tskeeter
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Post by tskeeter on Jul 8, 2015 18:14:35 GMT -5
So, I am full of conflicting feelings today..... My oldest finished 1st grade and even though our state doesn't requires it, I tested the hell out of him. It was a 3.5 hr test and we got results today. Well, he did remarkably well. His grandparents, (the same ones that feed him 19 pez dispensers) are about to throw a parade in his honor and think that their little "baby Einstein" deserves everything he wants. But I know how lazy he can be and how once things get a bit hard, he has no perseverance to work it through. I can't stand arrogant people who think they are smarter than everyone else and I am worried that he will be one of them. In addition to being lazy. So......how do I find the balance? I don't want to diminish his accomplishments, but.... He spent an hour this morning whining that he can't figure out a math word problem. It took him 30 seconds to get an answer once I drew a picture, the same pic that he could have done 10 times. How did you handle your intelligent but lazy kids?? Put me down in the academically capable, but not overly ambitious column. What I found motivating was the challenge. If it wasn't challenging enough, I'd lose interest once I had demonstrated to myself that I could do something. One of the things you might think about is whether your child is smart, but not creative. Smart is usually measured as being able to repeat what someone taught you. Creative and curious are more about being able to do things like figure out how something you've never seen before works. Is it possible that your child never saw anyone figure out something by drawing a picture before? If that's true, nobody has ever taught him that particular problem solving technique until you did. I think that creativity and problem solving can be taught. For me, the process is deciding I want to do something, then figuring out several ways to get there (usually with a series of brainstorming conversations with co-workers). And ignoring the rules and conventions that many people let block their progress toward their goals. It's things like questioning why the door to a building has to be on the street side of the building? Why can't it be on the back side, away from the street? (It can.) Why can't you use other people's property for your parking lot? (You can. If you lease it.) Why can't you do a temporary data and voice connection to a building three doors down the street in the next 24 hours? (You can. If you lay a cable down the edge of a power line right of way that runs along both buldings.) None of these solutions to problems are really conventional, but a company that I worked for implemented all of them. And the people I worked with took the basic ideas and made them better (putting the computer cable in interduct flexible conduit was a good idea because it layed out there on the ground, in the sun and rain, for almost two years).
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tskeeter
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Post by tskeeter on Jul 8, 2015 18:28:59 GMT -5
I have one of those. The key is to let them fail due to being lazy. Set consequences for their failure. They're smart enough to understand "If I don't get this book report done by the due date, I don't get to spend the night at my friend's house Saturday." Smart kids get lazy because they can sit and listen to the teacher in class and know enough they can pass the tests. They don't have to study much, or put forth much effort. At some point, though, school starts to require projects, book reports, research papers, etc. Things you can't just wing your happy ass through at the last minute. This is when it's really important to resist stepping in and helping - let them crash a few times and take their lumps, so that by the time they hit high school and college they understand the consequences to their grades if they fail to put some effort into their work. I know parents usually want to protect their kids from failure, but kids learn as much from failure as they do from their successes, and you want them to fail early on, when it isn't that important. The smart ones especially need to know just being smart doesn't guarantee success. One of the probably unfortunate things is that sometimes the real consequences aren't serious enough to change behavior. I didn't do my math homework for a full quarter when I was in high school. The teacher gave me an incomplete until I completed the homework. Dad chewed me out. When my homework was complete a week or so later, the math teacher decided that he'd give me a chance to raise my grade by letting me retake the tests that I had done poorly on during the time I wasn't doing homework. Since my worst grade that quarter was a B+, I only had to fiddle with redoing one test. The only consequences were that I got chewed out (that wasn't at all unusual) and I had to take one test twice. Not too serious.
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alabamagal
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Post by alabamagal on Jul 8, 2015 20:24:26 GMT -5
Also the thing to remember is that how things are in first grade is not necessarily how they will be when grown up.
DS22 struggled early in school. Unfocused, forgetful, ADD. Numerous teacher conferences. Things started to turn around in high school and really took off in college. He now has a good job and is totally self supporting, has a fiancé and they have their life planned out.
DS20 was a kid genius. Started reading at 3, started doing math on his own. At age 6 he could name all 50 states and their capitals and main agricultural products. At 7 he was playing baseball and calculating his batting average. We put him in K5 a year early ( he only issued cutoff by 13 days). He was so focused and determined to do everything. In k5 he would get himself ready for school and never forgot homework or book bag. As he got older the determination and focus has gone away ( thank you hormones!). Now when he has trouble in college he finds excuses and gets down. He could use a little bit more of that go- getter personality from kindergarten. His gap dropped to 3.0 at a tough school, which is not terrible, but he just accepts everything.
