Rating: 
Summary: Harder than it looks...
Review: Although the 10 steps outlined by Dr. Whitley seem clear, he doesn't spend enough time on strategies for overcoming the resistence and often strong anger that underachievers exhibit when their safety net starts moving away. As parent and teachers start to not respond to being blamed for everything and not rescueing, the anger that is unleashed by the underachiever can often be frightening.
Some of the author's suggestions really need to be initiated and guided by an outside party-I found myself often responding to Dr. Whitley's steps-"I don't know how to do that". I found that the charactersitics were helpful but I was really looking for more tools for the lay person.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent guide for parents, teachers, and counselors
Review: I agree with many of the favorable and critical comments made in the previous reviews but I would like to fill in some gaps. Whitley offers an excellent program for developing a consistently compassionate relationship with your underachiever. Addressing underachievement is difficult because it requires parents, teachers, and counselors to confront their behavior as well. But, Whitley does not blame parents. Ultimately, underachievers are responsible for themselves, and this is the key developmental lesson they have failed to learn. Whitley emphasizes underachievers' dependence on the very people who have tried to help them--their teachers, counselors, and, of course, parents--even as they yearn for independence. Underachievers fail because they haven't really learned how to be independent. As a result, tutors, grounding, bribing, rewarding, only reinforce, rather than resolve, underachievement. Underachievers have learned to depend on other people to help them complete their work, to turn in their assignments, to remember their assignments, and so on, to such a degree that they cannot even define their independence. This is why Whitley's program is effective. It requires parents to step back without becoming distant, to show their child they are willing to trust her, to allow her to state her own goals, and give her a chance to fulfill her goals on her own terms. If she cannot do so, then the parents will intervene and help her. Whitley's ten-step program is wise, practical, and compassionate. Now, this is where the book's limitations become apparent. Whitley addresses parents whose kids "get it," who want to do well but can't function in a way that achieves the desired results. It's not for parents whose kids have gone beyond underachievement and into more troublesome behavior. The most difficult behavior problem addressed by Whitley is lying about schoolwork. (Contrary to the reviewer from Cheyenne below, Whitley does provide an effective way for dealing with this kind of behavior. It is time-consuming and may be nerve-wracking, but it can work.) Whitley's underachievers are basically good kids who are puzzling and may not receive that much attention from teachers and counselors because they don't place as much pressure on the school system and social institutions as more troubled young people. In addition, Whitley addresses two character types, the socialite and the con artist, who are especially uninterested in school but he does not adequately address what to do with these kinds of kids. At least the other kids are interested in things that are related to learning; unless they are severely depressed, they have interests and hobbies that occupy their time and involve skills that may be usefully applied to academic work. Socialites and con artists just want to have a good time and get over; little else matters. For these kids, I recommend Gerald Graff's recently published Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. It's geared for teachers but its message of using kids'(particularly adolescents) expertise in popular culture, socializing, getting over, as well as their innately critical sensibilities, to learn how to think and speak like their teachers, is instructive. If your child fits this description, read Graff's book and recommend it to his teachers for suggestions on integrating your child's interests in class and having that positive energy transfer to his school work.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent guide for parents, teachers, and counselors
Review: I agree with many of the favorable and critical comments made in the previous reviews but I would like to fill in some gaps. Whitley offers an excellent program for developing a consistently compassionate relationship with your underachiever. Addressing underachievement is difficult because it requires parents, teachers, and counselors to confront their behavior as well. But, Whitley does not blame parents. Ultimately, underachievers are responsible for themselves, and this is the key developmental lesson they have failed to learn. Whitley emphasizes underachievers' dependence on the very people who have tried to help them--their teachers, counselors, and, of course, parents--even as they yearn for independence. Underachievers fail because they haven't really learned how to be independent. As a result, tutors, grounding, bribing, rewarding, only reinforce, rather than resolve, underachievement. Underachievers have learned to depend on other people to help them complete their work, to turn in their assignments, to remember their assignments, and so on, to such a degree that they cannot even define their independence. This is why Whitley's program is effective. It requires parents to step back without becoming distant, to show their child they are willing to trust her, to allow her to state her own goals, and give her a chance to fulfill her goals on her own terms. If she cannot do so, then the parents will intervene and help her. Whitley's ten-step program is wise, practical, and compassionate. Now, this is where the book's limitations become apparent. Whitley addresses parents whose kids "get it," who want to do well but can't function in a way that achieves the desired results. It's not for parents whose kids have gone beyond underachievement and into more troublesome behavior. The most difficult behavior problem addressed by Whitley is lying about schoolwork. (Contrary to the reviewer from Cheyenne below, Whitley does provide an effective way for dealing with this kind of behavior. It is time-consuming and may be nerve-wracking, but it can work.) Whitley's underachievers are basically good kids who are puzzling and may not receive that much attention from teachers and counselors because they don't place as much pressure on the school system and social institutions as more troubled young people. In addition, Whitley addresses two character types, the socialite and the con artist, who are especially uninterested in school but he does not adequately address what to do with these kinds of kids. At least the other kids are interested in things that are related to learning; unless they are severely depressed, they have interests and hobbies that occupy their time and involve skills that may be usefully applied to academic work. Socialites and con artists just want to have a good time and get over; little else matters. For these kids, I recommend Gerald Graff's recently published Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. It's geared for teachers but its message of using kids'(particularly adolescents) expertise in popular culture, socializing, getting over, as well as their innately critical sensibilities, to learn how to think and speak like their teachers, is instructive. If your child fits this description, read Graff's book and recommend it to his teachers for suggestions on integrating your child's interests in class and having that positive energy transfer to his school work.
