help! Struggling to get my child to do work

[crazymummy28]

I'm a single mum of a 9 year old boy. He's had problems at school for the last couple of years and its recently come to a head where his teacher is struggling to get him to do work in certain classes so is sending it home ot be done at home. Once he comes in I sit him down and ask him to complete the work but he won't, instead complaning of not feeling well or being tired etc. Its come to the point where I'm at the end of my tether and although I've taken away his DS, told him I'll stop him going to afterschool acitivites etc I am still struggling to get him to write anything. Its getting to the point where anything he does produce looks like its written by a 3 year old, if at all.
Any advie would be greatly appreciated

Might be worth checking for a learning problem first - dyslexia, processing problem etc
If all clear then test him (you can buy test books from Amazon) in English, Reading (a test for reading age so that you can plot his progress) Maths and Science.
Once your sure he has no learning problems and have a baseline of what he knows now you'll be able to compare to National Cirriculum levles (available online) and plot what he needs to do to get up to speed.
At that point it comes down to motivation - then your looking at having a system of rewards and penalities which you'll need to stick too.
There are many many ways to reward / penalise learning, what works for your lad might take a while to find generally things like extra TV programme, small amounts of money, playing a board game, kick about with dad etc for rewards, excersise (20 push-ups), making everyones beds, doing extra washing-up duty etc work well as penalties.

He has been tested for dyslexia, dyspraxia etc and at the time (this was 3 years ago) they said the only thing they could find was that he was a bit underdeveloped for his age. I've bought handwriting books and game books which involve work which he's happy to do but when its work coming home from school I struggle to get anything done

I have to lock me+ DH into a boring room with rest of household locked out, to get him to do any work at home. DS literally now allowed to do anything else but sit at the table with his work in front.

We got to the point last night of me removing every toy/book from his room and him sitting in there on his own to complete it. Took another 2 hours and he managed to write 3 sentences. I gave him a book back to read but said from now on he will have to earn everything else back by good behaviour and good work at school. He seems to have had an okay day at school today. the only thing is I couldn't stay in the room with him as I can feel my blood pressure going through the roof the longer he sits there doing nothing lol Still thanks for the advice, I will perservere as best I can :)

But you have a cast-iron excuse for two hours of MNing on your laptop - under the guise of "supervising" his homework! Result!

I wished it worked like that, Clam! DS needs my 100% full attention or he starts larking about again.

Hmm, sounds like he's got you done up like a kipper!

I think you need to test his basic understanding and knowledge of maths and English. If he's been like this for a couple of years, he might have big gaps in knowledge which result in him finding the current lessons overwhelming. My DS is 8, Y4, and when he moved schools half way through year 3, we found he was procratinating doing his English homework all the time. It was exasperating seeing him waste 2 hours to write 2 sentences. We soon noticed he just didn't understand what was expected from him, as the level was so much higher than in the previous school. He's now having extra lessons to catch up.

Clam, I think you are mistaken when you tell OP ?he's got you done up like a kipper?.

OP, your DS is very lucky to have you taking so much care to ensure that he gets some of his work done.

The fact that he isn?t getting on with his work, either at school or at home (unless you have very strict conditions and he has your undivided attention) suggests to me not that he is behaving badly, but that he isn?t doing it because he can?t.

I think you do need to explore exactly what the difficulty is, and work out why he isn?t working.

I think you deserve some outside help to address this - having your undivided attention to get through a bit of work is not sustainable.

I thought Clam's kipper remark was to me (posting as ragged), not to OP. I shrugged it off in a mood of "You haven't had to parent this same child."

It's not clear whether OP's child ever does the work quickly enough, maybe he does need other types of testing; I know DS can do the work, just bloody doesn't want to, I don't want to constantly threaten/reward him, either. I could write a huge amount more but may not apply to OP's child.

Your son sounds like mine - tests concluded that he is mildly ADHD. I don't like that assessment but it does make me realise that it's something in him and not just him being naughty.

What works for us is sitting and doing the homework with him. The only HW he doesn't struggle with is the Education City stuff.

Maybe your son would be allowed to complete his tasks on an excel spreadsheet.

Hi crazy, sounds like you / your ds are stuck in a cycle of behaviour and that he may have lost his confidence and feeling overwhelmed - as someone else said. For him it may be daunting and he may feel he has a
mountain to climb so he doesn't want to start the climb. If I were you I would go right back and start with some very basic learning so he can gain confidence. You could also do some fun things like word search or number games on a board ( if he's in to football do some work around the league tables which can be great fun) just to get him engaging, learning how to focus and most of all enjoying it, then slowly build up. There is no point trying to force him to do things he's just won't or can't do. It will only damage your relationship. Once he sees himself making small steps he will have a sense of achievement and gain confidence. See it as a journey you can go on together and enjoy it. I know it's easy to say an not so easy to do but when things get better you will both feel great and closer to each other because it's a shared journey. Btw, I think it's wrong of the school to hand the problem over to you by sending work home they should be working in partnership with you to help your ds.