As a parent, nothing breaks your heart more than seeing your child’s report card showing that they failed. It is especially more heartbreaking when your child is failing school because of laziness.
As soon as you discover that your child’s struggling with their academics, the first thing that comes to your mind is how you can help your child get back to full potential. Unfortunately, not every parent knows the right step to take and this often leaves them in confusion. We’ve done the heavy lifting for you by reviewing all the possible solutions to motivate your child. This article tells everything you should know about motivating your failing child.
What is a Failing Grade in School?
What is a Failing Grade in School?Grading system can differ dramatically depending on where you go. While done countries rely on a number of systems, others use a percentage system. The United States popularly uses the letter grading system, so you’ll probably hear more of alphabets being thrown around as grades if you currently attend school in the United States. But, what exactly is the failing grade in school?
If you are schooling in the United States or any other location that uses the letter grading system, grades would usually be arranged from A to F. These alphabets show students’ performance in different subjects from great to… well, not so great. However, F is typically the failing grade, so if you score an F in a course, you may need to rewrite the course. It also means that you’ll get zero points for that course when your GPA is being calculated. No wait, don’t cry! It doesn’t mean the end of the road for you. You just need to put more effort into studying harder.
Why Students are Failing in School?
As expected, there are several reasons behind the failure of students. Some of the reasons lie with the students, some with teachers, some with parents, while the rest lie with the educational system. Discussing individually, this section focuses more on the reasons lying with the students themselves.
Lack of Preparation
We often see students approaching their studies with an easy mindset. While this may not necessarily seem like a bad thing from the start, it often develops into lack of proper preparation.
This is one of the top reasons why students fail in school, despite having the necessary educational facilities they’ll need to succeed. To help, parents and teachers would do more to educate students on the importance of adequate studies. They should also advise them on the best strategies to fruitfully utilize their time.
Lack of Interest or Motivation
Students may also be susceptible to failure if they do not have interest in the course of if they are not adequately motivated. Students, especially in their young age would need to be interested in both the course and the teacher’s methodology to put in the extra work needed to pass. They must also feel enough motivation to study better within and outside the classroom. Continuous lack of interest often translates to laziness to put in the work needed to pass.
Lack of Effort
As a follow up to the above point, lack of effort can also cause a student to fail and not see any progress in their lifetime. When students begin to lose interest in a course, they typically begin to reduce the efforts they would put into studying.
This category of students are typically satisfied with grade C or D and would hardly realize the need to put in more effort for better grades.
Inadequate Time Management
You probably already know that time is such a valuable asset that cannot be retrieved when lost. Unfortunately, many students fail to manage their time efficiently and this often leads to struggles during tests and examinations. We often see students giving more time to non-academic distractions than they give to their studies. Failure to utilize time properly can lead to procrastination and consequently failure in high school.
Lack of Confidence
Another popular reason why students may fail is lack of confidence and low self-esteem. When students perceive a subject as being very difficult, they often lose the confidence to approach that subject. This is why they’ll rather spend more time studying the ‘simpler’ subjects and less time studying the ‘difficult’ subjects. Some students even assume that they can never do well in certain subjects.
Overconfidence
Being too confident in your ability can also be a cause of failure. Being overly sure about your knowledge and skills can make you abandon studying. After all, you would hardly see reasons to study topics you think you already know too much. Unfortunately, this trend would often come biting back as students can face trick questions that will knock them out of balance.
What to Do if You are Failing in School?
Whether you are failing school because of laziness or because of any of the reasons listed above, it’s never the end of the world. You can turn things around by taking the right steps. Here are actions that you can take to switch to the part of success.
Get Help
For most people, the first step to turning things around is seeking help from different places. You could be failing because your teacher isn’t explaining concepts well enough. It could also be because you need to study a little further to understand the application of each concept. You can opt for using other resources to learn the material at your own pace. One of the biggest benefits of getting help from additional resources is that they allow you to review each topic at your pace until you master it.
Rearrange Your Priorities
This point may seem basic, but many people still fail to implement it correctly. If your school works occupy any other part of your priority list than first position, you’ll need to change that immediately. Learn to finish all school work before trying other extra-curricular activities.
