If your kid never has homework ...

If he or she abhors talking about school ...

If you never see a graded piece of work ...

Then you have a problem that can't wait until midterm teacher conferences.

Pick up the phone and call those teachers, experts say. E-mail them.

Bring offerings of coffee and doughnuts — whatever it takes to get a little face time and some straight answers about how your child is doing.

Parents often believe the time to check up on a kid's progress is during the once-a-semester, school-sanctioned teacher conferences.

In reality, these conferences often occur so late in a marking period that a D student will have little hope of self-redemption. The conferences are also often so brief that a parent barely has time to get over the bad news.

Elementary school conferences, for example, can last 20 minutes, but many middle school and high school conferences are budgeted to last a fourth of that.

Experts say the solution for parents is to watch for signs that something is amiss and to contact teachers regularly to discuss the issue.

Kids exhibit a variety of symptoms when the academic part of school isn't going well.

"If he's in trouble, he gets quiet, worried, doesn't talk too much," Consuelo Cramer, of Lansing, Mich., says of her 16-year-old son in high school.

When it comes to checking up on her son in middle school, she asks to see the boy's planner. A blank planner is an immediate signal that she must contact his teachers.

With her son in elementary school, Cramer knows to watch for homework logs, which she must sign. If the logs stop coming home, she knows she can't sit back and wait to talk with his teacher at the conference.

For parents who aren't sure what to watch for, monitor first for avoidance.

Does the student change the subject when talk of classes comes up?

Parents can take control by being persistent, says Maureen Dykstra, who teaches sixth-grade science and language arts at Potterville (Mich.) Middle School.

"If the kids tell you they did it in class, then a couple of days later, ask where is it," she advises. "And if you get, 'Uh, uh ... I didn't get it back,' then I would be picking up the phone."

Don't wait for teachers to call.

"We don't have time to call 125 parents," she says.

Even parents of a top student should know what to look for when grades slip.

Teachers — at least most of them — encourage parents to ask.