To be at my wit's end with DS?

[WithTwoGiantBoys]

DS17 is driving me nuts. In year 12 and simply has no work ethic at all when it comes to his school work. He is doing ok in a practical BTEC and a practical A Level but is failing his maths A Level. We got a tutor to help him, school is doing lots to support him, but it just isn't his priority and he just doesn't seem to care. All he cares about are his mates, his girlfriend, the gym, and his part time job (which only matters to fund his lifestyle).

AIBU to expect him to put in some effort? It's half term and he has done nothing but enjoy himself. I have pointed out repeatedly that we won't be funding his lifestyle after school if he doesn't have a job or a course of study. He just nods along then does nothing. I can't force him to do anything, so I just end up frustrated. I love him, he's a great lad, but if I hear "It's not that deep" one more time I might explode.

YABU: it's his life, you can't make him do anything, he just has to find out for himself and you support him best you can but have to just let it go

YANBU: You are right to be angry and just haven't found the right tactic yet to make him study. (Please tell.me what this is as I'm out of ideas)

There is no point nagging him to practice maths, he isn’t going to do it. He needs to have a goal to work towards then whatever motivation he requires will come, I’d focus on trying to encourage him to think seriously about what he is going to do longer term, spell it out to him I.e you will not be able to afford your fun with no job etc etc. Sit down with his dad and have a proper chat about it with him.

Part time job, exercise? Could be far worse. If you can't have fun at 17 when can you.

Yes the job market is currently horrible. A happy go lucky approach isn't the best in this environment. By all means have hobbies, see friends, have a PT job but focus on studies/qualifications that will help you get to next step in life and set you well for the future.

You're his mum, you have every right to be worried and have every right to intervene when you see him going down the wrong path. Whatever qualifications he wants to do is up to him. But he should put full effort into achieving the best in his chosen qualifications.

I come from india as this name suggests and when I grew up the focus was always on my studies. I have passed this on to DC too.

What does this intervention look like in reality? How can you “make” a late teen study efficiently? Shouting? Punishment? Clue you can’t - it has to come from them.

Also popular and good people skills will likely take him a long way.

Seems like a pretty normal teenage lad to me. He does at least have a part time job so he has some work ethic-just not towards the things you're hoping him to work toward. It's half term. I'm guessing he hasn't skipped all week off his paid job just because it's school holidays.

Mine is 22, scraped through on 2 A levels to Uni. Hated school all his life from nursery to 6th form. Bright lad and could have gone to a red brick uni but just couldn’t be bothered. Instead ended up at one that was formerly a technical college, but achieved a 2:1 and did put the effort in. Of course he’s the year that never sat their GCSE’s. Room lies like a tip 99% of the time. Works permanent nights 3 times a week in a supermarket. He’s applied for a rolling 3 year working holiday visa for Australia, bank rolled off an inheritance. I worry, but then I think he has to go off and do this. I do everything for him and that’s the downfall, so I’m stepping back. If it all goes tits up, then he can come home. It’s his life and I can’t control what he does.

If he has no work ethic it's too late to instill it into him now- life will have to roll over him, and he'll find out.
My brother was like this moderately talented , but never put any work in, he got into a bit of trouble and decided to emigrate.
Without Mum to bail him out he had to shape up so he found it about age 24-25.
It's his life- you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Maths is a subject you can be talented in, but you can't fake it and cram at the last minute- probably a poor choice for him.

I think you should back off and let him make his own decisions at 17. Stay neutral and go into support mode.

I would encourage him to go to uni open days over the summer, to get an idea of what options are available.

I think it's also worth him talking to careers advice people at sixth form to check what the current thinking is on C and D grades at A level. My fear is they might look worse than not taking the subject at all, but I'm not up to speed on the current thinking. Can he downgrade the A level to an AS in maths / statistics? And maybe pick up another qualification in September?

It's also worth him talking to the SENCO or equivalent around the accessibility of teaching materials for maths - I bet it's not very dyslexia friendly. It ought to be possible for him to access the textbooks in alternative formats as a print disabled student so he can get the text books as Word documents and adjust the formatting to his preferences. I suspect screen readers don't handle maths well but worth checking in case it's easier for him to learn with a computer reading to him.

Haha! Another yr 12 solidarity here and I’ve been through it before with my now 19 year old.
DD just says ‘mum, everyone did badly in that test. You don’t understand’ or blames the teachers not teaching it properly. Hmmmm….

But ultimately, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. I do still reiterate the same things and want to make sure she has options to do anything she chooses but it never works.

Ironically my DS now lectures her on the same thing as he realises I was right all along. Funny that. And how if he’d worked harder he could’ve at a better uni etc etc

What I would say is also that in our current era, I actually thinks it’s more important that your children are active, sociable, have good mental health and a work ethic for actual work (even if it’s to fund a hobby to begin with!). Soft skills/social skills are going to be of such huge importance. He’s showing himself to be balanced in his life and that’s huge. I know a lot of super academic kids who have never held a part time job, have no common sense and have terrible mental health and don’t communicate. But they’re studying at top unis and got 9s at gcse…

Would I like my kids to apply themselves more? Yes. Absolutely. And to reach their full potential. But there’s also many ways to skin a cat and if he’s showing you all the great stuff now, it will happen, just in a different way or at a slightly different time.

