How do you "manage" your highschooler?

[Porridge]

DH sent me this blog post recently, and it got me thinking I should come up with a system for interacting with DD as she enters high school

https://review.firstround.com/ditch-your-to-do-list-and-use-these-docs-to-make-more-impact?utm_source=Firstround.com+Library&utm_campaign=25d9b5c934-brie_wolfson&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d9bb43e05b-25d9b5c934-79395373

I know that many of you do this, so maybe you can help me think through what it might look like. 

I envision a weekly 1:1 meeting between DD and I, not for anything academic, but more like a management meeting. We'd discuss her goals / deadlines, let her talk through how she plans to tackle various things, I give her feedback and help her make SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound). My guess is this type of meeting might take 15-30 minutes / week. (Reasonable estimate?)

How do I move from telling her what to do, to encouraging her / coaching her to make her own goals and plans? For instance, she has expressed interest in doing a book drive for kids at a local non-profit. If I gently bring it up, she always expresses interest, but she hasn't taken any steps.  She also wants to do a family history project where she interviews the remaining living siblings of my parent's generation. She contacted my uncle, but then didn't check her email for a few days 🙂 (Haha - checking email / email management isn't a habit for her yet.) 

And I don't want to just tell her what to do... I'm wondering if you have any helpful "scripts" or approaches that help you coach a student to take greater ownership and have confidence. I'm wondering if I can tweak some of those hard-core documents in the blog and make them kid friendly in a way that will 

I also plan to schedule separate weekly or biweekly meetings with her that will function more like "class / discussion" time because she is doing history and English with me.  

 

 

[regentrude]

I took a quick look through that blog post you linked and my eyes glazed over. This is so not how I myself operate (in my job, I have to manage classes with 500 students and a multi-person team, so there's plenty of tasks and deadlines, but these documents would give me hives), and none of my kids would have taken kindly to such an approach. 

We never did scheduled meetings or formal "goalsetting" or anything similar. My kids had very different needs in high school. While my DS still needed daily accountability for a couple of years, my DD was practically college-ready at 15.

I provided my kids with the materials for each subject and required them to spend 6 hours on schoolwork daily. They had to keep a log of time spent on which subject. They were free to structure their schedule however they wanted, work on whatever subject they wanted for however long, with the one exception of daily math for DS. We didn't have set syllabi with dates. If a subject got neglected too long, I did some gentle nudging.

I checked in with both each morning before heading to work. We talked about the day, when I would be available to work with them, etc. The only actual deadlines came from their DE classes, and they insisted I let them handle that independently. It was a good learning experience.
Basically, we just talked a lot. Normal conversations. In the car, at lunch, while doing school. Anything that needed to be discussed happened organically.
So I'm a bit at a loss what to tell you. I never "managed" much, and they turned out just fine.

Edited June 22, 2022 by regentrude

[Porridge]

12 minutes ago, regentrude said:

So I'm a bit at a loss what to tell you. I never "managed" much, and they turned out just fine.

Encouraging, thank you!

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, WTM said:

How do I move from telling her what to do, to encouraging her / coaching her to make her own goals and plans? For instance, she has expressed interest in doing a book drive for kids at a local non-profit. If I gently bring it up, she always expresses interest, but she hasn't taken any steps.  She also wants to do a family history project where she interviews the remaining living siblings of my parent's generation. She contacted my uncle, but then didn't check her email for a few days 🙂 (Haha - checking email / email management isn't a habit for her yet.) 

. I'm wondering if I can tweak some of those hard-core documents in the blog and make them kid friendly in a way that will 

Reading through the link you posted, I don’t even use most of those documents as an escalation engineer and operation manager. Some personalities do thrive on the blogger’s kind of documents. I am the kind who could use them well if it is part of my job but I would find them too busywork. 
 

DS17 is the kind who can manage his academics with a little prodding. However, he isn’t at the stage where he could make his own goals because he still lack life experience. Since your daughter is going to be in high school, this was my thought process with DS17 when planning his high school years. Firstly, my husband has set the objective of only applying to state universities. So DS17 and I set down and looked at how to fulfill the a-g requirements. Secondly, DS17 was interested in getting an associate degree while in high school. He also wanted to be back in a classroom. So we did the paperwork for dual enrollment in the event that he wants to take a class. In the meantime, we also look at the IGETC requirements to see if we could satisfy both IGETC and the a-g requirements. With the end goal in place, we plan year by year on which subjects to take. DS17 would decide and we would make sure those boxes get checked at the same time. 
Both my teens express interest in stuff without follow through. At this age, it is still very much an exploratory stage. DS17 is currently interested in mahjong (both Chinese and Japanese style) but not to the level that he wants a mahjong set. So I would ask now and then as part of a chat to assess interest. On the other hand, my teens do want to do volunteer work but they think they aren’t capable enough. So for lack of confidence stuff, we do help more by being there initially. For example, I stayed around when they started taking group tennis lessons. After a few sessions, I could take a walk and buy groceries while they were at their tennis lessons. 
I have to remind my husband that even though DS17 finds academics relatively easy, he is still in some ways a child. Some kids are just go getters. Some kids have to be encouraged. If you are working, you probably have a boss who would oversee your work progress without micromanaging. You probably have to set goals in your annual performance appraisal and also short term goals in your daily work. So teach your daughter those skills because she can use them for life. I also had to handhold DS16 on the important-urgent (Eisenhower) matrix https://www.ucop.edu/pmo/_files/The Urgent-Important Matrix.pdf DS17 understood that matrix instinctively. 

