To not know how to help my child at school

[TFC123]

Name changed for this.

Our DS is in Year 4 at our local primary school. Up til now, we have always been really impressed with the school particularly in terms of how caring they are. He has thrived and has made lovely friends, got on well with teachers and made excellent progress academically.

Fast forward to this year. From almost day 1, he came home ‘flat’. He has completely lost his love of learning and says it’s boring. We have supported, bought books about topics and taken him to places to try and inspire but he simply does not like year 4!

We have had meetings with school. His teacher says all the right things but says that every day is ‘up and down’ and that she has to do a lot to ‘keep him going’ and basically get through the day.

He is working at greater depth in everything and we are aware that he is bored BUT he often isn’t getting onto the given challenges etc as getting him to do anything is apparently difficult. He is often asking ‘what is the point of this?’ and sounds like an absolute pain to have in the class. I’ve spoken with his previous teachers who are shocked as he was always SO interested in learning, hard working, focussed etc before. Obviously, we have spoken with him about this at home, etc.

There are no friendship issues, bullying etc. We had a meeting and the teacher seemed to suggest that she was doing everything she could think of and did we have any ideas? We suggested:

being firmer with him - work must be done or it comes home to complete

lots of positive praise and reward

showing an interest in him (chatting with him about his hobbies etc)

letting us know what he’ll be learning the following week so we can ‘big it up’ over the weekend so he’s excited about it when he goes in on the Monday

Great minds of mumsnet, do you have any other ideas? We will take anything!

thank you all so much

Can they give him the challenge work in class and send the boring stuff home?

Does he actually need to do e.g. a times tables grid every morning if he is already confident and at greater depth? Could the challenge work replace the ordinary work for areas where the teacher is satisfied he's confident - because having to plough through boring stuff first is really tedious. The teacher wouldn't make the children who are struggling do the average work before setting them differentiated easier work, there's no reason he can't do the same with the differentiated challenge work.

Can he work backwards - start with the challenge work and if he finishes that then he moves on to the ordinary work, rather than the other way round.

I would engage with him on the questions about what the point is - sometimes the point is to demonstrate that you know something, because the teacher doesn't know you know it until you write it down. Sometimes the point is the knowledge itself (eg humanities). Sometimes it's a building block so that you have the foundations to learn more interesting things later on (e.g. science and languages) - remind him that he couldn't read interesting books now if he hadn't ploughed his way through phonics and Biff and Chip in reception and that was pretty boring too.

Can they gamify it slightly - Timothy I need a fast mathematician to help me take these books to the school office - can you get these books to the office and still get back and complete your maths sheet by the end of the lesson?

Where there is repeating work or overlearning can they send him and maybe one or two other advanced workers out for periods to help Y1?

I would also reassure him that some school years feel great and some less so and that this is normal. "Less so" years are not fun, but he is learning about resilience and getting on with things when he doesn't fancy it, which are also key skills. Y5 might be another great year. The summer term might be better. Having a crap term or even year doesn't mean the rest of his school life is destined to feel crummy.

Is he spending lots of time on screens? Could it be he's finding anything that's not a screen boring?

As an ex-specialist teacher, I have known children who were a bit like this with less assertive and demanding teachers at this age - putting little effort into schoolwork because it wasn’t interesting or stretching them, making them a handful for many teachers to manage.
I think all your ideas are good, including possibly doing some of the more boring stuff for homework (plus then you can see whether the problem lies with your DS being “difficult” or if the work is too dull and unnecessary for him as he can already do it)

In addition, he probably needs a different level of provision to the others in the class. Could you ask the teacher to try giving him the extension work instead of the “boring” work and see if that makes a difference?

Thank you, I think the idea of starting with the challenges might work!

We’ve had a lot of chats with him about what ‘the point’ of the boring stuff etc is, but I’m not sure it’s working. I will keep thinking!

Thank you

No, we only have TV at home, no iPads, phones etc

Yes, ‘less assertive’ would definitely be my description of the teacher. It’s all very gentle

Parents to two very bright DC and I've found teaching completely subjective over the years. Some teachers click with a child, some don't. Some years have been a case of "let's just get through this" and we keep them motivated at home - sports, music, chess etc.

For the eldest she's driven with her learning. The youngest (Year 4, also male) is 100% about the competition. I'd be careful about gaming it too much as you don't want to set them apart too much as they get to Upper Juniors. Year 4 (we found) is when kids are more likely to be able to articulate frustrations with their peers and an overly competitive child can isolate peers. When you have one child in a class hitting 130 on TTRS and the other kids are managing 19 questions in a minute, you have a problem. No one wants to be friends with THAT kid.

What's the teacher like in Year 5? There's a big jump up academically in upper juniors - that might help.

It's a difficult one. If DS was as far behind his peers as he seems to be ahead of them, he would be receiving interventions left, right and centre. Sadly lots of (most) primary schools don't particularly stretch the bright kids and focus all their resources on the stragglers. Literally 5 or 6 kids will be taking up half the teachers time. If they're comfortably working at GD with minimal input, awesome, job done.

Honestly not much you can do about what happens in class other than tell the staff how bored he is with the level of the work.

Outside of school, you don't want to rush ahead onto the next topics so try to cover the ones he's doing in greater depth and link across to other subjects. All dependent on his teacher keeping you updated on what they're doing each week. I have found them to be pretty bad at that too.

He isn’t particularly competitive. Provided he’s doing ok, he tends not to shout about it to anyone and his best friend is on the SEN register for learning needs so I don’t think that’s an issue. He definitely isn’t ‘the cleverest’ in his class, there are some far, far stronger kids especially in Maths.

