to wish - almost - that ds2 would fail an exam?

[Greensleeves]

Does anyone else have a Y10 boy who is completely and utterly complacent and lazy about school work?

He's a smart cookie and does well with minimum effort, so he's not actually failing anything, but my god he's driving me insane! Academic work is just not part of his mindset. At all. School seem to be pretty lax about homework (after having a big draconian drive on it last year ) so he gets away with doing virtually nothing. He did NO revision for his Y10 exams whatsoever - and I do mean nothing at all. I've had endless conversations with him about why I feel it matters for him to develop study habits, learn how to revise etc, and he just nods along, or points out that he's getting 7s and 8s in everything so he doesn't need to do more. Which is hard to argue with, but it frustrates me to see him coasting. It worries me that he doesn't know how to strive - he's never had to work really hard for anything in his life. He thinks IABU because 7s and 8s are great results (which they are!) and he can get them without trying, so why put himself out?

He makes the very reasonable point that his older brother works too hard, is too driven, and will probably get 9s at the expense of his mental health (it's a bit more complicated than that, but ds1 has ASD and suffered bullying and has had a very tough couple of years). DS2 says his work/life balance is his own business and as long as he's doing OK we should back off. He also wants to be allowed out with his friends until 10pm, which I think is too late...am I just an old fuddy duddy who needs to move with the times?

AIBU?

This was me OP I didn't revise until uni. Failed my first driving test at nineteen, devastated is an understatement, I'd never had to try very hard and never failed. It's alright I did well in my degree and now have a professional career, I still probably wing it a bit too much at times but it's never gone badly!

Oh and I used to do a lot of school homework on the school bus 😁

But they were basically well-educated alongside their chosen fields. You’re not going to be Copernicus without (essentially) being a polymath who is good at most things, and a strong work ethic to go with it.

I thought it took him years and years to graduate because he kept bunking off to go and listen to astronomers instead. Honestly though, I could be thinking of a completely different person!

Darwin was a disinterested student as well.

One blog says
"It must be admitted that Darwin's undergraduate years, save perhaps the last ones, were not especially promising --- less so, it may be, than even Einstein's. Darwin was not so much a bad student as a mediocre one, exhibiting little interest in his studies, whiling away time with the horsey set, and avoiding, to the extent possible, all consideration of his projected ecclesiastical career. (Long-time readers of this blog will recall much of this from the post "Go It, Charlie!" two years ago.) Had the chap who spent hours in his room practising "throwing up my gun to my shoulder before a looking glass to see that I threw it up straight" not proved against all expectation and probability to be one of the most influential thinkers in human history, details of his undistinguished life at college would be nearly impossible to discover; they are hard to obtain as it is."

I think actually a fair number of influential thinkers didn't do well in the conventional educational system, they ended up following their own unconventional interests - once they'd found them. Einstein was an unexceptional schoolboy. Roald Dahl too. Primo Levi was rubbish at Italian at school yet still became one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. You don't become a genius by following all the rules. There's hope for your boy yet, OP

My sister was like this. Would get an A with minimal effort. This worked fine at GCSEs but she bombed when doing her A-levels, could not get into her uni degree of choice and had to change plans as a result. She is clever but does not apply it and is in a low paid job and career. This would be fine if she was happy but she isn't. She is resentful that her siblings are better off financially, she thinks mum and dad did not push her enough. They did, she just didn't listen.

Your son is at a stage where he could turn it around in yr 11. Are 7s and 8s good enough grades for what he would like to do next? Yanbu though staying at till 10pm on a school night is way too late but up for debate on a Saturday.

Could you make a deal with him? you want him to learn how to study, he says his grades are fine.
Select 2 subjects (together with him) that he promises he really applies himself, and you back down. he’ll get to learn how to study properly, hopefully can see what his full potential is, but also keeps his easy life mostly?
my parents did that with me, and it worked very well

You sound a bit like my mum did. I coasted through school getting As and A*s with minimal effort. Never really had to put any work in academically until I started studying at Masters level. I also got to grade 8 in two instruments doing minimum practice.

From 15-18 all my mum and I did was argue. She'd had to work hard for her academic results and couldn't understand why I wasn't doing the same. Her answer was that if I worked harder, I could have got all A*s, and maybe she was right, but as a teenager I couldn't understand why I should bother.

When he needs to start putting the work in, he will. Or he'll fail a mock at some point and it'll come home to him. Don't let this become a thing between you.

So the stars turn things bold apparently

YABU. I think there can be a kind of competitive workload/stress thing surrounding exams and there’s this assumption that if you aren’t tearing your hair out and crying over your revision books every night then you aren’t working hard enough. It’s actually a GOOD thing if he’s able to revise efficiently and productively and get good grades while still managing to have a life.

I’ve always been quite good at judging how much work I need to do for an exam/essay etc and getting it done quickly without too much stressing. When I was your son’s age my mum used to tell me that I wasn’t working hard enough, but I was getting straight As. She would hear all these tales from other parents of tearful students throwing their revision books at the wall and I think it worried her that I wasn’t like that because she assumed it meant I wasn’t taking things seriously enough.

If he is doing well then I think you need to congratulate him and not apply unnecessary pressure for no reason. From my experience that only leads to unhappiness and anxiety later in life where you constantly feel like you’re not good enough even when you’re achieving amazing things.