Teens Struggling in School

As second semester is progressing, and faster than we realize, our High School teenagers are not recognizing how important these years are to getting into a good college or university.


It is a fact, not all kids are designed to go to college, some are very good at vocational trades, and that is a great direction too – as long as they have a direction.

However if you see that your once A-B student is barely getting C’s and D’s it is time to find out what is going on.

• Talk to your teen
• Talk to his/her guidance counselor
• Talk to his/her teachers
• Who are your teen’s friends now? Are they also failing?
• What has changed?
• Why are they spiraling to a destructive level?

This list could go on forever, but at the end of the day, it is about getting your teen back on track.  Especially if you have a 16-17 year old, you have limited time to get them back on the positive road.

Have you tried therapy, which in many cases can lead to a dead end since your teen doesn’t seem to see the issue – have you tried support groups?  Talked to your member of your church or community or friends that have been there?

Once you have exhausted all local resources it may be time for outside help, residential therapy.  This doesn’t mean your teen needs to be in a place where there are hard-core kid – quite the contrary, you need to find a school or program that helps stimulate your teen in a positive direction.  Get them motivated again – but in a good way.

For more resources visit www.helpyourteens.com.

Getting Your Teen Motivated: Helping Those Underachievers

“My teenager is brilliant!  Highly intelligent, has the potential to make all A’s but is barely bringing home C’s!  Help!”
 
This is a common complaint we hear about from many of today’s parents.  Teens do not recognize the importance of education and what it means to their future.  As a matter of fact, we are seeing more adults going back for a higher education than ever before.  Why?  It is simple- education is the key to your financial future.  Now we need to get our teenagers to understand this.

It is up to parents to set boundaries and set the example.  We are not saying that teens are not allowed to have a social life, of course they are.  We need them to find the balance.

Here are some great tips from Parents and Kids:

1. Start early on as possible as you can, set up reasonable goals, begin with small tasks and give them time to improve. For example, have the child state the goal, the grade on their upcoming report card for their classes, math, English, science, history, etc.
2. Tell your child that you love him/her and wish to help him/her to have a bright future, then start the conversation with patience on his/her daily school activities, homework, test, class projects, etc. Prepare to hear some “bad news”, if it did happen, do not be angry with him/her, be calm down and help your child find the problem and try to find a way to help him/her to solve the problem.
3. In order to build a strong work ethic, need to set some rules and ask your child to follow, be strict and tell him/her why. For example, finish homework before watching TV. Why? Homework is the key to understand and master what teachers taught, which leads to his/her success in school. This rule helps him/her be stronger on self-control as well.
4. Encourage and praise the child wisely, not too much, otherwise would mislead him/her to think he/she is the best. Namely, let him/her know that the best needs continuous learning, although did a good job today, need do better tomorrow.
5. Teach your child to have passion for learning new knowledge by showing fun stuff for the project and try to get his/her interest.
6. Tell your child successful stories. Help them to understand to get a good education and succeed in school is one of the most important things for his/her life.
7. Tell your child to make friends with those who are successful in school. Do your best to get your child into a good school, because a healthy competition environment challenges the kid and help him/her to develop better.
8. Introduce some real role models to your kids, who fighting hard with difficulties and succeeded at last, gained people’s respect. Help him/her to learn that if we suffer a set back, we don’t give up. Instead, we try harder.
9. Just like parenting, motivating your children is a life-long job. Keep investing your time, efforts to motivate your kids no matter how busy you are, because it is the most important investments in your life. Kids are our future!

If you feel your teen has reached a level that is not productive and they are going down a very negative path, contact www.helpyourteens.com to find resources that could help you and your family.

Underachievers: Help for At-Risk Teens

As second semester continues, more and more parents are struggling with their teens to get them to attend school.  It never ceases to amaze parents that so many teenagers in high school "assume" they can just drop out and get a GED.  Generations prior, this was frowned upon and the only teens that did there were juvenile delinquents.  This has changed.

Do you find yourself forcing your teen to go to school?  Are they failing when they have the potential to succeed?  Has your honor roll student barely getting C's?  Classic signs of underachieving can have an underlying issue to something bigger.

Has their peer group changed?  Are they experimenting with drugs?  Is it "only" a joint now and then? (Seriously some parents think this way).  What they aren't realizing is the pot they smoked 20-30 years ago is not the pot these kids are getting today.

You have come to the realization that you need outside help.  Local therapy has been exhausted, if it did anything, you haven't noticed.  Out-patient programs usually have kids far worse than what your teen is - which means they can learn better tricks and worse behavior.

It is time to do your homework as a parent and find the best match for your teenager - which includes an education.

Many know I am not an advocate of Wilderness programs - and I still am not.  One of the reasons is there is usually zero academics - it is about breaking your child down, which usually they are broken before they get there.  Many teens just fake it to make it for 6-9 weeks - and parents are charges exuberant fees.

Then there are the Educational Consultants (EC) - which parents have an extra $3000-5000, some will hire.  Before you hire them, learn about what many call the EC shuffle.   There are very few, if any, that won't have you start with Wilderness.  In my opinion it is a band-aid parents "like to hear" since most all don't believe their teen's are "that bad" and the years of negative behavior will be washed away in 6-8 weeks.
Wake up - if you talk to the majority of parents that sent their teens to Wilderness first, most will tell you by the fourth week of Wilderness the counselors and staff are already telling you to prepare for the next step.... Residential Treatment Centers or Therapeutic Boarding Schools. Another major costly expense.