Kids change
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Jul 9, 2015 10:21:22 GMT -5
One thing I'm finding out in life is the degrees, jobs, and other accolades don't go to the smartest, but those willing to grind it out, as long as it takes, to achieve their goals
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chen35
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Post by chen35 on Jul 9, 2015 10:39:27 GMT -5
I feel like I am fairly intelligent, and I also feel like I'm pretty lazy. I'm pretty successful in my career. I have a masters degree and and CPA, and I have a great job. One thing I realized is that most of my accomplishments have been completed in 10 minute increments. It's hard for me to stay focused on something for much longer than that. If I feel like something is going to take hours to complete, I put it off until I'm in panic mode. Once I realized that I can make a ton of progress on something in just 10 minutes, things are getting better. A lot of times I'll get into something and work on it for longer, but to get started I have to tell myself it will just be for 10 minutes, and I absolutely allow myself to stop after 10 minutes. This works for studying, work, house cleaning, pretty much anything.
Would I be more successful if I could regularly focus on the same thing for hours? Maybe. But I'm happy with my life and I've found a way to work around my short comings. Being lazy isn't the worst thing your kid can be. He just needs to figure out how to get what he wants out of life working around his laziness.
I don't know if I'm making any sense, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
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MJ2.0
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Post by MJ2.0 on Jul 9, 2015 10:43:47 GMT -5
erg, I'm not looking forward to this. I was smart and put the work in, but I definitely didn't challenge myself too much if I thought it might end in failure. I'm only recently getting over that. X was one of the kids I hated - very intelligent, but figured out the percentages of the workload for each class then just did the bare minimum to get the grade he wanted. This does not bode well for DS.
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ArchietheDragon
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Post by ArchietheDragon on Jul 9, 2015 10:43:50 GMT -5
The problem is that what motivates me doesn't necessarily motivate my children. That's how we ended up with an intelligent 22yo (now 25) who flat out told us to our faces that he wasn't going to work anymore and he didn't care if we were mad about it. He went to live in the woods so he didn't have to pay bills. That lasted three months and he asked to come home. We told him no. He didn't talk to DH for 18 months. (There is a lot building from him barely graduating from high school and the journey from age 17 to age 22.)
He's been lazy his entire life. He is wired differently from DH. He doesn't want "things" enough to work. He does work now for a refrigeration company. He gets paid about $12/hour. He doesn't ask us for anything.
Our 17yo daughter is lazy, but she likes "things" enough that I think she'll end up getting her BS. She has yet to get a job though. She is also starting to have panic attacks about moving out/going to college next summer. We'll see.
I guess my point is that I'm ahead of you in this journey and I have no answers for you. Being human is hard. Parenting is extra hard. That is what my parents went through with my brother. one of the smartest guys I know, but doesn't want to work (I think it has to do with some anxiety issues, too). Now he is 42 and works at a doggie daycare. They have been looking for a manager and I keep telling him he should do it, but he isn't interested. He seems happy enough, I think.... At least his girlfriend was able to put him on her health insurance through domestic partnership clauses.
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yogiii
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Post by yogiii on Jul 9, 2015 11:02:44 GMT -5
I don't know if this is quite the same as being lazy but I feel like other people always push me to do things I don't really want to do (because of lack of ambition) but then I do them because I have a people pleaser personality. So it all works out because I have accomplished the task or taken on the extra responsibility I didn't want but then ultimately I get pushed again. So my strategy now is to just roll with it and try not to be so scared of the next challenge thrown my way. However I often daydream about how it would be so much nicer to just work at Dunkin Donuts.
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whoisjohngalt
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Post by whoisjohngalt on Jul 9, 2015 12:13:05 GMT -5
I feel like I am fairly intelligent, and I also feel like I'm pretty lazy. I'm pretty successful in my career. I have a masters degree and and CPA, and I have a great job. One thing I realized is that most of my accomplishments have been completed in 10 minute increments. It's hard for me to stay focused on something for much longer than that. If I feel like something is going to take hours to complete, I put it off until I'm in panic mode. Once I realized that I can make a ton of progress on something in just 10 minutes, things are getting better. A lot of times I'll get into something and work on it for longer, but to get started I have to tell myself it will just be for 10 minutes, and I absolutely allow myself to stop after 10 minutes. This works for studying, work, house cleaning, pretty much anything. Would I be more successful if I could regularly focus on the same thing for hours? Maybe. But I'm happy with my life and I've found a way to work around my short comings. Being lazy isn't the worst thing your kid can be. He just needs to figure out how to get what he wants out of life working around his laziness. I don't know if I'm making any sense, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I have very short attention span when it comes to things I don't like - that's why I could never pass CPA. I couldn't sit down and study. I would do ANYTHING other than that. It was insane - how much money and time I wasted.
