Getting a pre-teen to FOCUS

[jackbanta]

Thanks for your reply, Jennifer.

First of all, though you didn't "go there", I have to say that my stepdaughter and I have a good relationship. Sure there's moments when she comes close to the "but you're not my dad" routine, but more or less, she avoids that because she knows that it won't be well-received (and she really does seem to respect my "authority" as much as her mom's... in fact, I tend to have a better time getting her to do chores most of the time.)

I know that she definitely can focus as well. She's very artistic, likes doing all sorts of little projects... she can go into her room for hours at time and focus on something that she likes to do, so you're absolutely right in saying that it's not overall concentration that's a problem, it's concentrating on school work.

We have been encouraging her to participate in other activities as well. She played softball last year and almost played soccer this year (which she didn't because she was worried that she didn't know how to play... which we tried to convince her that the only way to learn is to try, but she didn't seem to buy that!) She's in girl scouts as well and is very active in her grandmother's animal rescue service. Her mom and I try to be encouraging with whatever she does, but lately, her main focus has been on her small group of friends, which has been getting her into trouble at school as well. She's been grounded for the last couple weeks due to her grades and we keep on telling her that if we see improvement, she could actually go and hang out with her friends in her offtime, but so far, that doesn't seem to be any sort of motivator.

It's funny though, last night after I wrote this post, she asked me for help with her Spanish homework. She does ask me for help quite frequently, but a lot of the time it's like pulling hair to get her to actually listen after she requests the help. However, last night, I seemed to be getting through to her, which is crazy, since I don't actually know any Spanish, but she seemed to pick up on my verb conjugation explanation even though I was basically learning it as she was!

We aren't expecting amazing things from her, but she's failed almost every test she's taken this year and though it seems that she might be overall passing (from doing homework and whatnot), I am concerned going forward that she's not retaining anything she's "studying." I've tried to explain that school is starting to get more difficult at this age and she needs to prepare herself since her classes this year will have finals, but once again, I think that's falling on deaf ears. Maybe I was too tough or unrealistic to start the year though... I told her that the expectation was to get an 80 in every class, which I KNOW that she's capable of, but at this point, passing is most important (though, I don't really want to tell her that.)