Who will come and sympathise with me on the subject of bright boys who can't be bothered to make an effort with schoolwork?

[frogs]

Argh. Ds on inset day, I'm trying to make him finish his holiday homework, which is a thoughtful, well-structured and (you'd think) boy-friendly and interesting task involving a piece of extended writing about an adventure in Antarctica. Based on the previous half-term's geography work, so by no means the usual 'get your parents to research it on google and tell you what to write' routine.

Boy is bright. Boy is in Y4, and reads extremely well and very widely. Boy is nonetheless reluctant to produce anything other than the shortest, scruffiest, most ill-spelled piece of unimaginative scrawl, and alternates between grumps and tears when encouraged to crank it up a notch. And he can write beautifully when he wants to, I've seen the evidence. But mostly he just doesn't want to, would rather be lounging round the place, kicking a ball or playing SuperMario. Which he has spent most of half term doing, before you all criticise me for being a demon pushy mother from hell.

Argh. Will it get better? Please tell me he won't be like this when he's 15, and I won't have to worry about him spending the rest of his life working in McD's? Please tell me something that will stop me wanting to lie on the floor biting mouthfuls out of the carpet?

only read the op sorry

is this literacy homework or geography homework?

fact or fiction?

i would get him to tell you everything he knows about the antarctic

get his book out and see what he can remember of what he's learned

then don't worry about it anymore if he knows his stuff

or if you are still worried about it, get him to stand behind you on the computer and dictate it to you

I used to teach year 4 - boys hate writing generally. There was some research (sorry I can't reference it) on the subject.

Boys across KS1 & 2 were questioned about writing - the answers were not that it was boring or hard but that it hurt. Further research concluded that as man evolved to hold nothing smaller than a spear, the process of writing can be quite painful. (For Mums too!!!)
For all the teachers - how many times have you seen a boy put down his pencil and shake his hand?? You never see girls doing this.

This is why it is really important to teach them the correct pencil grip to begin with. Also why the idea of a laptop is brilliant.

Sorry this is a bit long and probably not very helpful but I think it's very interesting.

There is, I think, a general problem with kids regarding home work. They feel that they must get it all right, even if this involves getting their parents to do most of it. This is a particular problem among bright boys who have areas of relative weakness.

So they don't want to do the stuff that they find hard in case they 'fail'.

In part this is because they are tested to death and begin to see passing the test as more important that actually understanding stuff.

What we fail to teach them is that learning to fail with good grace, and crucially learn from the experience is one of the most important skills they will ever aquire

could have written the op!

will read thread carefully

Telling people off for not saying 'No' to their kids -- on the basis of a tiny snapshot of the other person's parenting - seems to be a top sport on MN, nowadays.

Anyway, I have same problem as OP. One tactic no-one else mentioned was competition... I'm always telling DS (8) that he has to show all those smarty pants girls (he's the only lad on the top table for literacy) that he's as bright as them. On behalf of all the boys in his class it's his duty to show those girls a boy can be as clever as them.

Doesn't help with homework, but does keep him on his toes in class itself.

Alas, DS will NOT learn to touch type we have tried to coax him to the idea, but it's obviously not half as fun as any other option like playing in the sand pit with his younger sibs.

Just wanted to say my DD year 3 is exactly the same so it is not just a boy issue. I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooo frustrated by her on a daily basis....if she was average and she really tried hard I would be so proud but she is bright but lazy and I am rarely proud of her for her effort she puts in to school.

also got boys here the same.....yr3 and yr1.

and my yr3 boy get regular detentions from his teacher, and yet still will not do any, despite my pleadings and threats!

he would rather do his homework during his detention TBH, and I am not making homelife a fight over 14 sheets! of homework a week when I have enough issues with his simple anger anyway.

eventually he will gt it, and I will then help...until then, he is yr3 and TBH, I am not a fan of homeowrk and do not agree with it until they are in senior school.....then I make sure they do it.

my girls on the otherhand.....do not like homeowrk, but no fighting!!!

much easier

read it all now

frogs, must say you didn't deserve any flak.........

very interesting anyway, I have 2 boys in primary and its worrying, ds1 shows signs of this, at 10 he still wants to please me a bit, but how long does that last?

and how do we go about learning to touch type?

I have a double whammy with DS1 as not only is he a boy (obviously) but he is dyspraxic. We have tried most things - Yoropens, pencil grips, writing slopes. And he is left handed as well so the whole pencil grip thing is a nightmare. The hand writing thing is difficult because even when you have grabbed his attention long enough for him to write something you often can't read large bits of it.

If we could get him to touch type it would be quicker, neater and easier to read.

And the reality is we all write less and less these days anyway - most written communication seems to involve a keyboard.

frogs' ds is the nicest boy, and my ds's hero. have no helpful advice i'm afraid, ds is both younger & playing on the wii ....

Haven't read all posts. OP could be describing my DS3. Sadly he is in Y11, in the middle of GCSEs and has just carried on coasting through school doing the bare minimum.

My Ds 12 (yr7) does all his homework on computer. His SENCO advised that he learnt to type at 20 words a minute. Turned out he was doing that already and he had taught himself.

It's not like when we were young and had to be taught to type, they seem to pick it up themselves.
I have both problems with him. Half the time we seem to be trying to get him to do his homework and has a tendency to leave it until last minute, then we have the other extreme where he will spend 5 hours doing a piece and finishing at 11 at night. It was a piece of homework similar to OP's about traveling through diffent ecosystems.He got really into it and didn't want to stop him when he was in full flow.