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chen35
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Post by chen35 on Jul 9, 2015 12:28:17 GMT -5
I feel like I am fairly intelligent, and I also feel like I'm pretty lazy. I'm pretty successful in my career. I have a masters degree and and CPA, and I have a great job. One thing I realized is that most of my accomplishments have been completed in 10 minute increments. It's hard for me to stay focused on something for much longer than that. If I feel like something is going to take hours to complete, I put it off until I'm in panic mode. Once I realized that I can make a ton of progress on something in just 10 minutes, things are getting better. A lot of times I'll get into something and work on it for longer, but to get started I have to tell myself it will just be for 10 minutes, and I absolutely allow myself to stop after 10 minutes. This works for studying, work, house cleaning, pretty much anything. Would I be more successful if I could regularly focus on the same thing for hours? Maybe. But I'm happy with my life and I've found a way to work around my short comings. Being lazy isn't the worst thing your kid can be. He just needs to figure out how to get what he wants out of life working around his laziness. I don't know if I'm making any sense, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I have very short attention span when it comes to things I don't like - that's why I could never pass CPA. I couldn't sit down and study. I would do ANYTHING other than that. It was insane - how much money and time I wasted. I did it by studying 10 - 20 minutes at a time a couple of times a day for about 6 weeks before each test. Then I would do a cram session the weekend before (the adrenaline of the test being so soon helped me focus longer when it was right before the test). Wouldn't work for everyone, but I made it work for me.
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Angel!
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Post by Angel! on Jul 9, 2015 12:38:17 GMT -5
I'm reading the book Mindset that was recommended by our school principal. I haven't finished it, but it seems your concerns so you might want to read it. It is about people who think they are just naturally smart (or athletic or creative) vs people who think that you can always get better by always pushing themselves. So far it has tons of examples of people that were either extreme & what happened to them. Basically if you are of the fixed mindset you eventually hit a wall where things become challenging & just give up because you figure you've hit the limit of how far your brains will take you. I assume there will be more, but it has so far discussed some about getting kids into a growth mindset where they see challenges as something fun & an opportunity to learn.
I will also add that I think there are 2 types of lazy. There is lazy where I don't want to do anything ever but sit on the couch & watch TV or play games or some other easy activity that I enjoy. Then there is lazy where I don't want to waste my time doing pointless work. The first category isn't good, but the second isn't always bad.
Kids who fall into the second type of lazy might hate homework, but they are also the kids that can do very well in life because they look for ways to work smarter not harder. A lazy person probably invented the remote control because they got tired of getting up to change the channel. A lazy person will realize the pointlessness of looking up thousands of data points individually & write a program to automate the process. Lazy + creative + problem solver is really an awesome combination because they always look for shortcuts to save time & money & energy. I would take a smart, creative, lazy person over a hard worker that will forever be ok doing a mundane task without ever questioning it's purpose or if there is a better way.
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Tiny
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Post by Tiny on Jul 9, 2015 13:52:49 GMT -5
Any chance your son is a visual learner? Some kids don't learn concepts by being told, but by seeing them. (Like when you drew a picture.) Doesn't mean the child isn't brilliant, but a lot of the scary-smart kids learn things differently from the rest of us, & see the world differently too.
If I'd been given the option to quit school (like my Dad was given the option by my Grandfather), I'd have left school when I had algebra. I was making great marks in my other classes, but had to spend an obscene amount of time on my algebra homework. Every. Single. Night. (It's amazing that I ended up a business major, and numbers DO fascinate me, but I STILL hate algebra!)
I've forgotten if your son is in a private or public school, but if the child were mine I'd probably send them to a school that worked with their style of learning. I do draw him pictures, but I want HIM to draw pictures when he does those problems. We homeschool, that's why I am so worried about the whole thing - if he is a looser who is living in my basement at 45 - it will be on me! Maybe you need to lead him down the path with questions - to get him to draw the pictures. Leading questions or just additional questions are how you get someone to think and hopefully learn how to "think". Which, in theory, is part of what you want to accomplish by homeschooling? I'm kind of idealistic so I tend to think that people what kids that can be flexible and think for themselves. sometimes the 'obvious' isn't so obvious to kids. I know. I seemed to get hung up on what was suppose to be 'obvious' to me... for example: in second grade I was presented with the task of writing a thank you note. I no clue what to do. I had never written a "letter" or done anything that vaguely resembled a "thank you" note. I didn't get any "help" with it either... you know maybe an example of what to write or maybe some leading questions to help me think about what I was "thankful "for? This was so stressful to me I couldn't even put pencil to paper. My inability to be able to come up with a few words to write combined with the 'stress' just got worse the more I was told to 'just do it' or "what do you mean you can't think of anything to write?" - and then when I was finally prompted with what to write I was so overwhelmed I could barely transcribe what was dictated to me. Talk about 'childhood scars'. I cringe to this day when ever I have to write a personal note of any kind. The stress/fear of not knowing what to write coupled with the 'never having done it before - I might do it wrong" feeling incapacited my little kid brain. (FWIW: I bought a couple of different "how to write letters" books that have all sorts of examples in them - and I saved some notes/letters/cards from friends/relatives that had 'good stuff' in them... I use those as a spring board to help me choke out a few sentences when I need to. )
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chen35
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Post by chen35 on Jul 9, 2015 14:08:12 GMT -5
I'm reading the book Mindset that was recommended by our school principal. I haven't finished it, but it seems your concerns so you might want to read it. It is about people who think they are just naturally smart (or athletic or creative) vs people who think that you can always get better by always pushing themselves. So far it has tons of examples of people that were either extreme & what happened to them. Basically if you are of the fixed mindset you eventually hit a wall where things become challenging & just give up because you figure you've hit the limit of how far your brains will take you. I assume there will be more, but it has so far discussed some about getting kids into a growth mindset where they see challenges as something fun & an opportunity to learn.
