Report on Miss Fiona

[pegkerr]

Bad news at the school conference with Fiona's teacher. She's very bright, is a huge reader, a delight in the classroom for the teacher, etc.

But she is not turning in her homework. And the bits she is turning in are obviously half-assed. She failed to turn in eight assignments, and the teacher showed us a pitiful half page response she turned in on an assignment she was given two weeks to do. We are not pleased because 1) she has been denying she had homework and 2) we would have appreciated hearing about this problem before she had fallen so far behind.

She caught up a bunch of assignments today. The school is closed tomorrow, but her teacher will be there for conferences. So I will drive Fiona to the school tomorrow to turn in her homework, and she will lose a week's allowance, which is the usual fine when she misses the school bus. She is no longer allowed to play computer games. And we will be reviewing her homework planner every night.

Goddammit. She's too bright, and she's been been taking advantage of that to coast like a slacker. Must nip this in the bud.

Comments

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

speaking from a similar position when I was her age (and I still fight it in college), have you had her tested for ADD? It's one of those things...Homework is boring, so you can't focus on it, and it's hard to focus anyway...except on the things you care about.

If you can get her to care about doing homework, to actually like what she's doing, then she'll do it. But at this point it can't hold her interest long enough to want to do it or want to do it well.

And the reason I suggest ADD is because she sounds like it from what you say of her and bright children are significantly more likely to have it.

[resqdog51.livejournal.com]

speaking as one who was 'too bright' and yet got way low grades in school due to no homework being completed (despite acing every test)....

Can I suggest you find out why she's not doing it? With me it was because it was boring. Repetative, remedial and boring. I HATED going over and over the same stuff again and again when I got it the first time, and the times I didn't get it the first time, it didn't matter how many times it was explained to me the same way, I still didn't get it, which was very frustrating and made me very not inclined to try it again, because frustration just makes you shut down.

With me, we got around it by not making me do things over and over and over. If I could prove I knew it (do one problem and ace the test) then I got credit for the whole thing. But, if I failed anything on the test, I got no credit for the homework. It did WONDERS for me. In addition, the teacher (and my parents, but mostly my teacher) came up with alternative things for me to do that challenged me, outside of the regular school work. Sometimes it was considered 'extra credit' but, really, most of the time it was make work that made me practice the stuff I was supposed to be learning, AND let me get ahead of the class if I was ahead -- things that I found interesting. Like side projects and such -- all based on whether or not I was passing my tests, but so long as I passed my tests, it was all good. I really learned a LOT of stuff that way.


I dunno. Maybe that helps you? maybe not. But that's from personal experience, so... maybe it will. Hope so!

Fiona is psychic, see...

[amandageist.livejournal.com]

No, no. It's not Fiona's fault. She's obviously channeling *my* bright coaster Kasia, who has occasionally fallen so far from homework grace that I not only stopped her TV and allowance, but started charging her per assignment.

~Amanda

[liamere.livejournal.com]

Must nip this in the bud.

Also, if she's bright, she may find that she does fine at school without doing the work. That might seem great (to her), but it means the whole "work and you will get results" concept might not be as fully fixed in her mind as it should be.

Just a thought, because I myself have always found that I didn't /need/ to do homework every night to do okay, and so now am finding it v difficult to motivate myself to work hard in order to do well. For me, work never seemed worth the effort, so am reaping the results now, I suppose.

[eal.livejournal.com]

Speaking as one who knows (as in, I beat the system with my parents for a LONG time before I got caught), you're going to need help from her teacher in the form of writing out her assignments FOR HER, to make sure that you know whether she has homework or not. Even after my dismal experience with my parents finding out I was doing a half-baked job at homework, I still managed to pull the wool over their eyes fairly consistently.

I'm seriously lacking in patience and I hate (and still do) doing any kind of paperwork. Makes me a pretty darned lousy teacher with a heck of a workload this weekend, let me tell you.

The other thing to be aware of is that bright kids often really hate homework because they know how to do whatever the homework is supposed to be reinforcing and they'd rather be learning something new. Is it possible that she's not being challenged in her current school? That would have been me in middle school. I could, and did, practically sleep through my classes in middle school and still made A's because I knew a heck of a lot more than the rest of my classmates.

