Help! I Need Advice About an Underachieving Brother!

[liberalpragmatist]

I'm asking for some advice about a younger brother who isn't doing well. In all honestly, I'm not really in a position to change too much here, as I'm only an elder brother and am busy with college.

Without revealing too much, I'll try to give you some family background. Both my parents are professionals; both are Ph.D.'s. I'm a student at a top-25 university in my sophomore year. As it is, I'm having some of my own issues, for although I'm pre-med, my 3.0 GPA isn't good enough to get into med school, so I'm currently looking into other options - hence a major source of my own stress.

Both my brother and I attended the same private high school. It was small, with a student body under 200 and with excellent teachers. I thrived and made it out of there with excellent recommendations, a 3.8 GPA, 1500+ on my SATs, 8 AP tests and several extracurriculars, including leadership roles in two of them.

My brother, OTOH, has never been the best student and he's finding high school very difficult. He is a high-school freshman with a 2.3 GPA that is the result of extreme inconsistencies - A- in history, B's in math, C's in English, D's in science and Spanish. We've often thought that he may have some form of dyslexia or ADD, but he's been tested and has never tested positive for any of them. On the whole, he just isn't a very serious student, but it's difficult to tell. I think he genuinely finds science and language-related things very difficult and his poor performance reinforces an inclination towards laziness - it's as though he just "gives up." He also just isn't able to make himself do things that he doesn't enjoy, which makes studying very difficult for him.

My parents are extremely worried, and I get worried about him too. He doesn't get into disciplinary problems; he's generally a very dependable kid who works hard in other contexts (he managed his middle school baseball team and was praised by all the coaches as one of the most dedicated kids they knew). At the same time, several teachers dislike him because he and his friends don't pay attention in class and are always talking and joking around.

When anybody tries to lecture him, he gets defensive and angry. At the same time, it seems pretty clear that he wants to do well and is very hurt by the fact that he isn't doing well. He dislikes the inevitable comparisons he gets to me, and he dislikes the fact that all of my parents' best friends' kids are overachievers too and go to the same school.

At this point, we're all worried he's not going to get into college or be able to make it through. Though he does well in some subjects, those D's are really going to bring him down, and because he's always had reading comprehension problems, we're worried as to how he'll do on the SATs. I'm sure he'll be fine in the post-college world, as he has good people skills and is dependable, but he's going to need a college degree and a decent GPA coming out of high school. Are we overreacting? And what are some people's advice? Obviously, I'm not in a position to directly make any changes but perhaps I can pass on suggestions to my parents.

So there it is - what's you advice for the family of a potentially bright and good-natured kid who's nevertheless not very academically-oriented, has problems with reading comprehension and is very stubborn?

[cally]

1. My advice is for everyone to back off

My eldest did not get the grades she could have mostly because she forgot assignments and lost papers. I worried way too much. In the end, she got into great colleges. Not the the top 25, but great colleges and got scholarships. (She wrote a great essay and had an interesting background since she has quirky interests.)

I think parents and students can get caught up in the whole grades/college pressure. What we forget is that there are a variety of colleges out there and not everyone wants to go to a top tier school. I look around at the adults I know and many struggled for many years in college. They dropped out, partied too much, traveled, etc. My sister couldn't be bothered with studying and got C's through college. She recently went back to graduate school and got straight A's. I asked her why and she said that she was intimidated by her sisters and didn't want to compete. When it mattered to her, then she got great grades.

I think the more your brother is pushed and worried about, then the more he'll rebel. If he wants help with courses, studying, or organizing, then help him find help. Otherwise, let him make his own mistakes.

[liberalpragmatist]

2. Maybe that would be best

I worry that for him, he's just somewhat of a late-bloomer (he's among the youngest in his class) but he feels the expectations are so high around him.

The other factor in all this is that we're an immigrant family; my parents are Indian and that's their social circle. And while Indian kids might not be Chinese kids, they're still pretty high-achieving. So my brother constantly feels like he's inadequate.

[Squeech]

3. Books

Give him books. Anything you think might be interesting to him. Baseball history and/or biographies. (One of the first books I remember reading as a kid was the story of Ty Cobb.) Novelizations of his favorite movies, biographies of his favorite rock stars, potboiler mysteries or science fiction. Just get him to read, anything that will make words on the page fun rather than a chore or a source of frustration.

I've got a nephew, 15 years old now, never was much of a reader. (In this he takes after his dad, who reads the Murdoch paper and votes Republican.) But he got big into Pink Floyd in the last year, and one of the CDs he likes is Animals. I gave him a copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm, and he enjoyed it so much that he's now reading 1984-- and it's hard for him; he's been working at it for a couple weeks now, but he's determined to see it through.

There's also my niece, my wife's brother's kid, who has even worse reading comprehension problems, but we haven't yet found anything that interests her :-(

Of course this advice is worth exactly what you paid for it, but I hope it helps. Good luck!

[Chemical Bill]

4. Get him a guitar...

so he can sing the blues. ;)

Seriously, for one thing he isn't your problem. For another thing he still has a ways to go before he qualifies as a complete failure, so you may not need to worry about him. Finally, the best thing you can do is love him without conditions or judgments.

Bill

[no name no slogan]

5. I was the same way in high school

and for much of college, too. I was a consistent underachiever, mainly because school bored the hell out of me. I actually learned more from reading the encyclopedia when I was a kid than I did from attending a class.

Also, even though they didn't find him dyslexic, he may still have a learning disability. I went to college with a woman who could not comprehend written material, even though she was very bright. She had to have all her textbooks on tape, and tape record all her lectures. She got very good grades, but simply couldn't retain/comprehend written information.

I'd get a second opinion on the reading disability thing. It may be something the first opinion didn't catch.

[greendog]

6. Sounds like my brother...

...who made enough money to retire at age 40.

Your brother will be fine. If you're nice to him, maybe he'll loan you some money when you find yourself in a jam. ;-)