‘He’s so bright but he just won’t work’

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If he was ‘so bright’ then he’d know he needs to work to get results.

The ‘clever but won’t work’ thing is trotted about so many DC, but it’s self defeating. DC worry that if they did work hard but dont’t get Grade As, what then? So they don’t work, and keep the myth of their cleverness alive.

Meanwhile parents convince themselves their children are ‘very bright’ but [x excuse]. It all leads to poor mental health in teens as the myth and the outcome diverge.

AIBU?

YABU as a pp mentioned children can be clever be not mature enough to make the right decisions.

And the school system isn't for everyone. I know plenty of clever people who failed at school. People learn in different ways, just because sitting in front of books doesn't suit some children doesn't make them dumb.

I'd say the opposite. The real bright dc have worked out they can get away with doing a lot less and still get results that are reasonable. I could have done better at school but I managed to get by on the little work I did.

As I got older I did a lot of exams at uni then professional qualifications then my masters but in work I work out ways that my predecessors haven't to make things as efficient as possible so they take minimal time and I can work 'less' than anyone else in my role. So im still lazy but I've worked it to my advantage.

I agree, if you are bright as an adult but not motivated, thats fine but accept people will stop believing you are bright. The proof is in the pudding as they say. Sadly many teenagers don't get this until they are older, I know so many who juggled full time work with evening courses cos they didn't apply themselves first time round. But I really admire that they are turning it around.

Now I'm going to be mean and use by MIL as example. She is in 80s now and had a tough time but typical of her background - left school at 12 to mind younger siblings, worked from 16 and left when married in early 20s. No education at all. She constantly moans about this how we were so lucky etc, and how she was so clever in school, she could have achieved great things if born in another generation. But I first met her when she was in her 50s with adult children and not working and I remember thinking what does she do all day. When I got the spiel about opportunities I remember talking to her about adult ed classes literally down the road, and all the training and employment opportunities opened to her now. She dismissed it all, for no reason I could see and continued doing nothing all day, regularly telling us how clever she was in school as 1 teacher in particular had told her. It annoyed me esp since my mother and grandmother were raised the same way but had gone on to have successful careers and never went on about it. Everyone bought into her story but recently when my DH said something like "well, you know how clever my Mum was in school.." I pulled him up on it saying she was piggy backing for 70 years on a comment by a teacher when she was 9 years of age and I have never seen any evidence of her so called superior intelligence. It sounds mean but its true - my point being if you are so bloody bright PROVE IT!

Ds was always "bright but won't work" still very successful in exams though. Sat his first exam at uni blind so as to detemine how much he'd need to work for it. Got the second highest mark without opening a book and that continued throughout. Got his Masters in a similar fashion. Notes from uni consist of three or four words on a page and the odd instruction of "don't remember" so as he could forget anything not needed or irrelevant. He never had to work at anything at school or uni just saw them as a means to an end but he's very successful and ambitious in his career and works really hard.

My teenagers know EVERYTHING anyway. Sorted.

Different people have different learning styles. Some people need to be shown things by another person and then copy it, some people need to read a chapter in a book, some people can be verbally told once and that's that.

But when a teacher's got 35+ kids in a class, it's utterly unrealistic to expect that teacher to drill down and establish learning styles for every child individually. IMO class sizes should be no more than 15 to 18 kids to counter this, but that's Cloud Cuckoo Land it seems.

Generally people that are intelligent want to learn. You need something to occupy your mind, stop you getting bored.

This isn't always the case. But mostly kids who are thought of as "bright" but lazy are not as "bright" as their parents think they are.

Plus they’re not lazy and they were just about to do x/y/z IN A MINUTE.

Why do you mean by “lack of parental emphasis on delivery”?

I just see it as, probably partly because of their natural personality and partly because of their environment, children will have different strengths and weaknesses.

I think the key is helping children see their strengths to use them to their advantage in life and helping them develop strategies to mitigate against the things they struggle with.

Depends what outcomes you’re focused on too. Success to me isn’t just about financial success, though ability To earn a ‘good enough’ wage is obviously important for wellbeing. Also mental health, happiness etc are important. I’d much rather my child earn a medium
wage but end up with someone they love, settled and happy, than earn a huge wage but be unhappy/stressed/lonely.

I think our idea about success is skewed too. Getting high scores isn’t the be all and end all.

Unfortunately @GasPanic the things they have to learn are not the things they want to learn usually!

I really struggled at school and (good old 1970s) was labelled “thick” by a teacher . But I wasn’t , I was (and hopefully still am) very bright. My parents thought I was lazy and badly behaved, they knew I was an excellent reader and very articulate from a young age so therefore I must be choosing to under achieve.
The truth was I struggled with self esteem, organisation, following instructions (usually related to anxiety resulting in missing the instructions), and confidence. I was very capable academically but all those issues held me back. No one noticed.