Just some unsolicited observations. Good luck!

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

My son does this, too. If you find an effective solution, please let me know.

[kokopoko.livejournal.com]

How old is she? I'm having the same problem with Rachael. I don't know what to do to get that kid motivated!

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

I did that, in fifth grade. Just stopped doing homework. I knew it was wrong not to do it. I knew it was wrong to lie to my parents and tell them I didn't have any homework, or that I'd done it already. But I was bored and I could do the tests well enough (or so I thought), so I let the homework slide. When I was confronted about it, I felt guilty... but not guilty enough to actually do it.

I got a D in social studies that year. Believe me, NOW I'm not fond of that little blot on my otherwise lovely academic record. But getting the D taught me that I couldn't just blow off the work.

You might check and see if there are other factors at play (social distractions, either positive or negative). I was in the middle of a maelstrom of friendship restructuring all that year, not to mention suffering some heavy student bullying, and those two factors probably held my attention more effectively than memorizing the state and world capitals would have. (Mr. Shaill, I am sorry about that now, I really am.)

At least you've caught it now and can start addressing it. I managed to drag mine out a long time...

[satakieli.livejournal.com]

I was exactly the same in elementary school. No ADD, although I was repeatedly misdiagnosed and placed on medications for a while. And I now have a deep-seated irrational distrust and loathing for all psychiatrists and therapists. (Incidentally, that's had some nasty spillover costs. Please, please don't take her to a psych if at all possible--it's very distressing to be aware of the fact that people think there's something wrong with you, and to be constantly prodded as they try to find an answer that doesn't exist.)

I think for me the problem initially, when I was about 7, was indeed the lack of enough work to keep me occupied and interested. I'd drop a few homework assignments here and there because they seemed (and were) trivial and weren't helping me learn anything. In third grade the pattern was intensified and solidified by a series of interactions with a teacher with whom I was at loggerheads for a reason I didn't understand then and don't understand now--but I ended up using not-turning-in-homework as a weapon with which to strike at him. Ridiculous, as it didn't hurt him at all and it hurt me then and for years down the line before I kicked the last vestiges of the bad habits I'd formed. I understand that now, and I think I understood it then.

I'd recommend asking the teacher to give her extra projects outside the normal homework, or perhaps doing so yourself? They should be challenging and interesting to her, and she should discipline herself (or be required to) complete her regularly assigned work before allowing herself to work on the project. It would be great if this came from the teacher--to know that your teacher has a good opinion of you and thinks that you're an intelligent person is a great motivator, and can release a lot of accumulated tension from past (and perhaps some present) haggling over missing work. (Once a bad pattern is set, the combination of the guilt the kid feels for failing expectations and the adversarial relationship the teacher is usually forced to assume tends to perpetuate things. Expectations yield results. That pattern is really hard to break. I'm about to start mumbling about steep power differentials and moral authority and nonsensical things, but if you can turn that authority to your advantage... ack. I have something to say here, but it's past my bedtime and I can't articulate it. I want to say turn it into a situation where she wants to please and the teacher wants to be pleased instead of a situation where she wants not to disappoint and the teacher wants not to be disapointed, changing the pattern gets a bit less hopeless, but that ignores the entire aspect of wanting to excel for the sake of the learning, which is just as strong a motivator. This applies even if the kid and the teacher get along famously in all situations other than the dreaded homework question.)

One more thing--not wanting to disappoint but anticipating inevitable disappointment turned for me in middle school to a nasty breed of perfectionism where I wouldn't want to start something because while it wasn't started, I could imagine its completion in beautiful and elegant ways, and if I started it and it (inevitably) sucked, well, then, really, what was the point? Or so I thought.

It doesn't end there--doom isn't inevitable. I did manage to kick it, and by the time I was taking courses in late middle school and high school that were actually challenging to me, I (mostly) wasn't still fighting old bad habits. But man... how much better it would have been if I hadn't begun those habits, or had kicked them early.

I'm sorry I've babbled; this hit a nerve. I fervently hope that everything I've said turns out to be entirely irrelevant and homework easily starts getting done again.

Anyway. My sympathies to Fiona and you and her teacher. Frustrating for all.

