For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for October 09, 2020

John says, “Well, did you lecture Mike about doing homework while watching TV?”

John sure knows his wife. He doesn’t even bother to say, “talk to Mike”.

Teenagers. They hear only what they want to hear and think they know everything. When they grow up, they forget everything what they thought back then. They are so ready to be adults and push the boundaries with parents and authoritarian figures. Little do they know that when they become adults, their carefree childhood of dependency is gone. I used to tell my sons that they have only 18 years to be a child, free of responsibilities of an adult, so they ought to enjoy that time before the next 65 years of their noses on the grindstone. Did they listen? Of course not. And I am 100 percent sure they don’t remember me saying that.

I never could concentrate on homework without the radio or tv on. ADHD must do 2 or more things at once.

Mike has great abilities indeed

Check the homework afterwards. As long as it’s done right and he gets good grades on it then there’s no reason to be upset about it.

I was also able to tune out the boring stuff back in the day. Probably why my grades reflected that…!

We were never allowed to watch TV on school nights when I was growing up. If we didn’t have homework or had finished it, we were expected to read a book or do something else constructive until bedtime. I always liked to have some music playing softly in the background when I was doing a homework assignment or studying. But I couldn’t do that when I was trying to read something that I found boring (History for me). For that, I needed to really concentrate in order to remember at least part of what I was reading. It paid off. I was pretty much a straight A student, with an occasional B thrown in once in a while. That was usually in a subject like typing or PE.

A boy hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

How can you do something correctly if you’re ignoring it? If I ignored my job, I’d get fired.

Guess the people at the farm failed to reform him. Michael needs the next step in his reformation, what would that be?

I always played records or watched TV or did it with a friend over the phone. Homework always struck me as a waste of time so I multitasked.

I used to listen to the radio (loved Red Sox games) or play records while doing homework. I was an “A” student…

Michael needs to take a good hard look in the mirror. He is lagging behind the other kids. Brian is a straight-A student, Gordon takes on whatever kind of work he can, and has there been one bad thing ever said about Lawrence? By comparison, Michael is a go-nowhere.

Nice tactic, Mike… good luck utilising when paying your own bills.

I love the expressions in P 3.

Oddly enough, that’s exactly how I used to do it. Now, however, it seems like the crap I don’t want to hear is loud and clear. Even after the sound is gone it drowns out the stuff I am interested in, like angry echos in my mind. …sux

Mike was honest, why bother.

A low level of “noise” can actually be conducive to concentration provided it is low enough to be shut out as you focus on the task at hand. Loud sounds are always distracting because, during our evolution, loud sounds generally meant “danger”.

There’s a way around this. Instead of giving in to Mike or lecturing him, just say “NO”. Then turn off the TV and make him do his homework where you can watch him.

Who runs this household, anyways? My dad would march over to the TV and turn it off, and give me a look that told me EXACTLY what would happen if I turned it back on.

I had bad study habits. For the gifted they tend to also study poorly when the work is easy. But once it gets hard for them they do poorly and have to get up to speed on study habits.

A good idea for university and lower education students is RASABIC. It stands for:

Read

Ahead

Stay

Ahead

Be

In

Class

Elly is a dropout. Lecturing her son on slacking off? Hypocrisy much?