I am most definitely bright. I got excellent Olevels, terrible Alevels, a first class degree and distinctions in professional exams.

I'm still more than capable of spending all afternoon on MN when I should be working.

My husband is exactly like this and has coasted not only through school and A levels but uni and a masters....

He also coasts through work professional exams and 2 days solid of interviews! He interviews very well and does do his job but could easily be a lot higher if he bothered......he doesn't want to and would happily work 2 days a week just for the social aspect if he had his way!

There are definitely some who can coast well into adulthood my husband being one of them!

My bright son who didn't work (I had one of each, so I don't think you can blame parentsl attitude to school) lacked confidence and that's a well known feature in procrastinators.

They're/we're scared to fail so they don't do it at all. Being told you're lazy too doesn't help.

He's actually found his niche now and is doing very well in a management job where things need doing "now" so there's no room for procrastination.

There’s a great book called He’s Not Lazy about all this- the argument is that some boys who are over-praised for being clever end up working less hard because they’re (subconsciously) scared of working but doing less than perfectly and so disappointing their parents. Slacking off allows everyone to blame failure on lack of work rather than lack of brains. It’s a sort of perfectionism, albeit a very different kind from that more often associated with girls.

My entire family are highly intelligent but lazy. We all do fine but none of us have fulfilled our potential really.

My son is normal range bright, and unmotivated just like I was. I try to be quite pushy because my own parents weren't.

Totally about parental involvement imo.

I say to my kids “ study please”, and they do.

No, really. 😐

@Scottishskifun my son was exactly the same until he got to work. He's ambitious and works hard, loves money though so always has his eye on the next rung in the ladder or where he wants to go next. Learning never motivated him like money does.

I hear this used in two different contexts:

• where the kid is doing well anyway. We've got some examples on the thread of people who didn't work and did well, for better or worse. But there's another explanation - not to be bitter but my mum said this about me as she ALWAYS thought I could be doing more and if I revised for 5 hours she thought I should revise for 10. Also a lot of kids don't want to show how much they're working or the parents don't know when they are working.
• where the kid is not doing well. Parents see the "brightness" in their kid, which is a great thing, but IMO that brightness doesn't necessarily translate into academic performance no matter how much the parent (and maybe the child) wish it would. Some of the brightest people I know for example are very dyslexic and flunked school, they probably seemed "lazy" as they had given up. And many kids just CBA.

I bet you think ADHD and other neurodiversities are a load of rubbish too. "Just naughty" and "needs a good smack". Bright but won't do the work/apply herself is what my parents and teachers said about me. I knew I had to do the work to get the results but I struggled soooo much with getting started and staying focused. I underachieved at school but gradually learnt coping strategies- mainly overscheduling myself so I HAD to do things in a permanent state of panic. My son was very much the same. After he was diagnosed with ADHD and medicated he was transformed. I then got my own diagnosis which was no surprise at all. I'm a partner at a city law firm so without being boastful I consider myself genuinely "bright". Some of us have massive struggles with our executive functions.

My brother was one of those kids. Very bright. Very lazy. Did nothing in class, did no homework, then aced every test. Getting a job was a shock, but he's now doing very well.

I had a good friend who was very bright (strong natural understanding of advanced maths and physics concepts) but never did his work. An outsider would think he was purely lazy, but the reality was that he was adopted with FAS and massively struggled with his mental health. He didn't wind up getting his high school diploma.

Both had parents who did everything they could for their children and tried to force them to do their schoolwork. Nothing was going to work for either of them in a school setting. One was just dealt a better starting hand in life.

I can't really vote either way. I think someone is pretty bright if they don't have to flog their guts out in life generally and have a nice balanced life. That's certainly what I aim for. There is working smart, and then there is working hard. None of us are workaholics in our house but we put in effort when we need to.

I really don't understand your point of view. He's bright but doesn't work means literally that: that he could do it if he tried, but he hasn't tried. What are you saying - that not trying is stupid? I mean, maybe it is! But it still remains the case that effort and motivation play a huge role in achievement. Loads of people achieve better than you might expect based solely on their natural talent, and loads of other people squander their natural aptitudes by not applying themselves. I don't think that it's smug to say this of your DC, it's admitting that they have no drive.

My useless DP falls into this category. He could if he tried, but he's lazy so he doesn't. It wouldn't bother me if he was working hard but just lacked the skills, it's precisely the fact that he could do a better job if he could be arsed that's annoying.

Oh bore off. We'd all love life to be this simple.

Also, has it occurred to you that many of us don't see our child's formative years as training for an office job?