Rating: 
Summary: Some good information but don't expect magic
Review: I bought this book hoping that there would be some revolutionary concept that I had not already tried with my underachieving son. There wasn't. Let's face it, many, if not most children are underachievers, the only questions is, how bad is it? Dr Whitley seems to believe that for all serious underachievers there are really deep rooted psychological problems such as being intimidated by having successful parents or a secret fear of being more successful than the parents. For these serious problems, he recommends, of course, professional help! Of course, if your kid the the ordinary garden variety underachiever he can only suggest firm consistent short term discipline and consequences to compel the kid to do their work without you screaming, yelling, using bribes etc. Frankly, it beats me how making your kid sit at the kitchen table contemplating their motivations, why they forgot their books, etc. is going to give them greater self worth and more internal drive to succeed in school. Punishment is punishment, and chances are most smart children will perceive the author's methods as exactly that. For kids that this method will work with, I suspect turning off the TV, the video games, and all other distrators will probably have the same effect as a motivational tool. Dr Whitley does not suggest grounding because it imprisons the parents as well as the child but taken to their logical ends his methods require even closer supervision and micro management on the part of the parents. If you tell your child on a short term basis that he can't go anywhere with his friends until he completes his work or hands in all assignments for a week is he any less "grounded" other than the punishment and the results expected are more short term? Dr Whitley recognizes that most underachievers will lie to their parents about just about anything connected with schoolwork to avoid doing what they need to do as opposed to what they want to do, however I felt the book skipped very neatly over how to get your kid not to lie to you so that you could then establish what the student actually had to do that he/she was not doing and apply the author's methods.
Bottom line, Read this book at the library. You can identify what type of an underachiever that your child is, and possibly figure out if you as a parent have become an enabler or are being manipulated by your smart underachiever but don't expect any solutions that a smart parent has not tried already.
Rating: 
Summary: Bright Idea
Review: I haven't finished the book, but used the first five steps recommended, and I can't express the gratitude I felt... for the first time in his life, my child cleaned and organized his room thoroughly, and I didn't have to stand over him, nag him, or enact a fit of despair *once*. I've read other books purporting to help with the problem of underachieving; I found the instructions either too vague or too unworkable to put into effect. This one is written in a clear, no nonsense manner that makes it very easy to follow. It explains the different types of underachievers, but doesn't require you to significantly change the program for specific types (a big relief when your child falls under multiple categories). It gives you very specific steps to take that can be used in any behavior-conflict situation with your child and which can be used with any age group. We just started homeschooling, and if this process is as effective at keeping our son motivated to learn as it has been in getting him to clean his room, I will definitely be nominating Dr. Whitley for sainthood.
