A 16 Year-Old Gets As, Bs In School; A Parent Asks Why There Were Not All As. How Should This Situation Be Viewed?

— -- Question: A 16 year-old gets a combination of As and Bs in school; a parent asks why there were not all As. How should this situation be viewed/remedied?

Answer: Grades are important to a 16-kyear-old who has aspirations for college. But we have to remember it's not just the grades we're looking at, it's performance. So what I would suggest is have a conversation with your 16-year-old and wonder: One, are As and Bs okay with you? Are you working up to your potential? Is the 16-year-old wasting time by doing other things like video games? Or is a 16-year-old getting As and Bs when they could maybe be getting higher grades but they're also trying to do sports and art and various other things.

Is the 16-year-old having problems and he or she wishes to do better but may have a learning disability or an attentional problem or something else that's getting in the way. And finally, who are these grades for? Are they for you, or are they for the kid?

If the kids' happy with As and Bs and is doing a bunch of other things like sports, like community work, arts, and they have a well-rounded life, it may be just fine, and we have to really remember that there's much more to success than grades alone.

Some kids are late bloomers, some kids don't mind, and what's so bad about As and Bs anyway? It's really up to the child and later the adult to make decisions about their own performance and how they want to balance academic achievement with other parts of their lives.