Is ParentCONNECT Too Much Information?

For those of you not familiar with ParentCONNECT, it's a web tool that allows you to micro-manage your child's school life.

You can monitor their homework assignments, email their teachers, and you can get email alerts if they fail to turn in homework or a miss a day of school. The only thing missing is a web cam that allows you to see them goofing off in class.

I never had access to a tool like that when young GTO was going to school in Richmond. Ray County don't play that shit.

But from kindergarten to 8th grade, GTO was a straight A/B student. No disiplinary issues, no problems. Just glowing grade cards with comments from teachers who described her as a joy to have in their classroom.

But now she's attending the Blue Springs Freshman Center and unlike Ray County, they do, in fact, play that shit. So now I have access to all of this fine detail. And it's disturbing.

I get email reports of failing grades because she has failed to turn in assignments. So I start talking to her about it and it pisses her off. We've never had these conversations before. There was never a reason to have these conversations.

But the thing is, she hasn't actually recieved a grade card yet. This is all a work in progress that I am seeing at a level of detail that was previously unavailable to me. She has never, ever, received a report card with anything below a B. There may have been one C. But still. She's a good kid and a good student.

So I told her I was going to back off and just trust her to do what she has always done and bring home the A's and B's.

But here is what I have up my sleeve.

She has recently discovered the joy of going to concerts and experiencing live music. I've bought her a couple of concert tickets in instances where there was an adult chaperone willing to go and stay with her and her friends while they endure the loud, unlistenable crap that 14 year old girls call music (I sound just like my dad talking about Jimi Hendrix!).

If her grade cards for this semester are below that A/B standard that she has established, I'm going to cut her off of little extras like concerts, CDs, T-Shirts, etc. and put her on notice. She has the next semester to get her act together and get back in that A/B range. If she fails to do so, I'll suspend her cell phone account for the summer. A (by then) 15 year old girl without a cell phone and text messaging for the summer. To make it hurt, I'd probably have to get her mother to take the laptop away too.

OK fellow parents, what do you think?

This was a lot easier when I didn't have access to the day to day stuff.