My son has only just turned 6 and is in Y1. He has never liked school - resistant to it from day 1 of reception. The problem is that he is not doing his written work in school. He is daydreaming/ staring into space/messing around, more so than his peers. The teacher says that he is clearly very capable of doing the work, because he can answer the questions verbally. This is for writing and maths - anything that involves putting pen or pencil to paper. For reading he is in the top set, and reading short chapter books on his own at home. I know she is not requiring an unreasonable amount of work from him. It is the same at home - for example, if I ask him to write a thank-you note for a present. He is perfectly able to do this, and he's actually enthusiastic about it right up until the second of having to start writing. Then he seems to zone out - he stares out of the window, stares at the ceiling light, is distracted by everything, does literally anything other than write. He will only do it if I threaten to take away a toy or a nice experience, and then he does it without any problem - so he CAN do it. It's some kind of psychological block as far as I can see.
I have arranged an approach with the teacher which we will try, and she suggested speaking to the SEN coordinator about his concentration, but I don't think either of us are very sure about this. He has no problem concentrating in any other situation and there are no other indications of SEN that I can see. His power of concentration simply seems to magically disappear when he is asked to do anything involving pen and paper. On the advice of the teacher, we are not doing anything other than the (really minimal) homework with him at home, and we even stopped his clubs for the same reason, so i don't think he's overloaded. Just wondering if anyone else has experience of this, and if so what you did about it?
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Lack of motivation in a 5/6 year old - how to address it?
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thestickereconomy · 18/06/2018 17:16
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