[BusyMom5]

I still actively teach math, science, and history in 9th and 10th grades. For LA I write out a daily list, sort of like Oak Meadow.  For electives, it depends on what it is.  Once they start DE I check in on Monday afternoon to see what the assignments for the week look like and how kid plans to arrange all their commitments.  I am always here to help, and in the first few weeks I kind of help them make a daily checklist or whatever works for the kid.  I usually check in again on Thursday,  to be sure they are on track to finish the weeks work by Friday.  After the first semester,  they older 2 haven't needed much else.  One was a procrastinator and for her I'd remind her of family commitments for the week.  She's in college and still procrastinator!  Lol.  She's working on it.  

My advice is not to move too quickly into total kid responsibility.  Some kids are better at it than others, so do what your kid needs.  High school lasts 4 years, so take it easy and don't stress it!

[Porridge]

It sounds like I can generally chill out a bit 🙂

It also sounds like it's still age-appropriate / ok for me to be helping with the goal setting or with knowing how to break down work / projects.

She's my oldest, so when people tell me how much kids mature over the high school years, I still have no real point of experiential reference. I also worked in a field where I was not managed, but rather had pretty much complete independence, so I have no models from the work world, either.  It's good for me to have the concrete examples that you all shared.

I appreciate the Urgent / Important Matrix. That will be a helpful framework to talk through with DD.

 

[Farrar]

Very appropriate to still be pretty hands on right up to the end. I mean, I've seen high school seniors micromanaged and that doesn't help anyone. But I've seen high schoolers left to fend for themselves inappropriately more often by parents who think they should be doing their own time management and goal setting and everything and it's like, they're 15! They need you! Their peers are literally going between regulated schedules from room to room where they get constant reminders. You should be hands on a bit!

My kid who worked out the best in this regard gradually moved to managing himself, but partly by coming to check in with me constantly. It worked so well because in 9th grade I was like, okay, do this do that. But by 11th, he would come see me proactively to be like, I want to start with this, my goal is to do this and then that, is it okay if I finish up with this, can I stop working do you think, have I done enough? He was setting his schedule for himself, but he was vocally checking in with me about it a couple of times a day at least and coming to me for help when he needed it on things like writing assignments and so forth. It worked really well.

I wish I could tell you how to replicate that because my other kid was hostile to ever checking in with me. He had a much rougher finish to high school. Sigh.

[Roadrunner]

nm

Edited June 26, 2022 by Roadrunner

[Alice]

7 hours ago, Farrar said:

Very appropriate to still be pretty hands on right up to the end. I mean, I've seen high school seniors micromanaged and that doesn't help anyone. But I've seen high schoolers left to fend for themselves inappropriately more often by parents who think they should be doing their own time management and goal setting and everything and it's like, they're 15! They need you! Their peers are literally going between regulated schedules from room to room where they get constant reminders. You should be hands on a bit!

My kid who worked out the best in this regard gradually moved to managing himself, but partly by coming to check in with me constantly. It worked so well because in 9th grade I was like, okay, do this do that. But by 11th, he would come see me proactively to be like, I want to start with this, my goal is to do this and then that, is it okay if I finish up with this, can I stop working do you think, have I done enough? He was setting his schedule for himself, but he was vocally checking in with me about it a couple of times a day at least and coming to me for help when he needed it on things like writing assignments and so forth. It worked really well.

I wish I could tell you how to replicate that because my other kid was hostile to ever checking in with me. He had a much rougher finish to high school. Sigh.

I think this is a really important to realize: a lot of it depends on the kid and sometimes you can come up with the perfect system for you but it doesn’t work for the kid. I have three kids, one graduated last year and just finished a gap year, one is a rising junior and one a rising 8th grader. 

For the first one it was very similar to what Farrar described above, in 9th grade I was fairly hand on and gave him a list of weekly tasks and what to do and checked in a lot even on his online classes to see if things were on track. By 12th grade I still checked behind the scenes but he managed a very intense schedule of 5 AP online classes plus other stuff on his own. I rarely if every had to remind him of anything. During his gap year he took it on himself to get a certification to teach swimming and did that as a job when he was home in between traveling around the country. He is working all summer as a pool manager and coach and recently I was blown away because he meal prepped on a Sunday so that he could have healthy food at the pool all week. 

My second kid is struggling through high school, not in small part because he has ADHD and we just haven’t found a system that works for him. He needs structure but hates it. I have tried all kinds of ways to scaffold him and try to help him and some work and I am very willing to be very involved....but he really chafes at being told what to do and thinks he should be able to figure it out himself. And I can only do so much with that. 