I will also add that I think there are 2 types of lazy. There is lazy where I don't want to do anything ever but sit on the couch & watch TV or play games or some other easy activity that I enjoy. Then there is lazy where I don't want to waste my time doing pointless work. The first category isn't good, but the second isn't always bad.
Kids who fall into the second type of lazy might hate homework, but they are also the kids that can do very well in life because they look for ways to work smarter not harder. A lazy person probably invented the remote control because they got tired of getting up to change the channel. A lazy person will realize the pointlessness of looking up thousands of data points individually & write a program to automate the process. Lazy + creative + problem solver is really an awesome combination because they always look for shortcuts to save time & money & energy. I would take a smart, creative, lazy person over a hard worker that will forever be ok doing a mundane task without ever questioning it's purpose or if there is a better way. I think I am both types of lazy.
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grumpyhermit
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Post by grumpyhermit on Jul 9, 2015 14:19:48 GMT -5
I am definitely both types of lazy.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2015 14:26:51 GMT -5
I have to stop reading this thread.
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Tiny
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Post by Tiny on Jul 9, 2015 14:28:40 GMT -5
I'm reading the book Mindset that was recommended by our school principal. I haven't finished it, but it seems your concerns so you might want to read it. It is about people who think they are just naturally smart (or athletic or creative) vs people who think that you can always get better by always pushing themselves. So far it has tons of examples of people that were either extreme & what happened to them. Basically if you are of the fixed mindset you eventually hit a wall where things become challenging & just give up because you figure you've hit the limit of how far your brains will take you. I assume there will be more, but it has so far discussed some about getting kids into a growth mindset where they see challenges as something fun & an opportunity to learn. I've heard about this concept - if you start out with the belief (or talk yourself into the belief) that you can only achieve X because of how smart/athletic/creative/rich/beautiful what ever - you'll only ever achieve X. If you think you can get smarter/more athletic/more creative/more beautiful/more whatever - then you can find a way to achieve X+1, or X+2, or X+ I think that one's believes about oneself do make a big difference in how successful people are in achieving the things they want. Oddly enough, I'm reading the Happiness Project and one of the personal 10 commandments the author uses is to "Act the way I want to feel" - she comes back to this strategy over and over again and found that for many of the small annoyances in life - making the effort to NOT be annoyed by quickly letting go of the feelings of annoyance (not ruminating) or reframing the annoyance as something positive - she did indeed improve her over all mood over the course of the day. To achieve this though she had to overcome her belief that she could NOT effect her mood by changing her response(s) to the little crap that happens. There's the underlying idea in the book that one's 'beliefs' about themselves and their actions and their lives that do drive one's feelings of "happiness" to some extent. it's not a self help book - it's more of a description of her experiences over a year after trying out some new habits and new ways to think about everyday life. It was very Ben Franklin and his 13 Virtues (anyone read his autobiography?) I think good old Ben also touches on the idea that one's internal beliefs strongly influence one's actions. Our internal beliefs are probably our biggest stumbling blocks OR strengths.
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Jul 9, 2015 14:59:02 GMT -5
Lazy people are entitled people. The way to combat lazy is to combat the entitlement mentality. I don't care how talented, smart, or whatever you think you are. You are never "too good" to do hard work, manual labor, clean the toilets or any of that. So, if you raise your kid by teaching them how much "smarter" they are then everyone else and they think they are better, you don't do them any favors. Just because you are the Valedictorian doesn't mean you don't have to clean their room or pitch in to do all the things that need to be done by responsible people.
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Knee Deep in Water Chloe
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Post by Knee Deep in Water Chloe on Jul 9, 2015 18:48:26 GMT -5
I recently read Mindset, and I wish I had read it years ago. It's really helped me.
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whoisjohngalt
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Post by whoisjohngalt on Jul 9, 2015 18:50:02 GMT -5
OK, will be taking it out of the library!
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