He sounds like a normal 17 year old. Does he actually enjoy maths A Level? I ask because you say he is doing ok on the non a level subjects so perhaps he is more suited to them.

My son is in final year of college and to be fair his priorities are his car, gym, football and work. College is somewhere on that list but he is sailing through it and on top grades because he enjoys his course.

I dont put pressure on him and I tell him its his life and he makes his decisions. It seems to have worked as he has 2 unconditional uni offers for September.

I had the same approach with his 21 year old brother who is in his 3rd year of a degree apprenticeship.

Sometimes the more we preach to them, the more they push back.

You can only do so much. At his age it's up to him to step up and sort his life and future out.

Suggest you consider taking a step back and if he fails maths, he may learn a tough but important life lesson!

If he doesn't do well in maths but still wants to go to uni there are uni foundation courses that basically repeat a level maths and do other things. My friends son did this at plymouth uni to prep for an engineeering course I think

If he got a 5 or 6 for gcse maths I am not surprised he is struggling. At all the local schools near where we live kids have to have a min of a 7 to be accepted for A level maths. My son went to a grammar school and got an 8 for GCSE maths ... his careers counsellor advised him against doing A level maths unless he loved maths so he picked PE and both enjoyed it and did well in it.
Lots of his grammar school friends continued to do maths a level and many struggled. Its a very hard A level.

So both your children are ND? What kind of assessment have they had? My son was diagnosed with DCD/Dyspraxia at 10 years and did fairly OK with GCSEs, using a laptop and being allowed extra time. However, long story short, it was a bit of a disaster after that and we spent several years getting to the bottom of the problem. He has now been diagnosed with ADHD and starting medication has had a transformational effect on his ability to study and organise his life. I would look into further assessment as dyslexia may not be the end of the story.

Long time ago, but this was me. Complicated by my moving school at 6th form and not having the same maths background the others did. I switched to Statistics after 3months and did much better.

He sounds a lot like my DS at that age in terms of his life, priorities and attitude.

Ultimately, DS does not want to fail but doesn't care about achieving anything more than that. We ended up deciding to completely disengage from all reminders/cajoling him to study, and in the end he just did things his own way and scraped by. This meant quite a few scary intermediary failures (which actually helped buck him up a bit), but ultimately when it counted he did a lot of last minute revision and just about passed everything when it mattered.

There's no point trying to get him to do "the best he can" because he doesn't care enough to want to and we can't make him. This is true of a school setting, there are other areas in life where he will push himself and wants to achieve more than the minimum, e.g. the gym and another activity he does.

Maths isn't the big deal people think it is so as long as it's not a requirement for whatever he wants to do next, he should drop it. It's a dreadfully demotivating subject if it's not your thing and knocks on to other areas of life. My son is now a very successful software engineer without higher maths and earning in the top %age of earners. Don't sweat it, school isn't the be all and end all, there's plenty of other ways to get into whatever career he wants.

My eldest was incredibly bright and capable at primary school, but stopped applying himself at secondary and lost interest. His behaviour at school was great, he just was not motivated to put in any effort at home or to pursue any kind of academic goals. He left school during early Covid with little in the way of formal qualifications and I was at my wits’ end.

Six years, a college course, and two apprenticeships later he’s a qualified engineer with a lucrative job and great career prospects. I have never once had to haul him out of bed or have raging arguments to get him out the door in the morning. It turns out not everyone is like me, we all have different goals and motivators, and me trying to shoehorn him into the academic path I followed was futile. That boy was a lesson to me (as was his brother, who is studying Law at a highly respected university, having completed his later secondary education at college after hating school)

Part of doing well in the world of work, in whatever category, is learning and demonstrating the ability to take responsibility, be resilient when life is tough -and play too.
He needs to take responsibility for his studies.

Honestly as an employer I couldn't care less how resilient someone was in getting a qualification that was irrelevant to the job they are trying to get. Being ever so resilient and scraping a C in maths A level will mean bog all if it isn't needed for his next step.

Best thing for anyone to do is work out what your next step is and do what you need to do to get there. That's it.

Strong disagree - maths A Level is hard. And I say that as someone who got full marks on one of the maths A Level papers and has a maths degree. On one of the papers I got the worst grade I’ve ever got on an exam and got an E. I’m someone with natural mathematical ability and who thrives in exams (hence the full marks) and still struggled with some of the syllabus (I still got an A in the end), and I came into it with an A from GCSE.

If you don’t have incredibly strong foundations and motivation and interest to learn difficult concepts, you’ll struggle to succeed in a Maths A Level.

OP, what are you sons options like if he fails Maths - what routes will the practical A Level and BTEC offer him? I suspect there will be some viable options in there, and honestly I’d let the Maths go if he can focus on that.

Will he be doing AS levels this summer? They can be a really useful wake up call to how much work is needed to do well.

I'm unsure if ASs still actually exist. I know schools still do predictor exams.

I’d say if he’s better at the practical BTEC stuff and failing the A Level, perhaps he isn’t academic and should be pursuing an apprenticeship? Not every child is destined to go to uni and there’s no shame in that.