Parents Getting Angry Over Grades

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Good thread! I was in the same situation as Aspie1. Even to this day, I shudder at the shame and guilt inflicted, even when I got a "B" instead of an "A".

I can understand the frustration when the student goofs off. It's a completely different thing when he or she does the best they can and their work results in a lower grade. The thing I hated to hear my parents say is, "We know you can do better than that."

In the end, I know from experience that learned helplessness can result from the constant lack of meeting the approval of your parent(s). They didn't do a good job at explaining the "why" behind their demands that I do good in school. During my last couple of years in high school, I often just spent time in my room until 9:00pm staring at my desk because I would have been told to keep studying anyway. There was only so much I knew that I would be able to process and retain and there was no way to convince them otherwise.

Fortunately, I was able to go on to college and eventually graduate. If I had to do it over again, I wish my family would have focused more on relevant life skills and how to make my way in the world without having to be sheltered from it. That's all I want for both my AS and NT kiddos.

I had to resort to a similar tactic. On some days, there was no homework assigned in some classes. My parents, however, didn't believe me when I told them that. To "make sure I do well in school", they went as far as digging through my entire backpack, just to find the homework that I was supposedly hiding from them. Whenever their search turned out fruitless, they'd tell me: "If you hiding anything from us, you will regret it later!" To appease my parents, I resorted to making up assignments that didn't exist. Usually, it was something like reading a chapter, completing a short set of math problems, or writing a simple essay; basically, something that wouldn't take more than 20 minutes. Every time, my parents believed that the made-up homework was actually assigned, and left me alone once it was completed.

Dear God, are you sure you aren't my long-lost brother?

I am a parent of a 13yr old boy still in school. I do get on him about his grades if there are missing assingments or incomplete work. Other than that as long as he is doing his work to the best of his ability if its an A so be it I'm proud and if it is a C so be it i'm proud I'd like to see better grades but if thats all he's got and he did his best then so be it. Some say i'm to easy on him when it comes to his grades, but the way I see it is he loves football and it depends on his grades if he plays or not. So I tell him do your best thats all I exspect you know what you have to do to play football he still strugels but he pushes his self so he can do what he loves doing. You have been through the situation of being pushed to do better. Is there something that I should do differently? Or just keep on doing what I have. I'm just trying to understand why people say I'm to easy on him.

I don't think so, although your experience does seem very similar. However, my older sister was treated way better than you described. She's NT, and went to regular classes (as opposed to being in a gifted program), yet she never got such a hard time for "bad" grades; my parents seemed content as long as she passed her classes. I really hate how being gifted becomes a license for parents to expect nothing but the best, even when the child is truly struggling. But getting back to what you said, it's truly amazing how aspies living hundreds or thousands of miles apart can have such similar life experiences.

As for what you said, all4myboys, you're certainly on the right track. You laid out your expectations about your son's academic performance, and you made the consequences clear (your son can't play football) for letting grades drop below a certain level. So as long as you don't actively punish your son for low grades, you're doing well. The natural consequence of him not being able to play football in school seems like punishment enough.

Yea, sounds sensible. Too much pressure on kids to get good grades will often lead to their losing interest in school and rebelling once they're no longer under constant parental supervision.

In my education class we are talking about, last week, how we go to school not to get an education but to get a diploma (and with it a GPA so we can go on to get other diplomas). Sadly in America getting bad grades can really hurt you, the logic seemingly if you do bad in high school English class you will do bad in college bio classes (or something along those lines). This is why parents put great amounts of pressure on kids to get the best grades possible, I see it with my brother (I was lucky that I didn't have to study hardly at all to learn the information, he isn't) and it seems like it is about to break him. Sadly in this era of seeing an education as an individual good, there is no real cure to that. If you want to be successful in life you have to jump threw hurdles as fast (or as good) as possible to get there...

Don't Aspie kids have enough to cope with without getting all this pressure about grades? Everybody can't get high marks and you have to have people to do all the trade jobs. Realistically speaking, only a minority of Aspies get long term jobs even with a college education. This might change once employers realise the value of having Aspies on their staff.

My parents would get really mad at me for getting b's.
My sister got "perfects Grades" and In my parents opinion. I seem Like A Idoit Compared to my sister. Now I barley talk to them. Plus i Have ADHD i also get very emotional.

I only started getting bad grades when I started having teachers who didn't care/hated me. My parents were always fighting with the school so maybe they were too tired to punish me for bringing home a bad grade. I also didn't really understand the concept of grades.

I viewed grades as a way of limiting the amount of pleasure in a child's life. Because the message I was sent, is that pleasure is intended for adults (by that, I DON'T mean sexual), while children's lives should be mostly unpleasant. Because a difficult life is supposed to build moral character, something or other . (I "knew" that, because kids who bullied me generally led happy lives.) One easy way to make a child's life unpleasant is through punishments. As well as making arbitrary rules, like limiting the child's water intake.