It’s a 3 form entry school so, whilst one teacher would hugely suit him, another is retiring and I don’t know who the third is, plus they may had a shuffle round so very difficult to predict who he might get.

i definitely think you’re right about “some years you just have to get through”. Neither he, nor his sister (same school) have ever had this before, they’ve always both thrived so far so you’ve definitely given me food for thought there.

He does a few extra curricular things plus weekends away, holidays, play dates, seeing grandparents etc. Do you have any other ideas for what we can do to just keep him going til July! Thank you

We don’t do anything with him at home other than foster a love of learning (read, read, read, theatre, museums, children’s university) and his weekly spellings.

Should we be?

I'd say you are doing the right things.

Chess was a big winner for us. Does the school offer a chess club? If not, try Duolingo as there is a chess game thing on there. Duolingo is also really good for languages.

If his strengths lie in English in terms of what he finds boring (you say he isn't top in Maths), he really shouldn't. You can ALWAYS stretch ahead in English. Better vocab, better structure.

I'd ask school what his standardised score is. That's a national benchmark. Top score is 140. I think to be GD the boundary is 115 or 120. There's a big difference between scoring 115 or 140. If school turn round and say he's scoring 115 i'd be wanting to know whether they can push him up to 140. If he's getting 140 then he's in the top 1% and school (in my experience) tend to know they need to push them.

I remember in reception their teacher said the greatest skill both kids would need to learn is to teach themselves. To push ahead because they want to explore an interest themselves. Because school (state or private) wasn't always going to be suitable for them. We really worked on that. Once their reading is solid and they understand what to do if they don't understand something (write down the word, look it up) then there's no reason they can't self direct their own learning.

This. Teach him chess or something else gardening, types of birds something together his brain and emotion side going. Write a project book on something eg dinosaurs.

For us she had done the entire primary maths and English by like year 4 and to year 6 greater depth standard - she just got it. Secondary maths ks3 maths done by year 6 and gcse maths by year 7. She got into chess big time and always had been into animals and it just accelerated. She did a level maths in year 9 and then school enriched everything but she was straight level 9 in all subjects. Find an interest of his, for mine it was maths, chess, board games, animals and bones (!) and fossils - got into reading classics and discussing religions too. She’s now at university and hasn’t changed (!) some people and lecturers she clicks with and get her and some don’t - either way she cracks on and does the work!
we used to set challenges (!) to keep her mind active eg she likes animal bones so she got her a vet anatomy book at like 9 and just started learning it. We let her get on with it! She’s now a lovely young adult thriving at uni.

What are his chief interests? When he asks 'what's the point' of doing something, you could point out that even top footballers, athletes, musicians, dancers [insert as appropriate] etc spend time on fairly boring and repetitive training and practice routines to perfect and maintain their skills. Authors will often have spent years writing stuff that's never published in order to get to the point where they are successful. If there's a personality he admires, maybe they've given interviews or written about their routines.

Not to side swipe this topic but is your DD ND? How did she manage socially being so far ahead? My DD sounds very similar across the board academics, is the same with languages and music. Grade 5/6 in 3 instruments by Year 6 and has taught herself French to GCSE Level. Likely will sit it early.

She struggles SO much with the girls socially though. Hoping she finds a tribe in secondary but it's so hard.

Please tell me it will all be OK!

He likes chess and does go to chess club at school along with choir, orchestra and rugby.

Where would a standardised score come from? As far as I’m aware, they don’t formally assess the kids, it’s all teacher assessment apart from the Y1 phonics, Y4 Maths and Y5 SATs (although quite a few parents don’t allow their children to do these). Who would I ask for this, the head teacher?

It’s the working on an interest independently which has gone this year. He just isn’t interested in anything school related any more.

Thank you. This is definitely good advice and what we’ve tried so far. Perhaps we need to look more into the specifics of authors he likes and research how long they’d been doing it for before they were published etc.

He isn’t this level of able, just working at greater depth in that he can use and apply what he’s learned to all sorts of other areas etc. I don’t think he’s miles and miles ahead by any means, he’s just an avid reader and this has naturally fed into his writing. Regarding maths, up til now he’s listened well to his teachers and made progress. He knows all of his times tables but the have to do this by the end of Y4 anyway so I don’t think he’s that far ahead. There are some incredible mathematicians in his class and he definitely isn’t one of those I don’t think!

Sorry I meant the multiplication check when I said Y4 Maths test!

And I meant Y6 SATs, I’m not doing very well here 🙈

Update:

Thank you all for your advice, we took all of it on board and I have positive news!

he is slowly, day by day, returning to his old self. It’s tiny steps but he chose a book with his world book day voucher which was about a topic they’re learning about in school. He’s come home and done a couple not projects of his own around the theme (unprompted) and he’s actually talked about bits of his learning.

His teacher took on board what we said about Maths and the children now have three sets of questions to do (varying difficulties) and can choose which to start with so he can start with the very hard ones and then drop back if they’re a bit too hard. Whilst he still says it’s boring, he IS now getting on with it.

There seems to be more focus on the positive and last Friday, he got a head teacher’s certificate in assembly for working so hard and engaging with his learning.

I don’t think this is ‘the end of it’ but at least we’ve now been able to talk about which feels better, doing well and getting praised by the head teacher or being sent to her for not doing your work etc.

So it’s definite progress! Any advice for how to keep this momentum and build on it very welcome. Thank you!