Alas, even parents can get it wrong. Worse is when (as my mother did) they get it wrong *consistently*.
After enough cases of "you can do better" for when you did get results, and "you aren't trying" for when you didn't (note that I don't mention any "you did great"s in there) and effort will get reduced to that which will balance the grief you are going to get anyway against the effort you are willing to exert on a lost cause.
One of the problems was that too often the lack of results was a matter of lack of understanding of what was to be done or how to do it.
After I didn't perform to expectations in first grade, mom (a former schoolteacher) started having my spend the summers doing workbooks for the next grade's math (and possibly other subjects, but math is the one I remember).
Thing is, she didn't get the textbooks. So there were times when her explanations of the concepts were lacking. But it was my lack of effort when I didn't get the problems done.
The worst case was they had those problems where digits are replaced with letters and you have to work out the answer:
SUMMER -WINTER -------
(not the exact problem but similar). When I expressed bafflement, mom "explained" that you replaced the letters with numbers. Period.
She *assumed* that I understood that you replaced a given letter with the *same* digit throughout the problem, but in different problems the mapping of digit to letter was different.
Without that crucial bit of "obvious" (to *her*) info I sat there staring at the problems because there wasn't any way to solve them (given the rules as I understood them). And since the "explanation" had been given with a *clear* "that's all the info you need, bother me again and you are in trouble" I was in a lose-lose situation.
So, I got in trouble for not doing the problems even though I tried to explain that I couldn't see how to do them. (keep in mind that this had to have been no later than the summer before I started 4th grade as we moved to a different house at the start of that school year).
An extreme example, but I've seen it in other cases with other people. "Obvious" *critical* info not known and folks getting in trouble because they must have been playing dumb or not trying or whatever.
Yes, in many, maybe even most cases a parent may be right in diagnosing lack of effort. But when they aren't...
no subject
After enough cases of "you can do better" for when you did get results, and "you aren't trying" for when you didn't (note that I don't mention any "you did great"s in there) and effort will get reduced to that which will balance the grief you are going to get anyway against the effort you are willing to exert on a lost cause.
One of the problems was that too often the lack of results was a matter of lack of understanding of what was to be done or how to do it.
After I didn't perform to expectations in first grade, mom (a former schoolteacher) started having my spend the summers doing workbooks for the next grade's math (and possibly other subjects, but math is the one I remember).
Thing is, she didn't get the textbooks. So there were times when her explanations of the concepts were lacking. But it was my lack of effort when I didn't get the problems done.
The worst case was they had those problems where digits are replaced with letters and you have to work out the answer:
SUMMER
-WINTER
-------
(not the exact problem but similar). When I expressed bafflement, mom "explained" that you replaced the letters with numbers. Period.
She *assumed* that I understood that you replaced a given letter with the *same* digit throughout the problem, but in different problems the mapping of digit to letter was different.
Without that crucial bit of "obvious" (to *her*) info I sat there staring at the problems because there wasn't any way to solve them (given the rules as I understood them). And since the "explanation" had been given with a *clear* "that's all the info you need, bother me again and you are in trouble" I was in a lose-lose situation.
So, I got in trouble for not doing the problems even though I tried to explain that I couldn't see how to do them. (keep in mind that this had to have been no later than the summer before I started 4th grade as we moved to a different house at the start of that school year).
An extreme example, but I've seen it in other cases with other people. "Obvious" *critical* info not known and folks getting in trouble because they must have been playing dumb or not trying or whatever.
Yes, in many, maybe even most cases a parent may be right in diagnosing lack of effort. But when they aren't...