Many of these children are defiant, act out in class, refuse to do class work and homework. They lie about tests and homework or anything related to school to either make themselves feel better or to get their parents off their backs.

By teenage years, they are attached to their cell phones, are texting, or whatever is the mode of operation at that point in time. They sit with earphones on and some become rude to their siblings and other relatives. Eventually, we lose many of these kids because they drop out of school or become involved in some aspect of antisocial behavior.

Then there are those children that do none of that. They work hard, some even too hard, and are respectful, but they still struggle to get the A or even a B. Yet, there are those that survive. They get through whatever it was that caused them to slip. How do these kids get over the hurdles and succeed and others don’t?

They were lucky to have adults in their lives to work with them. Together, the cause of the problem was diagnosed. And most importantly, their parents accepted their child for who he or she was. They supported this child and didn’t walk away and throw their arms up in disgust when the child started to slip. They stood by them. They were not adversaries, instead respected their child’s efforts to survive, no matter how small an effort it may be.

They understood that no one wants to fail; everyone wants the gold star, the A+, the 100%, and if their child sitting across the kitchen table didn’t seem to care, that child was hurting inside. Kids who are struggling in school usually don’t sit and say, “You know mom, you know dad, I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m failing. I have come up with many causes and have worked out my options. So, here’s what I think.”If a kid says that, you sit back, count your blessings and listen to what they think. They may just have figured out what the problem is and how to solve it. This can happen.

Dear Dr. Linda,

I read your blog and enjoy your advice, but I’m having trouble with your advice on respecting your child. I’m having trouble with my 15-year-old daughter.

She’s failing most of her classes, is rude to me, her dad, her sister and her teachers. I’ve taken away all privileges and she’s just become more obstinate.

How do I get through to her that her attitude and behavior are unacceptable?
Respectful Mom

Dear Respectful Mom,

Think back to when your daughter was born. Did she have an attitude? She might have been a fussy baby, or she might have been the perfect baby, but in either case, she didn’t have an attitude.

Then, when did you first see this attitude? In most cases, it develops when a child is struggling in school or feels that no one is listening to her, that nobody is addressing her needs.

Attitude problems tend to begin around 4th or 5th grade because that’s when school becomes more difficult for some kids. If the problem isn’t addressed, and I don’t mean by parental discipline, it usually becomes worse during middle school.

And if not addressed appropriately during middle school, by age 15 it can become a nightmare.

Here are three suggestions to break the stalemate.

• Be a good role model. You need to exhibit the type of behavior you want your daughter to exhibit. This means you need to respect her and tell her that in turn she needs to respect you.

• Learn why she’s failing. It could be she’s having problems with her peers and is ignoring school. Maybe her courses are too difficult. Perhaps she’s having other emotional issues that she’s having trouble dealing with.

• Seek professional help in or out of school. Be sure to find someone you’re both comfortable with.

Once you discover the cause of the problem, you can begin to look for solutions. It’s amazing how quickly attitude problems disappear once the issues that cause the problem are resolved.

Best wishes to you and your daughter,

Dr. Linda

Add your two cents. What do you think is the best way to help kids learn respect?

My grandson lies about school. He’s in the 10th grade and doing terribly in school. I’m not only upset because he’s doing so badly, I’m more upset about the lies. Parenting children who lie is not easy.

My daughter and son-law have found him in more lies when it comes to homework and tests than you can imagine. They’ve basically given up on him. They’ve grounded, punished and taken away everything from ipod to TV.

I’m just the grandma and can’t seem to get through to him or to his parents that nothing is working. I want him to succeed. What can I do? Grandma Fran

Dear Grandma Fran,

Lying is a common strategy children and especially teens use to hide problems they’re having in school. Sadly, to them, the consequences of getting caught in a lie will be less severe than the verbal or physical abuse they know they’ll face from their parents if they tell the truth about their troubles. As you said, “Parenting children who lie is not easy.”

Your daughter and son-in-law have to become parents whom your grandson can trust, parents who are safe to talk to. They need to begin working on changing the family dynamics. Suggest to them that they talk to your grandson every day about school, even if it’s just for a few minutes.

The discussion needs to remind him of his past successes and in particular what strategies used to work for him. His parents might share with him both good and bad experiences they had when they were in his situation.

