before he goes off to high school and his grades count for real.)
I’m TOTALLY into talking about this stuff, because it helps me be a better parent!
His Asperger’s program at school really is fantastic, and they have helped him TONS. And it’s funny that you mention a mentor, because his therapist and I were talking just last week about getting a mentor for him! His therapist works with the city and there are tons of mentoring programs out here. So we’re going to see how that goes.
I’m trying really hard to keep it in perspective- because you’re right, colleges don’t look at junior high grades. I just don’t want him to get cemented into bad habits or miss opportunities now because of his lack of motivation, ya know?
Sure, I know what ya mean! Also, I asked if it is ok to talk about it because my confidentiality detector goes off when I talk to people about their childrens’ school stuff.
I definitely think finding a mentor could be great for him. That one-on-one interaction and some solid routine combined should be a comfort to him.
Tell him that no on can predict what jumping through the hoops can do for him in the future but we all know EXACTLY what happens if he doesn’t play along now and that is a guaranteed life working behind stainless steel counter tops, wearing an apron and asking, “How may I help you?” and that is IF he is lucky. Explain that you know it is a bunch of b.s. but there ARE ways to subvert it and he is smart enough to learn those ways, but the key is learning and whether he likes it or not, one can learn a lot (or not at all) in school, even crappy public schools. Explain that your willingness to jump through some hoops made his life a whole lot easier than it could have been and if he cannot appreciate anything else he should try and at least be thankful for that. And that you love him
That’s EXACTLY what I tell him!!! He has all these huge aspirations of what he wants to do as an adult, and I tell him that if he flunks out of school, those dreams are pretty unlikely to happen.
and then I tell him that I love him.
(you know how Sully and I roll… Brad gets creeped out by how much we tell each other that we love each other… haha!!)
my brainy could-read-at-college-level-when-she-was-10 kid didn’t give a crap either
but since she started high school it’s gotten better -jr high was a total bust
i don’t think you can make them care, but you still have to try because what else can you do???
Hopefully that’s the route he’ll take.
But yeah… I’m not the kind of person that can just sit back and watch him fumble without putting up a fight.
Holy crap. That was EXCATLY the shit I used to pull with my mom. And you’re doing the same things she did. And Sully is doing the exact same things in response- i.e. turning into a limp noodle when faced with improving his grades via homework. There were a few things going on with me, and I have no idea if the same thing is going on with Sully… but they might.
For one, the honor of the gifted classes I got into was directly related to how hard I had to try. Since I didn’t have to try at all, the honor was and empty and shallow one.
For another, I knew how smart I was AND I knew how easily other people could be impressed. I was smarter than any other kid in my grade, and I could snowball my instructors so easily that I figured there was no way in hell I wouldn’t be able to bluff my way into a good college. Besides, that was way the hell in the future. I had a years left to run damage control.
And probably the saddest and most fundamental reason I did that was that I was realizing exactly how freakishly smart I was in comparison to my classmates. The key word being “freakish.” Nobody told the peg-leg kid how peg-leggy he was all the damn time, but they constantly pointed my brains out to me, and to everyone in earshot. How smart I was, how much I could do with it, how much fucking “potential” I had, and it drove a wedge between myself and my classmates. I didn’t get bullied for it(except the last year of elementary school) but I was very much aware of the social gap.
It was a weird mix of ego and insecurity that did it, not apathy. And I think that it’s not that Sully doesn’t care, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to deal with being as smart as he is.
Does this make sense to you, Kristen?
“Nobody told the peg-leg kid how peg-leggy he was all the damn time, but they constantly pointed my brains out to me, and to everyone in earshot.”
Hahaha! That’s an awesome way of putting it! And yes- you’re making perfect sense!!
I never thought of it that way.
I just see SO MANY STUPID KIDS every day, and my stomach does backflips at the thought that they’re going to be running the show when I’m old… and I just want to scream “SULLY, IT’S UP TO YOU TO SAVE MY ELDERLY DAYS FROM BEING RUINED BY THE MORONS OF THE WORLD!!! DON’T YOU LOVE YOUR MOTHER ENOUGH TO DO THAT?!?!?!?!”
Plus, I just want to see him do all the amazing things that I KNOW he can do and be happy and proud of himself.
But I should probably lighten up a bit. And I probably am putting undue pressure on him. And even though I apply pressure with love… it’s still pressure.
I’m glad you commented!
Thank you!!!
actually, you might just go ahead and say it to him…“SULLY, IT’S UP TO YOU TO SAVE MY ELDERLY DAYS FROM BEING RUINED BY THE MORONS OF THE WORLD!!! DON’T YOU LOVE YOUR MOTHER ENOUGH TO DO THAT?!?!?!?!”
seriously…he hates the system that morons built and run to this day and who better to fix it than him? or subvert it? or exploit it?
it may appeal to him, and will definitely make him laugh…
bribery? my parents gave us money for every A & B on the report cards. just look at it as positive reinforcement, i guess, since he might actually care about getting the reward even if he doesn’t care about the work. or you could go to his school and hand in the homework *for* him, he might be embarrassed enough to start doing it himself.
i don’t know, really, but i do know that all the “if you don’t get an education you’ll dig ditches all your life” lectures went right over our heads as kids, even teens.
