How do adolescents become underachievers? Many underachieving adolescents have had poor parent-child relationships. For example, their parents may reject them, fail to encourage them to be independent, treat them inconsistently, and rarely model achievement orientation.Generally, the parents of underachievers are not happy with themselves as parents and show high levels of anxiety. The school environment itself may be the culprit-underachieving adolescents may simply find school boring. When both home and school situations are modified, a remedial program is more likely to be effective ib changing the adolescent's achievement behavior