Overachiever ??...I Don't Think So

BOYS!! What can I say? They are such an odd breed. My oldest son maintained a 3.90 throughout high school without ever cracking a book. After that, he bombed out of college but made life long friends in his fraternity, and has great aspirations for when he moves to Los Angeles to be "discovered" (I hope it isn't by his creditors).

I have another son plowing down the path of life at sixteen and a half. He is tall and scrawny...my friend at work commented that he is so skinny he could pass as a sophomore for at LEAST two more years...and he may be doing that if he doesn't wake up and smell the coffee that raises my blood pressure even more EVERY day.

What is killing me is that he is so almost amazingly brilliant that his defiance in the school system is the only thing that is keeping him down. He is in high school though, the only way that I can keep tabs on him is with the parent portal...a place where I can check his grades and progress (or LACK of).

I told him tonight to decide which McDonald's he wanted to work at and see if they had a job where he could cook the fries while he could lie down between the fries getting ready to salt.

I realize that the school system is messed up. They should have intervened years ago with him, thrown him into some advanced courses that stimulated him and made him use his talented brain. Instead, they think he is a deadbeat (with good reason) and have just let him be a sub par student, one that falls through the cracks and never has the encouragement or support that he so desperately needs.

I have punished him, taken away his game systems, cut off the Blockbuster visits...then he just watches the History channel or Discovery and finds it much more exhilarating than school itself.

He is a wealth of information, he has taught me things about history and the planet that I would have never known. Why he challenges authority is a mystery to me. He says that students that suck up and kiss butt are the ones the teachers like...DUH!!!

If he only knew that is the way life works when you are a teen AND an adult...granted it is a flawed system, but it is the only system we have. He needs to learn how to work the system to his advantage .

He is a mystery to me. An amazing person that just can't see the way, or doesn't care to.

A good friend of mine is having the same issues with her son, they took him out of school and began to home school him. He has done the same thing...missing assignments, no desire to keep up...obviously he and my son will be room mates one day arguing over who gets to peddle the bike to McDonald's for their shift. At least my son is flunking out for free rather than me spending more money on home schooling .

There has to be a key that I am missing, there has to be a way to make him understand .

Don't get me wrong, he is a good kid...he just can't seem to grasp how important these years are and how much they can affect his future. I pray for him, I pray for me...I pray that I will survive raising him and I pray that he will find the strength to battle his way into the future that he so easily could have...or Not.