She

She is her mother's daughter.
She makes me smile.
She makes me laugh.
She is artistic. Brilliant. Incredibly smart. Observant. Stubborn. (She comes by that one honest enough.)
She makes me realize all the stuff I put my mother through. (Sorry Mom!)
And...


She is ... Making... Me... CRAZY!!!!!

My child, my middle child, my sweet, loving, laughing little girl is driving me up a wall. I have no clue how to talk to her. I don't know what to say to make her understand that if she wants a change to come about, SHE has to make it happen! I can't help her with this one!

You see, She is about to fail the 6th grade. For three 9-week periods now, we have struggled and fought, and grounded, and argued, and taken things away, all in the apparently vain hopes that something would make enough of an impression on her, to get her to buckle down, focus, and make better grades.

This? This is one thing I NEVER put my mother through. I was always, and still am, an over-achiever. I make good grades. I study. I care about my success. Mostly because I always wanted my parents to be proud of me.

My daughter? Nope. She couldn't care less. Her excuses for not doing her work? "I don't want to." "I didn't feel like doing it." "I did it, I just didn't turn it in."

?????????????????????????? WHAT?????????????????????????

Why would you do the work, and then not WANT to receive credit for it? I don't understand her thought processes. I don't understand why she is so determined that she CAN'T do anything about it at this point, so she's just going to fail. I don't want her to fail. I want her to believe in herself. I want her to TRY HARDER! But every time we talk about her grades, her study habits, she just responds with, "I can't," or "I don't know."

She has struggled in the past, and we got her on medication for her very severe ADHD. She's smart as a whip, she just can't focus. Her dosage is already really high, and based on what I've seen of her attention span for things like beading, video games, reading, arts and crafts, and so on (basically, the things she likes to do), her medicine is working fine. This? This is all behavioral. She is choosing to not do her work. She is choosing to not turn it in. She is choosing to fail. And since she's 12, she thinks she's big enough to decide to not do her work, but then shirks the responsibility for doing something to correct the problem.

So my question is this: How would you handle this situation? How would talk to a child who refuses to talk about the problem? Would there be a punishment? How would you follow up to make sure she was doing the work, turning it in, and so on?

I feel like I've tried everything. Punishments, grounding, taking away video games, taking away her favorite toys, no arts and crafts, and so on. We even took her out of Rainbow Girls. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING has had an impact on her. Nothing entices her to make the right choices. It really seems as though she doesn't care. We tell her she is smart enough, we tell her she has to make good choices, we tell her that she's the only one who can make this change.

I even tried a more negative tactic, telling her that if she doesn't pass the sixth grade, she's going to be almost 20 when she graduates high school (because she's already been held back once, in first grade), that the other kids will call her names and make fun of her. Maybe this was a mistake, because instead of making her want to do better, she just seems to be giving up.

She is amazing, this daughter of mine. She teaches me knew things about myself everyday. She shines so brightly when she wants to. And right now, she is making me absolutely nuts.

So how do I teach her? How do I get through?