[til-midnight.livejournal.com]

I very much agree. If it is ADD, it's so much to catch it now then in ten years from now when she's really in academic trouble because sheer intelligence isn't enough anymore. (No, that's not personal experience speaking at all...)

[lizardlaugh.livejournal.com]

Peg, I did the same exact thing. And I know this isn't helpful, but my parents just finally gave up. I coasted all through school until I got to college... and it totally kicked my ass until I figured out that 'oh, gee, I really need to do my homework in order to learn this stuff'.

I think the problem with exceptionally bright youngsters is that they feel that the homework is just make work. My attitude was always 'well, I know this stuff, I can ace the tests, what's the point? Haven't I proven myself already?'. And I did ace the tests and most of my teachers let me get away with it or at least let me make up the homework before the end of the grading period or it didn't matter because when, tests are 60% of your grade and the final exam is 20%, and you ace every test... you can caculate just how much homework you have to turn in to get a B or even an A. I started doing that in 4th grade. My senior year, my AP/GT English teacher gave me the highest grade in the class and I did not turn in a single homework assignment all year. Totally didn't help. This really came back to haunt me taking college level math and science. Frankly, it is haunting me now as an aspiring writer -- I have no discipline.

My parents were also at a loss. My mother made straight A's, was Valedictorian, did her homework without being reminded. She just couldn't comprehend why I couldn't do the same. My dad was a total slacker in school, but tried to come down hard to 'teach me a lesson'. I had to bring my math book home every single day and recite spelling words out loud. I don't think it is a coincidence that math is my worst subject and I rely very heavily on a computer spell checker.

I don't have good advice except to say that the time I did well in school were the times I was very much engaged. Not with hard work or busy work, but with work that made me think. My younger sister, who is many times more brilliant than I, dropped out of regular high school and finished her high school diploma at a 'go at your own pace' private/correspondence school. Most of the kids there were teen moms and discipline problems, but she loved it because she could skip to the next thing once she'd mastered mastered something.

just a suggestion

[hotarunokokoro.livejournal.com]

when my kids did this kinda stuff, i gave them the same treatment when they asked me to do stuff for them... for instance, only do half their laundry, give them half af a meal... they got the point. a job half done doesnt cut it. it works with stuff like birthday parties they get invited to and sleep overs too. only pay for half the stuff and make them take up the slack. don't get me wrong, none of my kids starved, but they are wonderful young adults who are self motivated now.

[byrlakin.livejournal.com]

I teach 6th grade and missing homework has been a common occurence. When I spoke with the 5th grade teacher about it, she said the same thing was also happening in her class. While it may be affecting Fiona's grades, it is also normal.

While using the agenda is an excellent way of keeping track of assignments, make she that she is actually writing in it. For students where both parents and I regularly check their agendas, if I do not give homework on a particular night I have them write "no homework" and I initial it.

Good luck with it. Speaking from a professional point of view, this has been the most frustrating problem I have faced since it means that some of the brightest students earn some of the worst grades.

[misia.livejournal.com]

Like a lot of other respondents, I was very similar. Homework was busywork. I hated it. Wherever possible, I didn't do it, or did just enough to get by.

Because my mom was a teacher, I knew I couldn't get away with bad grades -- that was the one thing I knew I'd get my ass handed to me for, without fail -- but I sure did learn how to work the system, and I figured out toute de suite just how much I could push things before my grades started to suffer.

Honestly, I can't say that it was bad for me. In fact, I would argue very strongly that it was *good* for me.

Learning how to second-guess the system has been much more useful to me than learning how to always obey the authority figures and do whatever I was told without questioning it or tryign to figure out why I was being asked to do such-and-so or what they were *really* asking for. Knowing how to suss out what people are asking me for, with some degree of accuracy, means that I often get to bypass a lot of rounds of doing what people say they want (but don't really want) by just giving them what they *meant* to ask for instead of what they *did* ask for.

It has likewise been very useful for me that I learned, very early on, the difference between the level that I know I *can* produce if wanted/needed and the level that is perfectly acceptable for the purposes of the given situation -- I can't tell you how much time that has saved me over the course of my life thus far.

And, in all honesty, it's been a cornerstone of my career that I know I can learn absolutely anything and I don't need a teacher to teach it to me. I learned that by being a slacker, too, because of all the times where I had to make something up out of more or less thin air and without assistance because I had left it until the very last second.