For example, “I heard that there’s a geometry quiz tomorrow. I always had trouble in that subject, too. I could never figure out what was going on.” Use that as a lead-in to begin solving his school problems directly instead of avoiding them.

Most likely, at this point in their relationship, your grandson will answer with a grunt, be a bit confused and not be willing to share. He may think they’re interrogating him. They need to not give up.

The most important thing is to start opening up communications with him and rebuilding trust. There are many strategies that can help. They should keep trying to find ones that work.

Also, they should consider seeking counseling from a professional. If your grandson refuses to see someone, recommend that your daughter and son-in-law get help so they can learn what to do to change the family dynamics.

Best wishes to you and your family,

Dr. Linda

Dear Dr. Linda,

Every year when school begins I feel like I’m always ready. I pride myself on the fact that I’m a very organized mom, but by the second week of school, there are papers all over my house. Do you have any suggestions?

An Organized Mom

Dear Organized Mom,

As organized as we are, by the second week of school, piles of papers start to grow all over the house. Here’s a recipe to overcome “paper overload”.

First, buy six see through open bins. They need to be bigger than a sheet of paper and can’t have a cover. If your child needs to take off a cover, the papers will never get in the bin. Label each bin by subject.

Each night or each week, go through the papers with your child, tossing the unnecessary sheets into the paper recycling bin, and dropping the loose papers into the bins by subject. Next, buy a quality 3-hole punch, a critical item for “paper overload” and six loose leaf binders.

Each week or month, take the papers from the bins and hole punch them. Next, place them in the labeled binders by subject, or include all the subjects in one binder, separated by dividers, and label the binder by date.

Keep the binders on a shelf in the closet to be referred to for tests, science projects, book reports, and other school assignments.

Wishing you a happy and organized school year,
Dr. Linda

Send me your questions in the comment form below. Dr. Linda’s School Success Q & A is published every Friday.

Many parents feel that public school is the only way to educate their child, and some parents believe that a private school education is the only means to a good education.

So who’s right?

For children who are already doing well in school, have friends and activities they enjoy, changing schools shouldn’t be an issue.  However, if school seems too easy and not challenging enough for your child or the school is struggling overall with test scores and standards, you might want to consider changing.

Choosing a different school for your child can become an issue if your children aren’t doing as well as they could. Perhaps they’re struggling but don’t really qualify for for special help.  If your child is happy at their school, it’s probably a better choice to find a tutor than switch schools.

If you’re considering changing schools, the question isn’t necessarily whether private schools are better than public schools or vice versa but the quality of each particular school. Some public schools are excellent, some not.  Likewise, some private schools are excellent and some not.

In general, public schools often offer more after school activities, a wider range of course selection and more services. Private schools may offer smaller classes and more individualized instruction.

Unfortunately, there’s no absolute answer. It all depends on the best school for your child, not what kind of school.

As a family, you need to make a list of the pros and cons of your public school and the private schools in your price range. Then shop around and spend some time visiting the private schools. If you live in an area where you can choose which public school your child goes to, you’ll also want to visit several public schools.

Remember though, your child, who will be going to whatever school is chosen, needs to be comfortable in that school.  No one can learn when they are anxious or unhappy.

Once I worked with a 14-year-old girl whose parents wanted her to go to a nearby private high school. She didn’t want to leave her public school. She was comfortable there.

One day when she was leaving my office, I introduced her to this cute football player sitting in the waiting room. He was a student in the private school she was refusing to go to.

She looked at him and said, “Oh, hi. You know I’ll be going to your school in September.” By the way, she did go to the private school the next year, but it wasn’t the right choice. She ended up back at the public school where her needs were better met.

The bottom line is to choose the school that best meets your child’s needs and uses methods that are consistent with those needs.

Be sure to read my recent post on  choosing the right college for your child.

Please leave a comment.  Let us know how you’ve chosen schools for your children.

Choosing a college is a big decision, and sometimes families don’t agree.

Maybe Dad thinks it’s best if their son starts out close to home at a two-year college, but Mom thinks their son should go away to school.

Often, as parents, we come to these conclusions because of what we did. If Dad, who started at a two-year school, is successful, he might believe a two-year community college is the obvious answer.

