Wednesday, January 16, 2008

To Go or Not To Go

My 12-year-old son has always been very intelligent, ahead of others his age. All the way through school, until last year, he received straight A's. Last year he received A's & B's. Still good, really no complaint, (even though I feel like he doesn't really apply himself or he would get straight A's), but I'm not really pushing it. He's in the Gifted & Talented program (which I could go on and on about in another post, but I'm not going to go there). This year when he received his grades mid-semester he had A's, B's & one C. Now mind you is a HUGE sports fanatic, so to motivate him to bring his grades up by the end of the semester I told him that if he would bring his grades up to straight A's I would get him tickets to a Dallas Mavericks game. Yesterday he received his report card and he did bring all of them up, but not to straight A's. Here are his mid-semester grades and his end of semester grades:

Subject 1 - mid-semester - 86, end of semester - 90
Subject 2 - mid-semester - 74, end of semester - 85
Subject 3 - mid-semester - 87, end of semester - 90
Subject 4 - mid-semester - 91, end of semester - 92
Subject 5 - mid-semester - 81, end of semester - 88

So he received 3 A's & 2 B's. Now I think that is GREAT and he really did try, but some of them were already so low by mid-semester he had a hard time bringing them up to A's. So here is my dilemma...he still wants to go to a Mavs game. Do I stick to my guns and say "no, the deal was all A's" or do I extend the grace I mentioned in yesterdays post and let him go anyway? I'm going to put a poll up and let you, the reader, give your opinion. Of course, feel free to leave comments as well. Thanks!

2 comments:

Steph said...

I think consistency is one of your best tools as a parent. I bet if you stick to your guns and extend the same motivation (another opportunity for tickets - there will always be games to go to) this next semester, I think you will be a lot happier with the results. In big people world you don't get a promotion for ALMOST reaching your quota or ALMOST doing all that you were asked to do. My 2 cents.

Steph said...

Afterthought, if he really is capable of straight A's then this should not be too much to ask of him and you're doing him a disservice by rewarding him for NOT completing his goal.