Mind you, I say all this having never gotten bad grades... but that wasn't because I was doing all the work or being a good little do-bee of a student. I wasn't. I looked like one on paper. But in practice I was a resentful bored slacker kid who didn't give a ripe fart for 85% of what went on in school. And I learned a lot of useful things anyway. Including a lot of extraordinarily useful things that I don't think my school knew it was teaching me at the time.

I'm not saying this to say that you shouldn't do your best to impress upon Fiona the need for her to do better in school. I am saying it because I think it bears saying that there are some actual benefits to being a smart slacker kid... if you're smart *enough* to learn how to not let it bite you on the butt. And perhaps there are some ways that the idea that yeah, it's okay to be resentful and bored sometimes, but it's not okay to let being resentful and bored put you in a position of having bad grades or worse, not learning anything, so you need to figure out what has to happen to prevent that, might not be such a bad one.

[morganmalfoy.livejournal.com]

I agree with pretty much everyone else. It's hard to motivate smart kids to do work they know is pointless for their education. It is good for their personal discipline. I think I've studied for a dozen tests in my life, even for one of my majors, I think I've had one really challenging professor. But that's why I take less pride in that Major than the one in Latin, because I work my ass off for Latin, and they're the only classes that I have continually HAD to put effort and time into. I also think that having the smart enough to slack mentality really hurt me later too, because when I got to a point in college (I got a D in Latin II from bad attendance, and one low grade--without attendance factored in, I had a B) where my not being willing to just show up and do work, it really hurt my GPA. Making an A in Latin III the next semester didn't do a whole lot to improve on the D. It kind of woke me up that I might (or might not) be brilliant, but that doesn't mean the rules don't apply to me. Also, I think the habit of not doing work gave me an excuse for any time I did bad--I could always say "well, I understood it, I just never did the work" and I was scared of working really hard and still doing badly. This fear has never materialized, but I have realized that I fear really giving something my all because it will somehow prove I'm not good enough. And lest this sound like mega self-analysis, my point is that I think it's a result of not having a habit of hard work.

As to the ADD question, I would wait a little longer before take her to a doctor. I had to go to a psychiatrist as a kid (completely unrelated) and I definitely felt ashamed at the time, even though being diagnosed and treated for OCD definitely improved my life. Long term, I think it has made me much more open to psychology and counseling, but as a kid it was very difficult.

And sorry about the headgear too.

-Morgan

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I could have written Misia's post--except my mom wasn't a teacher. I got good grades because I would get beaten. Period. I hated school, and I cheated and scouted the busywork as much as I could possibly get away with.

So when this happens now, I have a lot of sympathy for the kids. It's almost always smart kids who are bored. (Sometimes ADD and the like, but those symptoms show up in other ways, and a couple of times it's been bad eyesight sneaking up on a kid, and most often of all it's dyslexia, so even if the kid is super smart, the physical labor involved takes forever, but that has its signals too).

Where other issues are not involved, I talk to the kids about being responsible for actions. Point out that being fair in the classroom not only means being fair on the playground, but if the other kids have to do this work, well, you have to pull your weight. And I try to convince parents to attempt a reward system--too often it's just punishment (which I'm not arguing against. I use it myself, with my slacker son: no homework, no videogames.) But an extra reward for getting the work in on time and decent grades. Immediate rewards, immediate goals: catch up, you get a movie. Get that book report done, an ice cream cone.

It's a constant battle for many because kids just don't see where education is going, and my son is number one. And we do not want to use fear and pain and humiliation as the motivator, as was done so much in the past.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I too see myself in <"lj user="misia">'s post. I always did the homework that was required to be turned in--Catholic school in the 1950s and early '60s made life unpleasant otherwise--but I always tried to figure out the minimum I could do and still get good grades.

I hated, literally hated, every minute of every school day for 12 years (kindergarten was OK). Homework seemed like an intolerable extension into what few hours remained of my days.

I agree that it's important to try to find out the why when a kid blows off homework. I think everything people have mentioned here is a possibility: boredom, dislike of school in general, ADD, and of course Other and All of the above.

