Indeed, if your child is above average and feels bored at school, chances are your child gets very little attention in public school.  One of the sure ways to get attention is to drop your grade to F.  As the matter of fact, keeping your little ones challenged and interested at public school has been a concern on many parents’ minds.  My son told me he could get a decent grade by dozing off half of the class. My daughter had zero patience listening to some of her classmates spending 10 minutes struggling through one line when she could scan over the whole page in that amount of time.  Both of them were buried their heads in thick chapter books when their peers were laughing out loud over picture books.

While the teachers at their schools did not have time to do anything to keep them challenged and interested in learning, I took up the chores. I assigned to them some “home homework,” which they protested vehemently.  “Not fair. None of my friends have this so-called ‘home homework’.” My son refused to move out of his comfort zone and do anything extra. Well, nice try, I told myself.

Here came the power of persuasion and othe feasible tricks, which I used until they reached middle school age.  I asked them, “Most of the kids in your class will go to our local universities, do you want to be like them?” ”No way,” their resounding answer bellowed out of their chests without hesitation. “Then you got to do something more in order to take a different route.”  Plus, always remember mom’s words “Extra work makes you extra smart.”

Thus, both of my children had done mom-assigned extra homeworks in their primary school years instead of waiting for those who lag behind.  They did them without leaving their comfort zone, though.