Fear of failure

[Sonnet]

I am hoping for some advice. I posted a while ago about the behaviour issues I was having with DD2.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/behaviour_development/1740520-Please-please-help-me-with-dd-12-behaviour

I think it is linked to her recently diagnosed learning issues. In a nutshell each academic year Dd fell further behind her class. She has recently been diagnosed as having an eye convergence, slow processing skills and a poor working memory. I was also told she showed signs of ADD.

What concerns me now is her fear of failure . She is unwilling to revise for her end of year exams as in her head if she Doesn't revise then she has an excuse for not doing well.
Has anyone else had any experience of this?

I am concerned that if I do not solve this now she will become someone who writes her name only on her GCSE papers.
I have contacted the learning support centre before half term but am waiting for them to come back to me.

Bump for the evening crowd please!

Hi, I have just skim-read your old thread. This all sounds very tough. I hope the learning support centre gets in touch soon.

Firstly, what is her school like? Are they in contact with you and keeping an eye on her on not? Is it a big school? Are they worried about how she is doing academically?

Is she being rude or rebelling (e.g. body piercing, sneaking out, drinking) or is it solely refusing to revise? Does she do her other homework?

Have you had a proper conversation about this with her? What did she say?

Sorry I have not been able to offer any advice, but I send my support.

My DS1 has a fear of failing his ethos if you dont start it you wont get it wrong. He also has very slow processing skills (bottom 2%) and "well below average" working memory but an almost photographic memory for facts most sadly for him an IQ putting him in the top 5%. The best analogy we'v ever had is Porche engine lawn mower gear box. He is also hypersensitive to noise being unable to block out sounds thats most would routinely do e.g pens being tapped etc and is also hypersensitive to other people emotions so if a teacher is tired, cross, stressed, disorganised etc he instantly becomes like this. This seriously affects his concentration and ability to work for long periods of time.

I frankly dont know the answer to this problem he's constantly underperfomed and also most frustratingly of all has been consistently misunderstood through out his school career. This has at times had a negative impact on his mental health. We've tried everything cajoling praise bribery pleading shouting threatening you name we've tried it over the years and its made no difference. We've been most successful with mixture of cajoling shouting and very specific help organising revision time etc. The only thing we have found is that when the chips are down and the exams actually do matter he somehow manages to pull it off he's just managed to pass foundation level maths GCSE (at the beginning of the this academic year I thought he would still be re-sitting it when he retired).
I'm hoping (Im not a natural optimist) that when he starts his A levels next year and is doing subjects that he's chosen because he likes them and that those he hates ; maths maths maths maths will have been removed that he will be more inspired to work and give it ago. he tells me he is ambitious and wants to go to uni and get a good job. He does have a good GP whose listened to him and given him support and eventually the school provided him with a good tutor (not my initial impression) who actually tried to be on his side and I think this helped a bit.

Children with these kind of profiles are very inconsistent but its like trying to write with your hands tied behind you back and a blind fold on it must be absolutely exhausting they have to concentrate extra hard just to understand the simplest of instructions or write the simplest story. Teachers in general and in my now extensive experience are completely bloody useless jobs worths just don't understand the problem.
The really important thing is not to try and explain to much at once everything has to be broken down into small chunks and then talked over to ensure he's understood it or even better try and get your school to write everything down (best if luck with that one). I believe that part of the reason why they don't start things is they don't fully understand what is being asked of them they've got the general gist eg homework about Churchill but not exactly what they got to actually write about. My DS is like an encyclopaedia and would know millions of facts about Churchill but fails to write much becasue he hasn't understood the instructions and cant separate the wood from the trees.
If you talk to others with DC"s with similar profiles to my DS everyone will tell you as the curriculum gets more complex they under perform this is so frustrating it is a disability and although an invisible one and it means that he struggles to access to curriculum in the same way that a severely physically disabled child would.
I'm sorry I can't offer a solution or be more optimistic. I understand that just like blind people have more acute hearing children like ours compensate for their problem in one area by developing outstanding skills in another; in my DS's case a virtually photographic memory, high levels of creativity he's exceedingly articulate and an extraordinary memory for faces and micro detail of events unfortunately he's trying to stuff all this at once through the eye of a needle wearing a blind fold. Do PM me if you want to know more.

My DD is 19, has dyslexia, very slow processing, very poor long term memory, plus a few other LS issues & we didn't get a proper diagnosis until she was 15. She's been assessed by CAMHS, had some mindfulness training, counselling both private & via CAMHS & yet nothing helped for a long time. DD was self harming & really in a terrible place mentally & felt unworthy of anything good in her life. She tried going to sixth form three times & each time left before she was pushed. All she saw was failure - that's her words not mine.

In the past few months its almost as of everything has changed? She's been working for the past year & has a minimum wage job she doesn't want to be doing all her life; yet she's built up so much confidence in herself because she's actually in an environment where she doesn't feel under pressure. She's now decided to do an access course one day a week & continue working while she studies. If you had told me four years ago that DD would be happy, healthy (apart from the glandular fever she currently has) & forward thinking, I would have struggled to believe it. I'm so proud of her because she found her own way of getting through those tough times. We've always supported her obviously, but maybe our worries were actually putting undue extra pressure on her shoulders?

Don't know if DD's 'story' is helpful to you, but I've been in your shoes & I know how frightening it is, but for us there appears to be a great big light at the end of that very long, dark tunnel.

I understand exactly where she is coming from. My dsis was very bright, hard working, great all round student. My db was held up to be a child genius.
I chose not to work for exactly the same reasons. Luckily for me I was good enough to get through, and it was only in my adult life that I realised that I wasn't the stupid one of the family.

Could you afford private?
I don't think private is the answer to all school problems, but you do get the very small private school that works with individual children in a way that makes them all feel special for what they can do. They become an important person in the school life rather than a little lost fish in a big sea.
My dm worked in one that generally had less than 30 pupils and they specialised in children who for one reason or other needed individual attention. Often the children would spend a couple of years, then, having gained confidence would restart in a bigger school.
I've a friend whose dd has gone to a similar (but bigger) school round here too.

We sent DS1 to a an independent school IME a complete waste of money at least now we're not paying for getting nothing! If you post on the "Children with special needs" section of MN not "special needs education" there's lots of help and of people who've had similar experiences to me in the independent sector. I understand from the ed. psych that his "profile" is quite unusual and that most teachers wont have come across it but to me anyway its doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand it and his requirements aren't that complicated.