[Porridge]

9 hours ago, Alice said:

My second kid is struggling through high school, not in small part because he has ADHD and we just haven’t found a system that works for him. He needs structure but hates it. I have tried all kinds of ways to scaffold him and try to help him and some work and I am very willing to be very involved....but he really chafes at being told what to do and thinks he should be able to figure it out himself. And I can only do so much with that. 

This resonates. I have one (DS) with ADHD and I'm not sure what high school will look like. I have another couple of posts about high school math -- those posts were born out of a desire to find a better system that will work for him. He's still young though (7th), so hopefully I have some time there. 

DD14 is very self motivated and very capable on the executive functioning front, at least when it pertains to academics (her comfort zone). But she's more timid socially, and part of my question above stems from a desire to know how to gently encourage her to stretch herself in areas out of her comfort zone. But perhaps it's like I'm knocking on the turtle's shell waiting for the turtle to come out, when in reality all my knocking is just going to make the turtle stay inside even longer... hard to know when you're doing too much or doing too little.

I'm also realizing from this thread that it would be helpful for me to give her more specific guidance in some of our homemade classes. We are doing an interest-led history, but I realize I still need to help take the reins on defining output. I'm realizing this partly based on what  you all have said, partly because I realize that everytime I try to take her pulse on defining output, I'm met with resistance. I think there's resistance because she doesn't really know, and it might be too big an ask for her at this stage.

Edited June 24, 2022 by WTM

[ieta_cassiopeia]

A meeting structure I've encountered that might help is the basic SCRUM structure:

What did you do yesterday/[insert appropriate time period]?
What do you plan to do today/[insert appropriate time period]?
Is anything making it difficult for you to do this?

 

(Some information sources discuss other questions to add, but less is more in this situation - if any additional questions make sense in your meetings, they'll probably occur to both of you during the meeting, rather than needing to be pre-planned).

It is a fairly flexible structure in that it can be used to refer to a general activity overview, or focus in on a specific area. In the classic SCRUM meeting, 15 minutes is scheduled, but that's most often involving a whole team.  Expect early meetings involving you and one child to take considerably less. This gives your child practice at making a plan and troubleshooting each step in light of their current situation. You can have your child take minutes if you think this is likely to help. Starting with daily meetings would still be appropriate for a 7th grader, and even adults using SCRUM generally have such meetings once per week.

[elegantlion]

On 6/23/2022 at 3:11 PM, Farrar said:

Very appropriate to still be pretty hands on right up to the end. I mean, I've seen high school seniors micromanaged and that doesn't help anyone. But I've seen high schoolers left to fend for themselves inappropriately more often by parents who think they should be doing their own time management and goal setting and everything and it's like, they're 15! They need you! Their peers are literally going between regulated schedules from room to room where they get constant reminders. You should be hands on a bit!

 

I agree with this. DS needed a very hands on experience for high school. We did many of his courses at the table (we didn't have money for outsourcing much). He had a few subjects that were fully his domain - like computer programming. 

We had a loose weekly schedule and every morning we started with Gi Suilon (Elvish for "I greet you") time where we'd outline the day, talk through reminders of the day/week. Neither of us are morning people. We started school in the later morning and we both needed time to wake up and get our brains moving. The morning meeting was a good transition time. Then we did read alouds - even in high school. We read books that he might not have read on his own like Lord of the Ring and Moby Dick. 

All that to say, much of that article seems overkill to me. I'm detailed to the nth degree for myself and that's not how I organize information. Our morning routine was created to fit our specific needs but it only came about because of trial and error. Homeschooling high school felt like constant course correction. 

[Sneezyone]

We, meaning I, basically did as Farrar described. Now that we’re in application season I’m a little more hands on again with deadlines being so important but in other ways it’s very hands off.

We started oldest with semester check-ins WRT goal-setting. Neither of them hears boo from us if their work is getting done and the grades are on point. The benefit of doing what you’re supposed to do is not being harassed.

Oldest had her last such ‘conference’ in February. DS had his first. We go over course selection and summer volunteerism/employment/activities at the top of the year, and academic goals/expectations for each class during both. 
 

We touch bases as a family every night at dinner to go over upcoming events/scheduling,etc.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Sneezyone

[JennyD]

This past year my 10th grader (11th grader by age) and I met once a week to discuss a general schedule for the week, and then every morning we would touch base to talk about his plan for the day, which he would jot down on a whiteboard.  We do most subjects at home, so part of our planning also involved scheduling meeting times with DH and/or myself to go over/discuss substantive work, and making sure that DS knew what had to be completed before those meetings.  

 

[mom31257]

Ds and I used Evernote for weekly checklists. The list would sync as we both made edits. It worked very well since you can access it on two devices with the free account. I started each weekly list because I taught additional classes and did things on my own time. I wanted to schedule certain things in the subjects I was more involved in on days I had less going on. He would then contribute to it, too. 

The independence expanded as he continued on in high school as well as the number of outside classes. I always did math with him since I teach math. I also did the physical sciences with him because of the math. I discussed literature with him, and I suggested edits on writing assignments. He did foreign language online, so I wasn't involved in that. He did some dual enrollment courses, attended a co-op for science labs, and more. He usually discussed some of his social studies with dh since he teaches history and economics.