Does anyone else have a bird brained child? How did/ do you motivate them?

[reallypissedoffhouseseller]

Name changed for this.

DS is 9. He’s very bright, I think, but won’t focus properly on anything- homework is done at speed just to get it done, his handwriting is awful and he doesn’t care, he loves music but has to be nagged to practise. His teachers up to this year have liked him and let him get away with a lot, this year’s teacher has finally spotted that he’s underachieving and is on his case.

I would be inclined to let him live with the consequences of being a bit crap and unimpressive, but we live in West London and if we don’t get him into the one decent state secondary school that we have a chance at, we’d want to go private. But all the private schools, particularly for boys, are highly selective, and unless he actually wants to do well, he hasn’t a prayer.

Any tips about motivating him? Or should I just back off and give up? I’m resigned to him hating me as an adult whatever I do: either I’ll have put him under too much pressure or I’ll have not pushed him enough and let him underachieve. I don’t really know how to cope with this: DH and I were both social outcasts but academically very driven and ambitious, and I didn’t really expect to have a child with great social skills but who couldn’t be bothered with work.

Socially he's absolutely fine. Has friends his own age, adults like him, smaller children like him, his music teachers think he's great, the choirmaster wrote a glowing report. I've got no worries on the social side.

And sport - is he good at sport. Mine isn't because he doesn't concentrate. He's actually the most athletic of my children so could be excellent but is generally at the back of the field.

Mine isn't much good at sport, but he's one of the very smallest in his class so I don't find that terribly surprising: he's competing against people a head taller than he is. I don't think he's particularly athletic anyway.

All these labels flying around. Some kids are just lazy and harder to motivate. I'm the same as an adult!

'Lazy' is a label. It's a lazy label, in fact. From people who can't be arsed to actually find out if a child needs help.

I would think careful about putting an unmotivated child into a highly selective school. Passing the exam is only the first stage - the school will have very high expectations of his effort levels and unless he decides to find that motivation either he will run into problems with the a school quite quickly or you’ll permanently feel like you’re trying to push water up a hill.

Sounds like me in primary school. I was wired to the moon and using cubes to count whilst my class did long division. FF to high school (state comp) and I flew, straight As, RG Uni etc. Sounds like you’re doing fine.

Sorry meant to say for me the style of learning in secondary school just suited me so much better than primary, it all just suddenly came to me much easier. My parents didn’t worry, they said they always knew I’d be top of the class and just left me to it!l

Thanks, 57varieties. I'm hoping something will click for DS in the way it did for you: he has form for not getting something for ages, and then suddenly getting it very fast and zooming ahead.

A lot of what you say is very similar to my DS, who is in Year 7. Starting secondary school has been great for him as he has really engaged with subjects like History and Geography, and the Sciences, and Latin (of all things) which are taught in a much more lively and interesting way than they were at his primary.

We are in Bromley, and face similar problems to you in relation to him doing well enough in entrance exams to have a chance of going to the secondary schools that would make a difference for him long term. He sat for the Bexley and Kent 11+ last September. We didn't expect him to pass, and even if he'd passed the Kent test, it would have been too far to travel. DS did however expect to pass, but he didn't. Did well on the maths and verbal reasoning, but not on the non verbal reasoning and English.

Not passing gave him a kick towards working towards the independent secondary school entrance exams, which took place in January. He really buckled down, and did well enough to have a great choice of schools. Sometimes we have to let them 'fail', I think. Incredibly hard as that is to do.

That's a very good point, WellTidy. I wonder what I can put him in for between now and next January? We don't live in a grammar school area, but I could put him in for the Kingston 11+.

Nothing wrong with seeing if a child needs help and supporting them @HoldMyLobster but there are children who are simply lazy. They do exist and pretenting they dont is pure folly.

Who's pretending they don't?

It's hard living in areas with wildly varying secondary school quality if you have a kid who is not doing all that well.

Outsiders say things like "What's wrong with just going to the local school? Why are you being pushy?" It's hard to get them to understand that "Look, I am not saying my kid has to go to Oxbridge, it's just that round here, the lower-achieving kids tend to end up in the crappiest schools and it exacerbates the problems that they already have." If (and this is just an "if" because I don't know the OP's situation) the only secondary school available had a lot of disruption, behavior issues and poorly motivated kids and parents, I would not consider that a great environment for a kid who is already prone to slopping through his work and not giving much of a shit.

OP, if you post on the Education boards, I am sure you will get suggestions for private secondaries that are not selective or not very selective. You might have to cast your net wider, of course. Could your son reverse-commute to a school which was a bit further away?

Or: You say that your job is in West London so you can't move, but would having a long commute for a few years be at all feasible? I hate commuting too and it's grim and crap, but if it was either that or my kid going to a crummy school, I'd consider renting out my house and sucking it up for a few years. If the situation is different at sixth form, it would only need to be for five years. Do you have any younger children?

I’ve been very alert to dyslexia as my brother has it, but he reads really fast and learnt to read early, so I discounted that

My DD was an excellent reader from an early age and subsequently not diagnosed with dyslexia till she was 12. It was her average spelling which was the initial pointer.

Her issues were more with short term memory and focus which affected her motivation. To be honest, she struggled with that all the way through school but she got a good English degree and now works with children with learning issues.

It might be worth revisiting at some stage

Kokeshi123, yes, that's exactly the problem we have - I don't want to push DS into an academic future that he isn't suited to, but I want him to reach his potential, whatever that is, and go to a school that will help rather than hinder.

I don't want to sound like one of those posters who dismiss all suggestions, but it's difficult: we've considered moving and me having a longer commute (I work in central London), but then effectively DH and DS would be on their own for four days of the week - as things are I often don't get home till 8 or 9, and the commute's an hour each way. So I could do a longer commute, but DS wouldn't see me in the week, which seems to me to have disadvantages (for him as well as me). I'd have to be very sure that we were near a school that was right for him to make it worthwhile. We're also limited in how far we can go, and need to stay to the west of London, because DH's mother is elderly and ill, and we don't want to be more than two hours' drive from her. No younger children, though, so we don't have that complication.

I'll try posting on the Education boards, thanks for the suggestion, but I'm sure I've seen on here that West London is particularly difficult for boys' schools for the less academic. I think rich parents opt for boarding school if the selective day schools don't work out, but for one thing we couldn't really afford it and for another, unless he has a personality change, I don't think he'd want to board. It may yet come to that, though.

I'm in Tokyo, and round here it's common for kids to commute quite a way for school in some cases, if it's the perfect school for them---if it is reverse-commuting, the trains are quiet and kids can even get their homework and self-study done during the journey. I am not familiar with London, but perhaps he could take a train outside the west London area?

Thanks, Kokeshi123. I've started a thread in Secondary Education.