How to catch a falling son

He was tested as gifted and loved learning. But somewhere along

the way, my boy slipped through the cracks and nearly out of the
school system. Is it too late to save him?

By Christina Tynan-Wood

When he was young, my son Cole was an entertaining writer, voracious reader, and so curious he
exhausted us with questions. In second grade, he was tested as gifted. Now, at 15, hes as likely to be the
teacher in our relationship as the student. But with rare exception, he gets terrible grades. Over the years,
Ive been told hes learning challenged and so needs special education and medication. Ive been to every
kind of parent/teacher meeting. Ive tried every kind of school: Montessori, charter, public, magnet,
private, as well as homeschooling. I hoped as he got older, this bright boy would be more willing to speak
up and demonstrate that his inattention is not incomprehension.

But three weeks ago, as his sophomore year drew to a close, I got a call from a teacher warning me he
was unlikely to pass. I had known he was slipping behind. In fact, Id removed all the distractions I could
from our house Xbox, cable TV and even set distraction controls on his laptop to keep him from
wandering to Facebook when he should be studying. Cole and I talked about homework daily. He assured
me he was getting caught up and that his teachers were simply not updating the online grading system.
His efforts, he insisted with disarming confidence, would be reflected in his report card. But the teacher
informed me she had just updated the system. I sighed and took a look. His grades were so low he would
have to work to bring them up to Fs. What did he imagine was going to happen when I got that report
card?

We'd been here before, but he always managed to catch up at the last minute. This time was different. I
sat him down to explain that these grades were scotching his dreams of studying engineering at a good
university. He shrugged and looked hopeless. What are the chances that Ill get into college? he asked.

Not 'fit' for college?

What happened? How did that brilliant, curious mind decide it wasnt a fit for college?

I started troubleshooting. First I called the school guidance counselor to find out what Cole's options were.
Should I let him fail so he could learn from the consequences of his inaction? Was it mathematically
possible for him to pass? Its possible," the counselor told me. "But I doubt he can do it. He has dug
himself into quite a hole. These were not easy classes he was failing. No amount of general brilliance
would get him through honors chemistry. But he can retake the classes in the summer. If he does that,
these grades won't affect his GPA though the incident will appear on his record. But try and get him to
fix it. This is too harsh a lesson at his age. The counselor agreed to talk to him man-to-man to explain the
situation and Cole's options.
Next, I did what I always do when I feel lost: research. I discovered that whats happening to my son is
epidemic and has been happening for decades. Boys start falling behind girls in kindergarten and keep
doing it right through college. The end result? Colleges that are only 40 percent male and an educated
workforce that is increasingly female.

Five reasons boys fail

Dr. Leonard Sax puts forth five possible reasons our boys are failing: boys dependence on video games,
teaching methods that dont account for how boys learn, an increasing reliance on stimulants like Ritalin
that are designed to help young boys focus but according to his research sap their motivation and
drive when they are older, chemicals in the environment that disrupt hormones, and the devaluation of
masculinity in schools that disenfranchise boys.

I inhaled his book Boys Adrift. It made complete sense. Ive long been a believer in encouraging the boy
aspect of boys. Despite the not-so-subtle suggestions starting in kindergarten that I put Cole on Ritalin, he
and I refused. But the section on video games seemed to hold exactly the answer I was looking for. Cole
loves video games a love bordering on addiction.

According to Sax, the video game addiction is an indicator of the will to power personality. This term,
coined by Friedrich Nietzsche, describes the desire to control ones environment. Sax argues that the will
to power is among the basic, immutable personality traits, trumping other basic impulses like the will to
please. In video games, you experience control often of a vast, complex world that requires lightning-
fast reflexes, nuanced decisions, extensive memory, and ruthlessness. In fact, games are one of the few
places Cole achieves what brain researchers call flow where your mind is so engaged you lose track
of time.

I had long been responding to this aspect of his nature without having a name for it.

In the fourth grade, for example, his language arts teacher warned me he was failing so I called a
meeting. She handed me proof: a test where hed been asked to write a response to a prompt. She had
given it an F.

It was good and not just the grammar and spelling: he could write a lead, build suspense, and tell a
joke. Whats wrong with this? I asked. This is good writing even for an adult.

She handed me the rubric she had been teaching from. It stated a sentence had to be six words long. He
used a two-word sentence. I am not trying to teach good writing, she informed me, the irony apparently
lost on her. I have to teach him to write to that rubric so he can pass the EOGs (end-of-grade tests). I
pulled him out of this school shortly after.