And if all else fails, you can hold up misia and me as examples of what happens to slackers-at-heart.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I swear, in some alternative universe, you are my genetic child.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

I second the notion that you should find out if the homework is insultingly easy for her and, if so, to work with the teacher to find ways to challenge her.

I don't want to open a whole "women in math and sciences" can of whoop-ass, but when I was seen to be gifted in math in elementary school, the teachers found me a high school algebra textbook and let me do self-study and tutor the weaker students. I don't want to put down misia if she is glad that she took the same symptoms and learned how to play against authoritarian systems, but I am left to ponder if that's what the educational system should be aiming to achieve.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Fiona's 12.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I have a slightly different perspective on this -- I slacked off in math (primarily between second and fifth grades, but to a certain extent through junior high) not because it was my easy subject or because the homework was insultingly boring busywork (although I was perfectly capable of it) but because it was, by a very slight margin, my hardest subject. In other subjects, work was easy as cutting butter with a hot knife; math required a tiny bit more effort, and I didn't want to do it. I wanted to get back to doing reading for English or Social Studies or whatever, which was effortless and enjoyable, because I wasn't *used* to having to work, and I didn't like it. I was a lazy bum that way. I was more than capable of doing the work; it wouldn't even have been very hard, but it would have been a tiny bit hard, and that was enough to make it offputting. I wanted schoolwork to be entirely effortless and fun, because for most subjects, well, it was.

And of course it can't and shouldn't be. The problem was I was plenty smart enough to get good-enough grades in math even without doing the work. To a certain extent, that was a useful lesson, but to a certain extent it screwed me up. When I got to high school, I discovered math that was interesting and appealing -- trig, calculus, physics -- but since I had refused to do the homework, although I was perfectly capable of doing the basic arithmetic, it didn't come naturally. I had next to no practice and therefore little facility. Conceptually it was well within my grasp, but I didn't have the advantage of lots of repetition to develop a sort of mental 'muscle memory' with the basic processes, and so it was a lot harder than it should be. In addition to the interesting challenge of working out the problems, there was the frustrating fact that I didn't have a terribly good grounding in the fundamentals, and therefore had to work even harder than necessary (which frequently felt like spinning my wheels -- I could get the theory, but had a lot of trouble making it work out on paper). That's part of what prevented me from majoring in computer science, something which I regret to this day.

Given the responses, I suspect my experience is atypical, and the suggestions to see if she's possibly not being challenged and is therefore bored -- or is ADD -- are likely more useful, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

[dreamcoat-mom.livejournal.com]

I have a brilliant young "slacker" at home who has just been diagnosed ADD as an "Oh, by the way" thing when we took him in to be treated for clinical depression. I would concur that it wouldn't hurt to look into it at least - it was a wonderful "aha!" moment when the events of the past couple of years suddenly made cohesive sense. He was also relieved to be given some strategies for dealing with the problem. The grades have come up considerably, as has his confidence level.

Fiona is doing precisely what my Lukas was doing - not bringing anything home, swearing that he did the work in school, and turning in half-baked work at best. We too got the bad news at conferences when it was far too late for any kind of solution. He's so bright that it was easy to coast along, getting passable grades with very little effort. However, that kind of slap-happy work ethic got him nowhere in high school and he was seriously busted by Christmastime. I just wish it had been sooner. Welcome to the weird and wild world of adolescent parenting, Peg. Strap yourselves in and please hold on to the bar!

she's just 12

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest the same thing as some one else, upthread. That she might be in the middle of some sort of social restructuring that's taking all her attention. Also, she's at that age when puberty is just around the corner and you should expect some emotional and social stuff in advance of the physical changes. Becoming a woman is an exhausting process, and I know I've forgotten much of the stress I went through at that time.

It's a tough time to be a girl; I can see why she'd be slacking on school work. Can you give her a little one-on-one time, non-judgemental, so she can process and talk to you? Maybe go walk around the lake or something. Do more listening than talking and be patient with her and see if you can learn a little about what's happening for her.

K.

Re: she's just 12

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes, very good suggestion, and I will do that. We are about to take a trip out of town, and that would be a very good time.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

We did that too -- the hardest part was getting the teachers to follow through, but when they would, it really helped.

Re: she's just 12

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Just give her as much time as she needs to say things, and even if she doesn't say anything this time, giving her that non-judgemental patient open door will be really valuable as the Exciting Teen Years approach.

