Dear Dr. Meg,

I am concerned my son is cheating at school – but I’m afraid this may be a bigger issue.

I have been keeping up with his grades and ask him about every low grade I see (he’s 14 so he doesn’t love that and he gets an attitude). I finally had to say, “Okay, I’m giving you full responsibility for whatever happens with your grades. I won’t get on your back about it, but it’s up to you to tell us what you need for studying or you can do it all yourself. You know the consequences for grades below a C-.” (any grade C- or below and they have all electronics taken away until that grade is a C or better).

After this conversation, it seemed like he was doing great. I never saw him with homework and I didn’t see him studying, but his grades were really good. I still couldn’t understand how he was doing it.

His report card was great – he only had two Cs. In the past, his report cards were pretty good too, but he would have large swings during the trimester and have to work hard to bring them up.