Every successful adult has a story, but most successful adults would have been successful even if the story had been different.

As far as where kids should go to college, it’s hard to say what’s best without knowing what the kids themselves want. Many people take the community college route because they don’t want to go away to school and it’s less expensive.

Others choose to go away so they can experience the college life. Many claim it was the experience of going away from home that helped them mature. If you believe your child needs to go to a two-year school and money is not an issue, many excellent two-year schools offer on-campus living.

There are no absolutes in life. No crystal balls.

Again, the first question is what does your child want to do? If they want to follow in your footsteps and are happy with that decision, then that may be the right path.  But, if they want a different college experience and it’s affordable, this is the only time in their life that they’ll be able to experience that.

The important thing is to keep an open mind as you decide as a family what’s best.

Please leave a comment. Let us know how you’re making college decisions in your family?

Not surprisingly, he was up to all hours of the night finishing his homework. Daniel’s Mom worried because Daniel kept having  meltdowns and she didn’t know why.

Daniel wasn’t suffering from low confidence. He was suffering from one of the “Terrible Toos,” having too much to do.

Now that school is starting, it’s a good time to plan ahead for outside activities. You may not know exactly what will come up but you’ll have a good idea. It’s much easier to schedule fewer outside activities right in the beginning than to wait until your child is involved and then discover that she needs to drop a couple of them.

Keep in mind that school is your child’s most important activity. If your child is involved in too many outside activities, this constant running from one thing to the next gets in the way of school success. Help them choose two or three things they love doing. Even two is enough.

When kids have too much to do, they often appear to have emotional problems, learning problems, poor study skills or poor work habits. In fact they just don’t have the time to do their homework. They’re involved in so many activities and have so many chores that they end up with no time to play, relax and unwind.

It’s as if these kids are attempting to squeeze school into their busy schedules. Kids obviously do better in school and in everyday life if they aren’t stressed-out, too tired, over-scheduled and burdened with hours of homework.

When kids are overwhelmed, parents need to help monitor the amount of work and activities, in and out of school. It’s a parent’s job to protect their kids from having too much to do.

Strategies and Recommendations:

Together with your child, make a schedule of his day. Put in the activities he’s involved in or wants to be involved in. Include the time it takes to get to the activity and get home. Be sure to include dinner.

Now how much time is left? Is there enough time for homework?  Does finishing homework mean he’ll have to stay up too late.

If you see that he has no time for homework or only time for homework when he should be getting ready for bed, talk about what can be changed. Let him decide what to drop and what to keep. Don’t insist that he drop an activity he loves, such as playing on a team, or practicing guitar.

Many children aren’t getting enough exercise. Physical exercise helps not only build strong bodies but also improves brain function. So it’s a good idea to encourage one activity that involves moving such as sports or dance.

You can do this now before school starts and save the complication and disappointment of dropping something later.

For kindergarteners, 1^st and 2^nd graders, one scheduled activity is plenty. Even though they don’t have much homework, they need lots of time for playing. Playing is a learning activity.

Older elementary school kids can usually manage two activities. For tweens and teens, three is the maximum and for some that’s too many. If teens are taking several AP classes and have lots of homework, two activities may be all they can handle.

When you’re helping your child fill in their schedule, remind them that school will include activities that take more homework than usual: doing a science project, studying for final exams, a senior project, a college-like term paper. When these deadlines come around, kids need to have the available time to do their best job.

Helping your child carefully select a couple of outside activities now gives your child time for homework, class projects and other things that pop up like birthday parties, family gatherings, going to their school’s football games and sleep-overs.

Your child is going to have piles and piles of papers. These papers need to be organized. they need to be hole punched and filed in 3-hole binders. Some are necessary for the next test and some are notices about next week’s cupcake sale . . . or last week’s sale, oops!

Every night or at least once a week, go through the papers with your elementary-school child, tossing the unnecessary sheets into the paper recycling bin and hole punching the others. Encourage older children to follow this plan. It could even be on their to-do list that’s on the fridge.

