Let's pretend your child is a little girl named Jamie. When Jamie's grades suddenly plunge faster than a rollercoaster, don't automatically start screaming at her and nagging at her. Worse, don't start thinking in your head that your kid is a dummy. A lot of times, when kids' grades plunge drastically, it's really not because of the level of their IQ but because of other external factors.

Jamie might be getting bullied in school. Her friends might be bullying her so bad that her self-esteem is slowly being chipped away. Jamie begins to feel worthless, and thinks, what's the point in trying to do well? And when she does do badly in school, she starts feeling even worse about herself.

Golly, I remember how I used to hate my Maths teacher. I spent every Math lesson in school fantasizing about carving her legs up and making her bleed (I was a bit of a violent kid). Her name was Mrs. Foo. Mrs. Foo, I remember clearly, had ugly frizzy hair and was a short stout woman. Her legs had prominent varicose veins on them (that's why I wanted to cut them up).

I really hated Math, I hated Math so much I wouldn't do any homework, wouldn't bring any workbooks to school and so forth. Okay, I know I definitely deserved to be punished. The line of punishment Mrs. Foo chose for me was to humiliate me in class. She loved comparing me to my elder sisters (who, incidentally, did all their homework) and telling everyone I was a problem child'. Maybe she was trying to shame me into doing my homework but all it achieved was making me feel a lot more resentful to her. I wrote a lot of stories starring her as the villain. They all had bad, violent endings for her. Hee hee.

The point I'm trying to make is this. Sometimes teachers make your kid feel really bad and inadequate. Every time Mrs. Foo made a negative remark about me (there were a lot of times those remarks came out) it just made me more determined to be lazy and uncooperative. She called me lazy so many times. I remember thinking, "Okay, if you call me lazy, I'll GIVE you lazy, woman." So lazy indeed I gave her.

Of course, my attitude wasn't right too. I'm just trying to explain how I felt like as a child. When Report Card day rolled around, boy, let's just say I got the scolding of my life. My mom finally found out really how much homework I'd been doing (which was, zilch) and I was given one of the biggest scoldings in my life.

I remember feeling so ashamed and so humiliated. So stupid and so inadequate. I really didn't feel shamed into doing any better. I felt instead, boy, I'm so stupid, why bother?

If your kid is doing badly in school, don't just start screaming at him or her. Try talking to him or her, and nicely too. Don't put too much pressure on your kid till your kid's about to explode. You should probably check too, on whether your kid is doing her homework or not in school.

Learn more about this author, Lee Rae Zhen.
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