At home, Cole looked at the test and shrugged. I dont care what she thinks, he said. She calls
adjectives sparkle words.

Its not writing, I agreed. And shes not half the writer you are. This is a word game. And these are the
rules. I handed him the rubric. I thought you were good at word games. She thinks if you cant play this
game you wont be good at the EOGs either.

He glanced at the rubric and nodded. I left it at that. And he went back to his computer game. But he got
As after that and top marks on the EOGs.
He may not be interested in pleasing teachers, but hes always up for winning a game.

School is for girls

What should I do? I asked Sax.

There is only one solution, he told me. Enroll him in an all-boys school where the teachers know how to
handle this personality. Not only are the schools he endorses same-sex, but the teachers at the boys
schools understand that boys respond to competition and sometimes need to lead. They get the concept
of will to power and use it as a teaching tool.

Unfortunately, there is no such school where we live and I cant afford boarding school. I pointed this out.

You will have to move, he answered without hesitation. I could hear him typing and looking up the
school closest to us, which turned out to be three hours away and full. I thought he was joking, so I
laughed. There was an awkward silence.

This is your son, he said. I moved so my daughter could go to the right school. You have no choice. If I
thought there was another way, I would not have founded the National Association for Single Sex
Education.

I have changed Coles school a half-dozen times without success. Although the debate on the pros and
cons of single-sex education continues, Im willing to believe Sax might be right about my son. But Cole
likes his school in no small part because there are girls there and none of us want to move. I made a
note of this idea as a possible last resort. But I searched on for a solution that fit our lives.

Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, saw no easy solution either. I hate to say this about your
son, he said. But, at this point, he is not likely to achieve his dream of studying engineering at a good
school.

I dropped out of high school, I countered. But I went on to a good college after a semester at a
community college and have achieved most of my dreams. I explained that I went to an experimental
high school designed like a college. It lost funding in my junior year and closed but I couldnt face the
prison-like atmosphere of my only other alternative. So I got a GED at 16.

Whitmire listened with interest to my story. But he insisted, You didnt want to study engineering. And you
didnt have the experience your son is having. He is learning that he cant do this. It sounds as if your
journey had the opposite effect.

Whitmire has spent years examining the appalling number of boys who dont do well in elementary
through high school and then go on to do poorly in college, if they go at all. This trend has been going on
for decades. At this point, in some colleges, he told me, girls outnumber boys by two to one.

The problem, he says (along with Sax and many others) is that academics have been pushed into
childrens lives earlier. Kindergarten is what first grade used to be. Girls are often ready to read at this
age. Boys? Not so much. So from his very first school experience, a boy senses school isnt for him, a
feeling that worsens as the years drag on. Schools, which once left girls falling behind in math and
science, have been revamped to be more verbal. This has helped girls. But boys arent as verbal and
tend to tune out when theres too much talking. Homework is another problem: in general, girls do it, boys
dont.

In fact, it was the failure to turn in homework that accounted, for the most part, for Coles current grades.

Dont push the homework button

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, a clinical psychologist, wrote The Homework Trap because it was the book he
wished hed had when his son was in school.

Imagine Pavlovs dog, Goldberg told me. Pavlov taught the dog to salivate to a bell by using positive
stimulation. And they teach rats to push a button the same way. But you can also teach the rat not to push
a button with negative stimulation. Thats what we are doing to these boys (and girls) with homework.

Some students are fine with homework. But for others this nightly ritual is hell. Maybe they didnt pay
attention in class so they dont know what the homework is or how to do it. Perhaps they have trouble
sitting still again after a long day in school. Some have a low-level learning disability, which leaves them
disadvantaged when it comes to processing information thats spoken out loud. (Boys are much more
likely than girls to have one of these.)

Whatever the reason for the students difficulty with homework, its a big part of school. So concerned
parents spend hours on it every night. We lose family time, pleasant after-school activities, and the
harmony of family life. It becomes a war between parent and child to get this essential work done.

People work in containers, Goldberg says. We go to school for five hours. We go to work for eight. But
a homework-trapped student has to do homework until it is done or everyone is too exhausted to care.

I thought about all the fights Cole and I have had over the years about homework. It seemed pointless
and cruel.

