Back story: my SO (divorced father of two girls aged 13 and 9, who I will refer to as SD13 and SD9) and I have been together about a 1.5 years now and have been living together for almost 3 months now. SDs stay with us most weekends, but their mother (referred to as BM, short for biological mom, from here) has full custody and they are with her during the week.SD13 started high school this fall, even though she should have been held back in grade 8 due to failing pretty much everything. But, where I live, we can't hold back kids because of their feelings... We knew she was going to be at a disadvantage because of this going into high school, but my SO and I talked to her and encouraged her to do well (which she said she wanted to) and let her know she could come to us with any problems with school work (my SO and I are smart, highly educated people and are more than capable of tutoring her in any high school course).We started making her do math on weekends since she claimed to never have homework. The more we worked with her the more we realized she was extremely far behind; for example, we had to teach her long division from scratch. About 2 months into the term the school contacted BM notifying her that SD13 was failing math and science and had a whole bunch of missed assignments and tests. My SO and I had a lengthy talk with SD13, pointing out that she was setting herself up for failure, that she was intelligent enough to do math, and that she just had to put some effort in. We found out all the missed assignments were because of therapy appointments that BM was taking SD13 to, and BM had never bothered to notify the school so SD13 just has a bunch of absences.SD13's grades have continued to decline. We have continued to talk to her to impress upon her the seriousness of the consequences. The school again notified us this week of her poor performance, and that during a meeting with staff SD13 said she would not attend school-offered tutoring, that she wouldn't catch up on old assignments, and that she would only work with EA's in class if "forced to".My SO is contacting the school today to set up a meeting to talk about options and the best course of action. BM has flat out refused to get involved with the school regarding SD13's poor academics performance, and as far as we can tell has not attempted to motivate SD13 in any way (SD13 isn't even made to do homework when at BM's house). My SO is tentatively planning on reaching out to BM to see if they can co-parent better on this, but BM is high conflict and quite frankly, a crazy, stupid person, so we don't have high hopes on that front.We anticipate SD13 coming over this weekend, although she wants to spend less time with us because she's a teenager and she doesn't want to do homework (surprise surprise!). My SO and I are at a loss as to what to do about her academic performance. SO is afraid that if we punish her she will resent us, rebel, and want to spend even less time here. Making her do homework at our house isn't helping enough, and even if we set something up with the school SD13 might refuse to participate in it. And of course, we don't want to sit back and watch her fail.Any advice or tips are welcome. My SO and I are both stressed out about this and are getting really angry and upset with SD13. She doesn't have a learning disability, she is just plain lazy and doesn't understand that she is setting herself up for a difficult future. It looks like she is going to follow her mom's footsteps and drop out of high school. Her sister, SD9 is completely opposite and does well in school and wants to do well and learn.TL;DR: SD13 is failing grade 9 math and science, SO and I are at a loss on how to motivate her despite many attempts to help her, and BM refuses to get involved with her schooling. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2jhMwiY
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