We’ve tried different treats for different grades… but we’ve found that his attention span is crazy scattered, so for him to have a goal where he doesn’t reap the rewards for months just doesn’t work. We do have daily positive reinforcements. Like tonight, he sat and finished all his homework without a single complaint or scam…. so we went out and got a slushy. Little things like that work better for him (except for the frequent days where he cares more about not doing his homework than any treats or rewards we could ever give him).
Going to the school and handing the homework in for him is a pretty funny idea! He’d HATE me for quite a while after that!!
But your right… I’m pretty sure that all the lectures I give him just bounce right off his brain.
“i don’t know, really, but i do know that all the “if you don’t get an education you’ll dig ditches all your life” lectures went right over our heads as kids, even teens.”
actually, the fear of not being able to provide a better life for myself than the one my mom had to work her ass off to provide for me worked on me through high school at least. And I learned enough to work the system and skip that college business and at the moment I could not be happier with my career choices.
Peyton is exactly the same way. No motivation to be anything but a professional skater. His teachers laughed at me when I suggested a tutor. They said he’s perfectly capable, he just “doesn’t want to”. I’ve been doing it since 9th grade. tele’s gone. skateboard. gone. freedom. gone. Nothing but cleaning the dog shit out of the yard, dishes and schoolwork but he still seems to prefer to stare at a wall rather than “let me win” by sucking it up and putting forth some effort. Teenager’s suck so royally, dude.
p.s. I’ve been all but banned from his school since I tried to sit in on all of his classes with him last year and the ladies in the office know my voice on the telephone before I even identify myself and his vice principal even comes to my art shows because we’ve “become so close”, since an incident last year in which he was banned from the internet after looking up “vagina cookie” and “penis salad” on the school server. Awesome! I fucking love it!
My brother was the same in school. He just didn’t give a shit he got kicked out of catholi. School for kicking a nun (she was a bitch and proba Bly deserved it). In high school his guidance counselor who wAs awesome would get so pissed at him because he was briliant yet he was flunking most classes . He got like A 34 on his act’s without trying. My daughter Hannah Is incredibly smart yet sounds the opposite of sully She pushes herselfso hard and is terrified of getting c’s or low b’s, mind you she has been on the high honor role at Collegiatewhich is one of the top private schools in Kansas, I am worried she will have an ulcer by age 15. I started her in counseling about 7 months ago due to issues regarding having a dead beatdad, how easily stressed she gets, and her attitude towards her family suckedmostly. I tolerated it for quite sometime attributing it to her being 12 however when she began hitting her head and threatening suicide when things upset her. I tell you it has made SUcH a difference!!л i would recommendations this for sully.Its hard being really smart. Is Nick involved much in his life?
It really helps to know other parents are dealing with similar issues, and we are all screwing up! I have a full time step-son with Tourettes’s syndrome, which includes ODD, OCD. He also has similar symptoms as Asperger’s but has not been diagnosed with it. He reads at a college level. His grades are all over the place As, Bs, Cs, Ds, Fs. Like Sully, he will spend time on homework, and just not turn it in. He is also very manipulative and tells lots of lies. He 12 years old and started Jr High this year. At least the Jr High teachers deal with him better than elementary teachers did. I think this is because they are used to the “adolescent attitude”. We just don’t know what do do. His dad lectures him about his future. We have tried every kind of punishment and reward system we can think of. I try to get him to draw or write about whats going on inside his head. Lots of people say, Oh, he’s so smart he must be bored, but I don’t think that’s it. We hate to see such brilliance going to waste. His mother, who also has similar developmental issues is in constant legal trouble for everything from shoplifting to fraud. We are doing everything we can to keep him from going down that road, but, like you, nothing we do seems to help, just creates more stress for all of us. The few time he has made some change is when the advice came from someone other than us. We had a wonderful tutor last Summer who really seemed to get through to him. I’m hoping he meets a dream teacher who awakens something in his soul, or he gets knocked in the head leading to an epiphany that the problems he faces in life are largely brought on by none other than himself.
All of this to say, Kristen, you are trying. You are trying so hard (too hard?) and that is enough because that is all we have. I try my best every day and even though it seems like it hasn’t done a damned bit of good I have to have faith that it has. Because that is all I have.
I love reading your blog, thanks for being a voice for parents of exceptional and exceptionally difficult beings.
P.S. Like you have all the time in the world to read, I heard an interview on NPR with filmmaker Tim Page. He wrote a book “Parallel Play” about his and his son’s Asperger;s. In the interview he talks about his troubles in school, sounded so much like ours. Its on my reading list, hope to get to it before Joseph graduates high school.