The solution? Set a fixed amount of time for homework ten minutes per class is a good amount, says
Goldberg. When the time is up, hes done. The idea is that over time youre changing how your child
approaches and feels about homework. Eventually, says Goldberg, Cole will be able to complete all his
homework without the usual strife. (Ideally, you work with the teacher to devise a homework solution that
works while youre retraining your child to approach homework differently.)

Would this solution work? And would we get cooperation from the school? Wed have to see.

Lets make a deal

I would like to give up on this system thats teaching my son that he cant succeed and enroll him in a
virtual school at K12.com or Connections Academy or move so he can go to an all-boys school. But
Cole wants to stay in this school. So we settled on a plan to get him caught up: if he fails, I get to choose.

I printed out a list of all the missing assignments and tests. He grabbed at it, gratefully. He hadnt been
paying attention and had no idea what was missing.

Then I asked my mother to stop by every afternoon after school. She has never been part of the
homework battle, so I thought she might be a more effective person to help him get through it all. She
read while Cole plugged away online at the Khan Academy, quickly getting up to speed on chemistry and
algebra. In Salman Khan (at the Khan Academy), Cole discovered a math and chemistry teacher he could
relate to, as I thought he might.

He also did his best to impress his grandmother with his dutiful attention to work. Though she didnt do
much but sit observing, occasionally shed gently redirect him back to his studies if he strayed. She
stayed for one hour. Once she left, homework time was over. He could do more work if he liked, and
sometimes he would. But that was up to him.

One thing was clear: this new method was working. Suddenly, homework wasnt something Cole put
every ounce of his intelligence and effort into avoiding. With a hard stop at the end of an hour and a lot
of work to do it was easier just to do it.

Cole started turning in piles of homework. He started to look less hopeless. One Sunday when my mother
was visiting, he came out of his room, hugged her, and said, Thanks to you, I got the highest grade in
class on my chemistry test yesterday. His familiar look of failure was starting to wash off. Three weeks
later, we got Coles report card: Three Cs (math, chemistry, and civics) and a B+ (creative writing,
previously his lowest grade.)

He passed. But his GPA will never recover unless he goes to summer school, retakes those classes, or
switches to a virtual school.

We sat down together to look at his bittersweet victory. I made it clear that we were all impressed by what
he had accomplished. Learning honors chemistry in three weeks is no small feat, I told him. Not many
people could do that. If you had started sooner, you might have made the honor roll.

He nodded. I lacked initiative, he told me. But I learned my lesson.

Did he? Hell be fine, Tisha Green Rinker, Connections Academy's senior manager of school counseling
told me. Ive seen pregnant kids who dropped out at 15 come to us, get a high school diploma, and go on
to college. Cole has something none of those kids or many of the numbers your experts are looking at
have: you. You care. You believe in him. And you are willing to do what it takes to help him figure it
out.

Shes right. When I dropped out of high school, I could easily have become a statistic used to support a
theory. Many of the experts I spoke to would probably have predicted an unhappy outcome for me. Still,
my mother encouraged me to follow the path that was right for me. Finding my way to college by going
outside the box may have been one of the most important lessons I learned as a student.

As the parent of a struggling boy, though, its not always easy to feel so sanguine. Faced with so many
disheartening statistics about failing boys, no parent can afford to sit back and have faith that their care
will be enough to pull the kid through. I still don't know if Cole will achieve his dreams or anything at all
but I choose to believe in him. Its not even really a choice. I refuse, am unable, to see him as one of
these dire statistics. Not today. Probably not ever, however things turn out.

Ive learned a few things in all these years of helping this boy survive school: even when he seems not to
be, he is listening. Even when he says hes got it, he needs help finding a solution he cant see or a way
to reach a goal hes given up on.
But the biggest lesson Ive learned is that people who tell me what this boy cant do are usually wrong.

Ive been told he cant take tests. (He aces them.) That he cant pay attention without medication. (Hes
fine. Pick up the pace!) That he will bring down the class EOG average. (He often gets the highest score.)
And that he cant handle the workload. (Honors Chemistry and Honors Algebra 2 in three weeks! You try
that.)

So heres what I say to He wont achieve his dreams: how about we wager some money on that?

Christina Tynan-Wood has written for Better Homes and Gardens, Popular Science, PC World, PC
Magazine, InfoWorld, and many others. She currently writes the "Family Tech" column in Family Circle
and blogs at GeekGirlfriends.com.