DR. WALLACE: I'm a guy who's a senior in high school and my youngest brother is in the seventh grade. He is struggling with two of his classes this year, and they are subjects that I did very well with back when I was his age. Our father approached me and asked me to specifically help him when he requests assistance.

I love my brother, so I agreed to help him. Sometimes when I sit down to help him, he will pay attention, but I noticed he gets easily distracted if a text message comes in on his phone or if he hears a sound somewhere in our house that makes him curious.

At first, I thought these were going to be the extent of the challenges I would face in working with him, but last week he dropped a whole new problem on me. Just as I was heading out of the house one early evening, he intercepted me before I reached the front door and told me he had a major paper due the next morning that he had barely started.

I really wanted to tell him to deal with it himself, but a little voice in the back of my mind told me to stop my plans and work with him. I thought I might need to spend 30 to 45 minutes with him, but it ended up taking me over two and a half hours to tutor him properly.

I, of course, texted my friends and explained why I had to cancel on them, but having this sprung on me at the last moment has now caused me to experience some animosity that I'm helping him at all in the first place. What can I do to avoid this situation in the future? I don't want to give up on him, but I can't be at his disposal on a moment's notice, completely unannounced, either. — An Unpaid Tutor, via email

AN UNPAID TUTOR: I commiserate with you greatly, and commend you for dropping everything to help your younger brother in what was "an emergency" for him. He made a huge tactical error by not getting this project started earlier and not notifying you well in advance so that you could help him in increments several days in advance.

Going forward, you have every right to let him know that you won't repeat the same accessibility on a moment's notice again. Explain to him that he needs to budget his time and you should teach him how to break a project down into segments that can be completed gradually. Beyond this, I suggest that you find another individual, such as one of his friends at school, who does well in these particular classes. Offer to spend your time sitting with both of them to help with some of the coaching and mentoring that your brother needs. Ask the friend if your brother can do a favor for him, or if he can do some part-time work to even pay the other student a moderate amount to put some time in as an "associate tutor" to back you up.

Having a backup is very important since anything could happen or change with your availability at any time. And no matter what, your father should be extremely proud of you that you took his request to heart and that you've invested your time into effectively assisting your sibling at a time of need.

MY MORNING OPTIMISM FADES MOST AFTERNOONS

DR. WALLACE: Every morning when I head off to school, I have high expectations of success! For whatever reason, I always feel truly optimistic in the morning, as I feel like I have boundless energy and I'm going to have a great day at school, both academically and socially.

Some days kind of work out that way, but most of the time by the early afternoon I'm already feeling exhausted and a lot less optimistic! What can I do to balance out these highs and lows that I experience some of the time each week? — My Optimism Bounces Around, via email

MY OPTIMISM BOUNCES AROUND: The good news is you fully understand your situation and have experienced it enough times to understand how the sequence of events impacts your perspective during the day, and as you say, your optimism.

Perhaps the next time you are feeling extremely optimistic in the morning, skip past that thought process and visualize yourself in the afternoon, accomplishing one or two things you wish to accomplish well and allow yourself the ability to catch your breath and glide through other areas of your afternoon that are of less importance to you.

The idea here would be to allocate your energy and positive mindset in segments throughout the day rather than having it all front-loaded first thing in the morning! Pace yourself, and allow the day to breathe for 20-30 minute segments as time and circumstances permit. Your most successful days will be the ones in which you identify what will be the most important things you need to deal with that day and find a way to match your energy accordingly to achieve items you feel are the most important on each particular day.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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