Once the papers are hole punched, put them in 3-ring binders. Label each binder. For example, one can be English, another math, etc. Or put dividers in an individual binder, sorting the papers by subjects and labeling the binders by dates, for example, 1st quarter, 2010, 2nd quarter, 2010. Encourage your children to create a system that works for them.

Keep the binders on a shelf to be referred to for tests and exams, science projects, book reports, term papers, fund-raising activities and field trips.

Make a table of contents for each binder including the date for the test or event. When that exam or event is over, cross it off the table of contents and throw away the paper. Be sure, however, to save papers that need to be referred to again for mid-terms or final exams.

The teachers will let your child know what they want in the binder they use for school. It’s all those other papers that need to be filed away.

Check out some more organizing tips.

Leave a comment below and let us know how you help your kids organize their school stuff.

Michael believed that if he tried hard and kept working at something, he’d succeed.  He could succeed at school. He was sure of it. He said that nobody had told him this—not his parents, not his grandparents. How did he know?  It was the message in his fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant–so it must be true.

It’s a cute story but in Michael’s case, luckily only partly true. In fact he had wonderful support from his parents and his grandparents. They cheered him on every day as he struggled with severe language issues.

Although Michael could speak when he was five, nobody could understand him. His family was concerned with school and worried about his future. By the time I met Michael, he had been through three years of neurologists, audiologists, pediatricians, and speech therapists.

I started working with Michael when he entered kindergarten and continued meeting with him through high school. Between the school and hour-long weekly tutoring sessions, Michael succeeded. Sure there were rough times. At times, Michael became so frustrated that he would pound his fist on the table because he couldn’t retrieve the words he needed to express himself. But, through everything, Michael’s family never walked away.

They accepted his strengths and weaknesses, supported him daily and respected his needs. He’s in college now, wants to be an engineer. He’s an amazing math student! And he now talks up a storm!

Michael’s story shows that even with odds stacked against him from the get-go, with the proper support, success in school and beyond is attainable. However, it takes a great deal of effort on three main fronts: the child, his parents and his teacher.  But it starts at home with you.

All parents, like Michael’s, want their kids to do well in school. How well children do in school and beyond is determined by their own special genes (nature) and experiences (nurture). Sometimes their genes contain special “gifts” from the past. For example, they may have inherited their Great-Grandpa Joe’s dyslexia or Grandma Sue’s love of reading.

Some children are extroverts like their dad and get A’s in class participation, while others are introverts like their Aunt Sally, and are very happy just to listen and take it all in. Many parents have a fantasy of a child they want their child to be, but it may not be the child they have.

To ensure school success and beyond, you need to

1. Accept your child for who he is.
2. Support your child in any way you can.
3. Respect your child so that she can reach her full potential.

These are three of the most important factors in school success. Since you—Mom and Dad—are the most important significant others in your child’s life, your acceptance, support and respect are essential to her emotional, social and intellectual growth.

In fact, these three factors are the building blocks of positive self-esteem, which is of the highest importance to ensure school success.

They’re eager to be outdoors playing, jumping in the swimming pool, going on family outings.

But what about learning? Are you worried they’ll forget a lot over the summer. What if they’re behind when school starts in the fall?

It’s three months without school, without daily reading and writing. But you certainly don’t want to assign homework. Summer is supposed to be fun.

So I’ve got a solution to your dilemma. I’ve created summer fun, yet educationally based, activities to do with your kids on hot summer days, at the beach, after camp or on vacation, so that your child is ready to fly in September

It’s all about reading and writing on June 14 and June 28. We’ll do math on July 12 and 19. Then on August 2 and August 16, we’ll get ready for school with games that help improve focus and concentration.

You can sign up for each one. Just $47 for reading and writing in June. Just $47 for Math in July. Just $47 for Focus and Concentration in August. That’s half-off the regular price. It’s even less when you sign up for all three.

I’m offering Reading and Writing (both sessions), Math (both sessions), and Focus and Concentration (both sessions) for only $94. You’re getting six TeleWebcasts for the price of two. That’s a savings of $188, or 67% discount off the regular price!

And your getting the recording of all six session plus six Action Guides packed with information.

Sign up now to help your child stay on track with school success.

If some of the dates don’t work for you, you can always listen to the recording on your computer or download it to an mp3 player. You won’t miss a single game or activity.