Rating:
Summary: What every parent should know
Review: I picked up Dr. Whitley's book last summer (2001) and once I started reading, I could not put it down. I bought it and read it twice over the weekend. It was be best book I had ever read on kids, and believe me, I've read plenty. At that time, my daughter was in the 10th grade and was in trouble and making noises about droping out of school. It was uncanny reading Dr. Whitley's book, for what I had been going through with my daughter since the sixth grade was on every page, including all my mistakes and the misguided advice we had gotten to help her that usually only made things worse. I tried highlighting the useful information, but I wound up highlighting entire pages of this book. Before reading Dr. Whitley's book, I had tried everything else to help my daugher, from family and individual counseling to tutoring, rewards and punishments, supervision and just leaving her alone, to groundings, special education, various medications, and endless teacher conferences. I had read other books about kids and underachievement and adolescent troubles. Nothing worked, and in the meantime, while my daughters grades went from As in grade school to flunking four classes in her tenth grade year, her depression increased and I felt I was losing her; and just as importantly, the tensions between my wife and I were increasing. Dr. Whitley's approach made sense; it was clear, precise and sensible and offered hope. I used his approach religiously. It was not magic, but I applied the ten steps he talks about. I gave up on groundings and punishments and took a positive approach he advises. My wife and I actually came together as we used his approach. I used the ten steps he advises over and over again until I actually dreamed about it. There are no instant miracles here, but the approach started working from the start of school last year onward. Using Dr. Whitley's approach, there were ups and downs, but my daugher began to redefine how she made decisions and learned to take control of her own behavior and motivate herself. By Christmas, her grades had improved markedly, but more importantly, her mood and self-esteem changed...she was proud of herself, of her independence, and that her success had become her idea, not mine or her mother's. By March last year, she had made the honor roll for the first time since the 5th grade and we had grown closer as a family. The lies, arguements and tensions were greatly reduced. And perhaps my greatest surprise, she changed her peer group on her own, which believe me, was a real blessing. We've continued working with this approach over the summer, and we are perhaps not through...but the changes in our family and in my daughter are more than I thought possible in the summer of last year. This is a significant, important book for families, parents and children, and it delivers. Every parent and teacher should read this book and I wish it had been available to me years ago so that my daughter and I could have avoided all the pain and mistakes we went through all those years. Thank you Dr. Whitley for this book.
Rating:
Summary: Helpful but Not the Answer
Review: It has been several months since we started using Dr. Whitley's program. After a month or so, our son became increasingly impatient with our calm questioning and was making no progress. While we still use the calm, methodical approach to communications with our son, we dropped the more structured questioning. Our son has been dianosed twice with ADD by psychiatrists. He refuses to accept the diagnosis or medication, and we discuss these issues with him in the calm manner suggested by Dr. Whitley. However, Dr. Whitley's program is not going to result in better grades for our son if the problem is physiological. Dr. Whitley does a disservice to parents by not at least mentioning the possibility that underachievement can have a biological cause.
Rating:
Summary: Helpful but Not the Answer
Review: It has been several months since we started using Dr. Whitley's program. After a month or so, our son became increasingly impatient with our calm questioning and was making no progress. While we still use the calm, methodical approach to communications with our son, we dropped the more structured questioning. Our son has been dianosed twice with ADD by psychiatrists. He refuses to accept the diagnosis or medication, and we discuss these issues with him in the calm manner suggested by Dr. Whitley. However, Dr. Whitley's program is not going to result in better grades for our son if the problem is physiological. Dr. Whitley does a disservice to parents by not at least mentioning the possibility that underachievement can have a biological cause.
Rating:
Summary: Harder than it looks...
Review: My fifth grade son was showing every sign of classic underachievement. He had had a fourth grade teacher that made him feel like a complete failure, and he took that lesson to heart. His fifth grade year was littered with missing assignments, half-completed work, lies about schoolwork, and an overall horrible attitude. I felt like I was losing my child at the age of 11. We tried the usual (punishment, lectures, etc.) to no avail. I bought this book, read it and implemented it to the best of my ability. It was counterintuitive to me (no punishment for bad behavior?) but I'm so thankful I went against my intuition. It proceeded about like he described: two months of not a lot of progress, then the tide began to turn. The turning of the tide, however, corresponded to the end of the school year. He moved from elementary school to middle school, and is doing quite well. He's getting A's and B's in the honor program, is excited about school, and confident of his ability to succeed. My only complaint about the book is that there aren't a lot of "success" stories included.
Rating:
Summary: This works
Review: My fifth grade son was showing every sign of classic underachievement. He had had a fourth grade teacher that made him feel like a complete failure, and he took that lesson to heart. His fifth grade year was littered with missing assignments, half-completed work, lies about schoolwork, and an overall horrible attitude. I felt like I was losing my child at the age of 11. We tried the usual (punishment, lectures, etc.) to no avail. I bought this book, read it and implemented it to the best of my ability. It was counterintuitive to me (no punishment for bad behavior?) but I'm so thankful I went against my intuition. It proceeded about like he described: two months of not a lot of progress, then the tide began to turn. The turning of the tide, however, corresponded to the end of the school year. He moved from elementary school to middle school, and is doing quite well. He's getting A's and B's in the honor program, is excited about school, and confident of his ability to succeed. My only complaint about the book is that there aren't a lot of "success" stories included.
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