Go The Extra Mile
There’s no going overboard when it comes to studying. As usual, we advise students to face their studies and do all their assignments, whether they are optional or compulsory. This way, you’ll score all the points that are available for tests and assignments and they can be a huge boost to your total score at the end.
Be Realistic
If you are struggling with no hope in sight, it may be time to take stock of whether you are on the right path or not. If your school has a counselor, go to them to inquire about the consequences of dropping a class. If there’s any chance that dropping a very difficult subject won’t affect your academics, it might make sense to drop the class and invest your time into other classes.
Study Your Failures
However you choose to look at it, the truth remains that staring your shortcomings right in the face can be very difficult. However, it’s something you must do if you want to understand where you are getting it wrong. If you fail a test or assignment, don’t just dump the result. Go through it again to understand what you’ve done wrong and what the correct answers are. If you do not understand any part of it, visit your professor to ask what you are doing wrong.
Don’t Give Up
Accepting failure can be difficult. It often leaves students hopeless and in doubt about their ability. However, you’ll need a change in mentality to stop failing. Perhaps it’s time to stop saying ‘I’m failing math” and focus on saying “I’m working hard to get better in math.” The extra work you’ll put in to change things can be the spark you’ll need to turn things around. But even if it doesn’t turn things around, you can say you’ve done your best.
How to Deal with a Child Failing in School?
In an ideal world, you are supposed to be your child’s best friend and this means that it’s your responsibility to help them overcome failure at school. As explained above, there are several reasons why your child may score poor grades in high school. You can adopt the following steps to help them get back to their feet.
Be proactive
This step involves monitoring your kid’s performance. Once you realize that your kid is falling behind in grades, talk to their teacher immediately – before it becomes an issue. Together with the teacher, you can create strategies to help your kid improve.
Create clear expectations and stick with them
Did your child’s grade drop? Perhaps it is time to take some privileges away. Clearly communicate your expectations to them and talk to their teacher about the best ways to achieve the target.
Don’t skip parent-teachers meetings
We understand that you are busy with work and other things, but your child’s welfare is also your responsibility. Studies show that students whose parents attend parent-teachers meetings tend to perform better in school. The forum offers you an opportunity to know the challenges your kid is passing through in school and how to help them overcome them.
How to Motivate Failing High School Students?
It’s one thing for a student to fail in school and another thing for the student to have people that will help him/her bounce back. While it can seem like the world is crashing on them, parents, teachers, and friends owe students the duty to motivate them to try again after failing. Here are critical steps that anybody can adopt to motivate a failing student.
- Be intentional about helping the students whenever possible. Your approach on this would vary depending on the student’s grade level and class structure. However, the most important thing is that you are doing everything possible to help the student whenever possible. It could be supervising them. While they are doing their assignments or reminding them of the importance of asking questions in the classroom.
- Encourage them. As expected, failing students would naturally get frustrated and discouraged when it seems like their best is not yielding fruits. Yes, sometimes it may seem like they don’t care, but deep down, they are already becoming frustrated and tired. It’s important that you learn how to encourage them. For some, it could be praising them for the little successes they have, while for others, you could go as far as teaching them the importance of resilience.
- Pay attention to underlying problems. There’s a huge possibility that their struggles are caused by underlying problems. Therefore, it’s important to identify three problems and deal with them. Check to know whether they have any learning disability, or if their failure is caused by addiction to another activity.
- Ask how you can help. As simple as this may sound, it’s often the key that unlocks a student’s potential. Instead of trying blindly to solve their problems, ask the failing student what you can do to help as a parent or teacher. You never can tell, you may be surprised at the response you’ll get from them.
Wrapping Things Up: Failing School Because of Laziness
There you have it, a few strategies you can implement to solve the problem of failing school because of laziness. Whether you are a parent of a failing student or the student yourself, failing can be frustrating. The best way to overcome this frustration is by seeking the most suitable solution for you. Unfortunately, not many people know where to seek these solutions and that’s why we’ve done the heavy lifting for you. The strategies explained in this article would help you find your footing in your quest to overcome failure in school.
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