K,

[folk.livejournal.com]

misia, that is incredibly wise.

Peg, as someone who spent his summers during college tutoring children with ADD, let me say that absolutely nothing that you have ever said about Fiona makes me think that she is even on that spectrum. I think that US culture has a major problem with over-medicating children who are simply bored and not being challenged at school.

When I was at school in the US, I went to the best private school in Westchester county and loathed it. My grades dropped, I lost interest, stopped doing any more than was required to get by. I failed various standardised tests. I moved on to the best public school in Westchester and...loathed it. Same thing.

At the age of 11, I decided that I wanted to go to boarding school in England. I did. Within a year, I was the top of my class in everything but Religious Education (which I failed! Heh!) and History, which I have never, ever done well in, because I never agreed with the teacher's interpretation of facts. I even came top in Latin, which I had never done before. The teachers challenged me, and found out what needed to be done. They engaged me in learning, and made it interesting. They motivated me.

I'm not suggestion that Fiona needs to go to boarding school. But she may well need to become engaged in learning. As a teacher myself, I have to say that the buck ends with Fiona's teacher to get the best out of her, educationally. If the teacher is not managing to do that, I would be asking myself whether or not the teacher was doing a good job with my kid.

That said, I'd also ask Fiona why she's not doing homework, why she's not interested. Perhaps she would be interested to read some things on Myers-Briggs personality types, because there are some people who just don't do well at preparation and thrive on last-minute stuff. (Hi! That's me.) If you present things in a fact-consequence way ("Your grades are slipping. The world will not end, but you will be narrowing down your options for the future, like which college you can go to, or what you can do in later life.")

Perhaps Fiona would also benefit from talking to one of your friends in confidence, as a mentor. I found that was very useful growing up.

I always hesitate to give parents advice on education, because I am not a parent. I have stood in, though, as an educator, as a mentor, and as a friend.

[(Anonymous)]

If you know of any older kids in your area (maybe friends have children that are high-school age and excel in school), it might be a good idea to have them talk to Fiona about the importance of giving 100% when it comes to school. I know that for me, as a teenager, I always take things more to heart when someone around my age gives such advice--because after all, adults and teachers are expected to say those kinds of things. Kids often have a tendency to just write it off as "Oh, they're just saying that because they have to" whereas hearing it straight from someone who can connect with them as a peer generally brings about a "maybe s/he is right" kind of reaction.

-Megan

[fairmer.livejournal.com]

Similar thing for me. I blew off math for all of fifth grade because I hated it. They had tracked me in a lower-level math class for some reason that year--I don't know if it was fluke test scores or an accident or if I'd slacked off similarly the previous year (it just didn't reflect in my grades) or what, but it was soooo awful.... Boring, and I was on the gifted track for every other subject, and going to that math class felt like shame, and I *knew* everything. Blew it off, got A's for the first three quarters and bombed the third quarter with an E (not even a D!), when they actually covered new material.

Augh. Bad memories. My mother was so disappointed and totally didn't know how to handle the situation (or, maybe she did, come to think of it). She got me these math workbooks that were way over my head and told me I had to work through them at my dad's house that summer. Only I really didn't get any of it. I paid attention the next year just so I'd not spend another summer frustratedly dealing with math workbooks that were beyond me. Ended up getting tracked into high level math by eighth grade, as a result.

[dreamingcrow.livejournal.com]

I'm having the exact same problem with my Jake, who's 11. Of course, we've been having them since a month into the school year. :-/ Every time we think we've got a handle on it, things slide again. ::sigh::

You have my sympathies.

Me too

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

"Given the responses, I suspect my experience is atypical, and the suggestions to see if she's possibly not being challenged and is therefore bored -- or is ADD -- are likely more useful, but I thought it was worth mentioning."

Yes, this is mainly what was with me, the homework I hated was hard. It was unpleasant to do, it was annoying to have to do it instead of what I wanted to do, it was maddening to know it was only going to go into the teacher's wastepaper basket once it was done; and it was depressing and embarrassing that I could work hard and still not be very good.

My advice, for what it's worth, is to have her read this thread. Ask her which comments seem the most relevant to her situation and why.