School isn’t for Socializing?
Any teen walking into high school has one big concern, who is my posse? Yes, there are some teens that are going to be more concerned with if they will excel academically, but more often than not your teen is going to be concerned with which table they sit at during lunch.
Please don’t fault your teen for having this anxiety; they’re social beings by nature. This is because their job is to discover who they are independent of you. You have placed one set of expectations on them and it is time to figure out if they want these expectations to stick, making friends is the best way to figure that out. Being a slave to making friends is when you should be concerned.
Friends are like any other pastime, it should never distract them from their job so much that they get fired. In high School this means failing. Sometimes quizzes and projects can go by so fast they have failed a semester before they realize what has happened. Develop a check system a month into the semester to decide whether they’re managing their social and academic time well. Do this again another month into the semester so you have a way to assess your teen’s time management skills before things are too disastrous.
Consider all avenues of socializing when you make these assessments so computer, phone and actually hanging out. One of your teen’s jobs in high school is to develop time management skills. You owe it to them to see how they do before you step in and micromanage, but it never hurts to give them a heads up before school starts. A contract posted on the fridge stating your expectations and what you have agreed upon saves a lot of tantrums later.
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