So, schools provide an opportunity for parents to punish their children: giving them bad grades. After all, no one can find opportunities to to dole out punishments all the time, at least not without degenerating into abuse or bona fide stupid rules. But grades are a simple, "objective" reason for punishing a child. Good grade = punishment averted. Bad grade = parents get angry and punish the child. And averting the punishments (i.e. getting good grades) takes enough effort in itself, that it makes a child's life more difficult. Thus, it truly limits pleasure to adults, who don't get in trouble at home for a bad performance review at work.

Hmm, for a young child, I was a very BIG conspiracy theorist . Fortunately, I started sneaking whiskey at age 12, which helped drown out feelings of unhappiness when they got really bad. Although the person who drove me to drink wasn't my parents, but my therapist, who was a blithering, unhelpful idiot.

Aspie1:

Great Topic!

Parents get mad about grades for the same reasons anybody gets mad about anything: Pain, Fear, and/or Frustration. Many parents see their kids as little projections of themselves. (Might be just as well in order to reduce infanticide - only partially a joke...) So some typical examples:

Pain - It hurts when someone you love is hurt, too. Many kids are just as upset as the parents, if more so, by bad grades. It is tough to accept the failures of those you want to "do well", but it is also blaming the victim.

Fear - Everyone knows that in this world if you want to "get ahead" that means getting a degree from a good college. And that requires being able to get good grades. It is scary to imagine your kids doing poorly as adults.

Frustration - When parents are doing what they can to assure their kids get good grades, and they don't, it is frustrating. The parent's "self-worth" is reflected in their kids grades. Poor grades can make a parent feel like a failure, too. Again, who gets blamed? The victim.

Another question to ask is WHY parents want to see good grades to begin with? I quoted some reasons above: "do well", "get ahead", and "self-worth". These three things, and many, many others, are tied to academic achievements in today's society. The real, underlying problem is valuing status, rather than worth; putting getting above giving; Pride above Humility.

It is the human Curse.

I don't think there is a single universal answer to your question, but I expect with many ASD children the cause is the gap parents will see between perceived talent and performance. Someone like my son seems so incredibly smart, and also motivated when he wants to be, so unless you've spent hours and hours studying all the issues connected to ASD, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing "he would do so well if only he did the work!" Parents get angry when they think you are CHOOSING not to do the things you need to do, or are CHOOSING to under perform out of spite (it can happen). After all, in the scheme of things, grades do have a lot to do with how many doors will open in the future, and also with the odds that there will be scholarship money to insure you can afford to go through those doors (a factor that can be HUGE to parents who worry about the costs of higher education).

Fortunately I learned very quickly that with my son it wasn't nearly so easy. He wasn't being lazy or contrary. He actually had real issues with showing knowledge in structured assignments that prevented him from excelling in the grading rubrics the teachers were using. He also had issues that could put roadblocks in the way of his getting his work done. A parent has to look pretty deeply to get to that level of understanding with their child, and then has to work carefully with their child if the child is going to learn to overcome those gaps. It is hard, complicated and frustrating work.

It is a whole lot easier to tell yourself the child could do it if only he was willing to apply himself.

I am grateful that I was saved from falling into that trap, and sorry that your parents probably were not.

I think I can give you an idea of why. I don't have all of those conditions, just autism, but I can have panic attacks. To give you an example from me, I worked very hard for many years to recognize facial expressions, and their underlying context. I can now read a person better than many NTs. I can even handle some group conversations within reason. But when there are times when I'm in a room full of NTs and everybody in the group gets whatever is being discussed except for me. There were even instances where somebody would try to explain to me what was being discussed, and I just couldn't understand. To try so hard, to put so much work into something and be good at it, and yet to still find gaps where obviously you aren't able to grasp a subtlety that everybody else can grasp....it's hard. I've had a panic attach because of that.

It sounds like your son is putting everything he has into his schoolwork. It also sounds like he actually does quite well at school, and probably excels easily over many of his peers in certain subjects. Likely, however, there are certain subjects he just can't grasp no matter how much effort he puts into it. Perhaps he learns but seeking out patterns to find the correct answer, and there are subjects where patterns aren't applicable. To put in your best effort and to still fail, especially when you numerous other people easily grasping the material, can be quite difficult to bear.

That's probably what he's going through, if I were to bet.

My parents didn't care about grades as long as we could read and write and do some math. My siblings and I were typically above average in performance so my parents didn't worry much.

I am going to break somewhat with what other people are saying here. I'd say that a parent who is angry over a kid's grades alone has mental issues. There are many reasons why a child gets bad grades and it's not always the child's fault. I had bad teachers when I was in school; quite honestly most of them should have been fired or put somewhere away from the classroom as they were bullies and/or inept at teaching to make a long story short. For the parents who get angry over bad grades you really need to get help, psychiatric help, and no, the tough love thing doesn't work - that can come back to haunt you later.