text: should i ground my son for? my son is 16 and very intelligent. he has scored in the top 5% of kids his age nationally on standardized testing. yet he has a d for the fourth quarter in geometry and holds a c for the year as of now. he also has a's in english, chemistry, and a b in history. i have been telling him since half way through this marking period to pull up that grade and go for extra help. he doesn't always do his homework or study. he didn't go for any help even though the teacher offered. i told him at that time if he ended the quarter with a d he would be grounded for the first 3 weeks of summer.(working around the house, not going out) even though he got good grades in his other classes and still will end the year with a c in geometry should he be grounded, if so for how long? nah, don't ground him. i think it isn't even the case that he lacks doing his homework, or that he studies too less.  i had the same problem in school, intelligent student, on every course i had high grades. only biology i could never get into my head. i doesn't interest me at all how flowers reproduce, my brain simply refused to keep that information.  and i saw it a lot around me, intelligent people who are very good at a lot of things, always have a few things that they can't get their mind to do, no matter how much they even want to.  in my country holland, we grade from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. on almost all my classes i scored 8 or 9 or 10. biology was always a 3 or even lower. no matter how hard i tried.   at the age of 16, i actually think it's a very good thing that your son chooses the things that obviously interest him the most. he's also old enough to realise that he won't really need geometry in the rest of his life. if he even increased his grades to a c, i think that's probably the maximum for something that obviously doesn't interest him at all. the smartest people are only lazy at things that they really have no affiliation with.   (i'm sorry, i am aware of the fact that ur son will probably read this as well, and he will use it as an arguement against you trying to push him to study harder...but hey, then you shouldn't have asked me:p )  love and sprite, mark.