My question is - why not start and finish at the same place?  Consistency is one thing these troubled teens need.  Visit www.helpyourteens.com for more valuable parent tips.

Michael and Abby P. of Weston recently had to take that major leap with their 17 year-old daughter that was simply escalating out of control.  Knowing that this was their last year to get her help, Abby said, "This was literally the hardest decision we had to make, but we know we have to save her life and hopefully give her an opportunity for a bright future."

Be an educated parent, you will have safer teens!

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Shocking Stats on Academic Cheating

Every student will face down the temptation to cheat on an assignment in his or her lifetime. By this point, turning in fake papers, copying the work of others and outright plagiarism has sadly grown inescapably woven into the education sector. Unsurprisingly, statistics abound regarding the whats, hows and whys behind academic dishonesty — and many will surprise those who find such actions deplorable.


8 Astonishing Stats on Academic Cheating:

1. 60.8% of polled college students admitted to cheating. An admittedly informal 2007 poll conducted by the popular website CollegeHumor revealed that 60.8% of 30,000 respondents — most of them within its core demographic — confessed to cheating on their assignments and tests. This lines up closely with a questionnaire sent out to Rutgers students as well, to which 68% of students confessed that they had broken the university’s explicit anti-cheating rules. And the number only seems to swell as the years progress, with freshmen the most likely to fudge their way through class.
2. The same poll revealed that 16.5% of them didn’t regret it. Probably the most disconcerting find that the very same CollegeHumor poll unearthed is the fact that 16.5% of those who admitted to cheating felt no guilt whatsoever for their breach of ethics. It did not go into any details regarding why, of course, but one wonders if today’s culture of entitlement and success without regard to the well-being of others plays a major role in such callous attitudes. With so many scholarships, awards, internships and other incentives at stake, it’s entirely possible that those reporting no regrets considered their actions justified when rewarded for their “success.”
3. Cheaters have higher GPAs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a poll conducted at Fordham University noted a significant gap between the GPAs of cheating students and their honest counterparts. Cheaters, on average, boast a 3.41 average. Non-cheaters average at 2.85. As mentioned with the previous statistic, many probably feel compelled to compromise their school’s ethics policies in their own self-interest — especially considering the significant number of academic rewards hinging on one’s GPA. What makes this statistic so upsetting is the amount of opportunities being robbed from honest students whose averages may not measure up, but at least they came about them without resorting to plagiarism, copying and other cheating strategies.
4. The public is more concerned with cheating than college officials. The Ad Council and Educational Testing Service discovered that 41% of Americans and 34% of college officials considered academic cheating a serious issue. They attribute the surprisingly low numbers to a decreased stigma surrounding the actions and an increase in emphasizing a stockpile of rewards and honors over hard work and dedication. Though their fact sheet does not offer any specific numbers, they noted that men and women are equally likely to cheat in an academic setting; math and science classes inspire the most incidents. Engineering and business majors, fraternity and sorority members, students on the extreme ends of the GPA scale, freshmen and sophomores are all more likely to cheat, and there exists no real difference along gender lines. However, men seem to admit to it slightly more than women.
5. Cheating college students likely start in high school. If not before. According to the very same Ad Council and ETS study, between 75% and 98% of college students who confessed to cheating reported that they set such a personal standard in high school. The organizations conducting the poll, however, believe that the motivation to cheat can start as early elementary and middle school. After kindergarten, teachers, parents and administrators place much heavier emphasis on grades and awards, placing considerable pressure on students to do anything necessary to stay ahead of their contemporaries.
6. In fact, 85% of them think cheating is essential. Even college students that don’t cheat still think it a valuable strategy to scoring the best grades, internships, scholarships and awards possible. A U.S. News and World Report survey noted the phenomenon, revealing that 90% of those polled didn’t believe that they or others would get caught — and subsequently punished — for their actions. In his study of 1,800 college students, Professor Donald McCabe noted that 15% turned in a fake term paper (either from a mill or a website), 84% cheated on written assignments and 52% plagiarized one or more sentences for a paper.
7. 95% of cheaters don’t get caught. As another study conducted by Ad Council and ETS confirmed, many of the suspicions that college students held about getting caught for their crimes. This gives them even more incentive to lie their way through classes rather than actually put forth the effort and learn something. Websites such as Turnitin.com allow professors to check whether or not their students have handed over a fake paper, but it cannot help cheating on tests, quizzes and non-written assignments.
8. Top-tier paper mill website average about 8,000 hits a day. ETS and Ad Council’s research quotes SchoolSucks.com founder Kenneth Sahr as stating that his website receives around 8,000 hits a day. Even accounting for innocent, curious onlookers and suspicious educators and parents double-checking a student’s work, this does illustrate the prevalence and high demand for pre-written term papers, homework and other projects. SchoolSucks.com and its ilk often post disclaimers citing their services as “for critique” or “research” purposes only – yet their copy almost always tends to suggest otherwise. Some schools have launched campaigns against their services, though such measures put little to no damper on the overarching popularity.

Source: Online Education Database
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Sue Scheff: Military Schools are opening soon. A Great Opportunity for many Kids!

I hear from many parents at this time of the year that their children are struggling academically and they are considering Military Schools.

As a reminder, Military Schools are an excellent opportunity for boys and girls that need motivation and stimulation, however your child has to have somewhat of a desire to attend.These are not schools for at-risk or troubled kids.

I think Military Schools offer a great sense of responsibility and discipline for children.If you think your child may do well in a Military School take the time to research them. Email me for more information at http://www.helpyourteens.com/ - As a parent, my son attended a Military School and it was an excellent education and experience.