A B-minus doesn’t faze him. His homework arrives in a crumpled ball at the bottom of his backpack, if it comes home at all. He’s happy doing … whatever. And on every report card the comment is the same: He’s not performing to his full potential.
If researchers call the perfectionist a “maximizer,” this usually easygoing kid might be dubbed a minimizer – or, less charitably, a slacker.
Parents watching a pre-teen of this type playing endless video games in the family room may worry that their kid will still be aiming for high-scorer status long after his gold-star peers are finishing their surgical residencies.
Relax, advises Deborah Stipek, dean of education at Stanford University and co-author of Motivated Minds: Raising Children to Love Learning.
“Parents look around and see friends who have the A-plus kids who are totally committed to going to an elite college and will die if they don’t,” says Dr. Stipek. “But they are not the healthiest kids. They’re the ones popping pills and developing anxiety and depression. I will take a B-student who is a happy, well-adjusted kid any day.”
This is the mantra that Genevieve Rodney, a mom in Brampton, Ont., repeats to herself when friends boast about their piano-playing, competitive-dancing, school-excelling offspring. Meanwhile, Ms. Rodney’s seven-year-old daughter, Kailese, literally falls asleep in her tutoring sessions. “It’s Grade 2,” she tells her mom. “So what?”
In fact, under the right conditions, middle-of-the-pack students may outperform their higher-achieving peers in the long run.
They often arrive at university with “more gas in the tank,” as one expert put it, having not burned out in high school. They have stronger social skills. And even if the neighbour’s keener kid comes home in scrubs one Christmas, the middle-school “slacker” has a better shot at happiness: A study by American happiness researcher Barry Schwartz found that while “maximizers” earned on average 20 per cent more than less “extrinsically motivated” personality types, they were significantly less satisfied with their lives and relationships.
At the same time, education experts says, your laid-back child requires some extra prodding in the right direction. The first step is to figure out why the homework isn’t happening. Is it too hard? Is it boring? Is the child a perfectionist in disguise, afraid to fail? Or is he just stalling until a parent swoops in and saves the science project?
“What parents often do is jump to a solution before they understand the nature of the problem,” says Dr. Stipek. Banning television and chaining your child to a desk is “not going to help if the kid doesn’t understand the homework.” It’s essential to rule out issues such as bullying or a learning disorder.
But if it’s a case of “boring homework,” a parent needs to be clear about why the work is important and what the real-life consequences will be of not learning it.
“My stepson was one of these kids,” Dr. Stipek says. “He got As in the courses he was really passionate about. And he got Cs and the occasional Ds in the courses he wasn’t. He saw no reason why he should work really hard in Spanish.”
So she spelled it out for him by showing him the grade-point-average requirements in his older sister’s university catalogues. “I did make sure he understood what options he was closing off.” (Her stepson is now getting top marks in a sports business program at the University of Oregon. Minus the Spanish.)
But for many students who seem less motivated, a lack of organizational skills is slowing them down, says Michele Borba, author of The Big Book of Parenting Solutions. They need a clearly structured routine for homework, and often a step-by-step strategy to get them from bed to school bus each morning. (Dr. Borba suggests flow charts and individual calendars.)