Wow sniffyhock, that is interesting! my ds is dyslexic but struggles particularly with the actual act of writing. He always says it hurts and cries if he has to write more than a couple of pars.
We type most of his homework, but the dyslexia means he finds typing a challenge too, as everytime he sits down to a keyboard, it's as though he has never seen the letters before in his life....

Read it all now, including some v v unhelpful comments.
I have two boys and a girl, youngest daughter and son motivated to do homework and the other one not at all. Will spend 4 hours in his room reading his course books (true) rather than put pen to paper for homework that eventually (after I have virtually given myself an embolism trying to get him to buckle down) take him 10 minutes. He is very bright but hates to write.

Course work for GCSE's can be very stultifying and this seems to be such a common problem I think it's very unfair and "anti-boy" to include so much of it in exam results. I'm so glad this is going to change.

I have had many, many battles over this and the problem is that if the school does not take it on board as an issue, and find a decent carrot and stick approach to motivate the child, it can be very destructive at home.

I can offer some encouragement.. he is improving at age 12. We're changing schools to one with higher expectations where if he doesn't do it, he will be picked up on it.

I have used strategies like the one I described, and in addition, have had him dictate it to me, then I dictate it back, so that he's not "thinking and writing" simultaneously. He's thinking, then he's writing.

I've also got him to copy out large blocks of text from course books, just to get him used to writing large amounts neatly.

It's very tough and has very little to do with parenting strategies and discipline I've found, so good luck.

Oh frogs, only read OP but posting so I remember to come back and read this tomorrow.

I think my ds is either

a) lazy or
b) a bit thick

but unless he tries harder I won't know and I'm finding it v wearing too. Have just researched schools and he either works hard and possibly gets into good free one or doesn't and maybe getys into fee paying one which means us finding £800 a month for FIVE YEARS, aaaggh.

Have skimmed thread and yes, MB, it is a shame that the approach is as it is.

My ds doesn't even put the effort in with sports frogs so I think is worse than yours. He puts effort into

being lovely to his sister most of the time
yu gi oh cards
Wii/PS2 (only allowed in moderation)
star wars figures
playing with friends
reading some fiction (not as much as I would like)

His teacher said at the recent parents evening that many many boys are like it, they'd rather be playing football etc. He said it in a tone of voice that suggested he understood too.

We are going with daily 10 minute tests from now until whenever for the 11+ but it won#t be enough unless he tries harder. He can do them, just makes a huge fuss and doesn't want to and gets into a strop and we have screaming etc etc.

Sorry, that's no use at all is it?

at www!

My ds isn't thick, but I don't think he's a genius either. He's doing fine by most measure, but could be doing considerably better if he could channel the attention he devotes to cricket into his schoolwork. Round here all the good fee-paying schools are nearly as selective as the state grammar am hoping to wangle a good comprehensive for him. Argh so hard to walk that tightrope between nudging and motivating them to do their best and being unrealistically pressurising.

There are some really useful as well as reassuring individual posts -- thanks to all who took the trouble to help.

Crossed posts, www.

At least he's sweet to his sister, that's lovely. Mine is a sweetheart too, he'll make someone a lovely husband one day. He has big brown eyes, makes a mean cup of tea and can operate a washing machine. What more could any girl want?

My other main leverage atm (apart from 'show me you've made an effort with your homework and you can have half an hour on the DS') is that he's started noticing cars, and has his sights set on a sporty BMW. So I keep spelling out just exactly how much those cars cost, and how he'll need to be a lawyer (his maths def isn't up to being a banker) and he'll need to work really hard to get a swanky car like that.

Arf.

frogs - do you think there is any mileage in addressing the "dauntingness" aspect? (I am extrapolating a bit from what you said about the maths being less stultifying, as being more contained ...) Do you do "mind maps", for instance? - where ds can dump all his ideas in a way that somehow naturally categorises them & sorts them into blocks, & then he could do a block at a time, gradually over the week? (With breaks for rewards of Dr Who stickers.)

I have masses of experience doing this with ds, who - without that sort of structuring scaffolding - can't even get started. But once ds has his chart to guide him, we get some rather wonderful written work (comment from his teacher, reported to me by ds, on seeing some work he had managed to finish: "If only ...")

my DS(10) hates writing.... it kills him to do his spellings and worksheets. it's become a daily battle, but i notice that he tends to get sloppy around this time of the year anyway. he'll do math/science/reading all day, and he's doing really well in all his 11 plus practice sheets but i'm sooo fed up of his diary being full of "try to write neater" i think it might be the reason that he doesn't enjoy writing but unfortunately he can't type the homework.

I'm not sure this is a boy issue but leaving that aside:

1} homework in the holidays is damned annoying
2) a piece of extended writing for homework is damned annoying

Therefore, your ds has a point

He sounds like at least half the incorrigible boys I teach! The fact that he likes reading is great - it gives him inspirational ideas, adventurous vocabulary, modes for expression, all essential for progress in English. He might never like extended writing but boys, generalising massively I know, when it really counts can be very grade driven & competitive when it comes to coursework (they never read the feedback, just look at the mark) and they can turn it on for the examiner.

i agree with you wholeheartedly pointy