Help! Ds's teacher has told ds we are "pushing him too hard" and "may be confused" re 11+ whaaaat?

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Ds is ten, will be 11 in October. The 11+ is this October. I have posted before about not being sure whether he's lazy or not that bright, since he doesn't appear to try very hard when we have given him home tuition / 11+ tests and so it's hard to tell. So I went to see his teacher last night as I thought he might have a better idea and asked:

• do you think he's got a chance of passing?
• do you think he's bright enough to be ok if he gets in or am I doing him a disservice giving him tuition and trying to help him pass?
• is there anything else the teacher thinks I should be doing?
• I explained that I have bribed ds and he gets stuff if he passes

The teacher said first of all he was double booked so would have to make it quick, then said he 'would like to see him pass' but that ds lacks concentration sometimes and can be slapdash. I know this. He fails to read questions etc and doesn't answer properly because he hasn't read the Q properly.

To clarify, home tuition meant an 11+ tutor for 9 sessions only last year to teach him how to do the 11+ tests, since then he's had no tuition until recently (a month ago ish) when we've been asking him to do 10 minutes of test questions every night. Also:

• He doesn't have to do them at the weekend
• He only gets about half an hour homework a week.
• He does no afterschool activities.
• He is allowed to laze about a lot at weekends.

We're not pushy parents imo.

ANYWAY, ds came home tonight and said the teacher would like to see me at parents' evening next week as he's concerned we're 'pushing him too hard'. Teacher also said he thinks we may have misunderstood and that 11+ shouldn't be revised for.

Btw, our choices for secondary are:

• pass 11+, lovely school
• alternative school, rubbish, in special measures
• another lovely school but we pay, £880 a month

We could pay but I don't want to have to JUST BECAUSE DS IS LAZY! I don't mind if he doesn't pass if he genuinely tries his best, (I really don't) I just can't bear it to cost me and ex dh £60k or whatever in fees over the next x years because ds CAN'T BE ARSED now, which I think is fair enough.

I already work my fingers to the bone, commute 4.5 hours a day and was looking forward to not paying nursery fees of £800 a month from Sept when dd goes to school.

Wise words much appreciated. I'm tempted to drop teacher an email tonight saying "just to let you know, we're not pushing him hard! It's 10 mins a night! And no tuition since last November!"

Feel v anxious about tihs. TIA for any advice.

You're all going to tell me to wait and see what he says aren't you? I am also concerned that he#s telling ds he needs a break. Because that's not the message we're giving him.

Wasn't havign a go at you btw oo hope it didn't come across that way!

I think a bit of all of us being consistent would be damn good for him tbh!

Have also said I'll email ex SIL a link to this thread so she can see what I'm on about. She said in a text this am that she had already been thinking about the 11+ and ds, she knows waht he's like!

oh yes, you all need to be in agreement, I was just thinking that if he is reluctant to the the extra work (which isn't a lot AT ALL, you are not being pushy etc), then having all the family round giving a pep talk may shove him the other way and make him dig his heels in

are any of his other friends at all going to try for this school? what are their parents doing?

Take your point OO, will discuss with dh and see what he says. Thanks.

what a cool extended family - great that he has you all on his team

Your ex-SIL sounds the perfect ally www, good luck with this and with talking it through with the prof

You sound like you are a brilliant mum to your DS. It is so hard to keep the boundaries when there is family pressure (eg ex MIL)to let them do as they please. I know exactly what you mean about just 'encouraging' him to do the practising now in order to secure his future. It is so hard and such a fine line between thinking 'oh I can't be bothered' and actually if you just give it a go, you may actually pass!!! Just make sure you don't overdo it with the family, need to emphasise that it isn't the end of the world if he doesn't pass but on the other hand, if you don't have a go, you will never know. My DS1 had his cousin (at really, proper pushy primary school - complete opposite to DS2s school) and all his cousin's friends doing the test at the same time. They (apart from cousin) were all heavily tutored and it scared me to death seeing what they were up to, they did all pass but so did DS2 with only tutoring from me, but I was able to glean through sister what stages they were all at with the marks they were getting etc, and so I knew the competition he was up against. And only he and one other boy passed from his primary school (as opposed to the other schools and esp private schools). So, not wishing to scare you, you do need to get them up to the highest possible score just before the test!! Forewarned if forearmed etc. It is really all down to practice, if they are bright to start with.I just felt I didnt want him to lose out, just because he couldn't be arsed to be honest, but it is very difficult!! Good luck.

Sorry that should read 'forearmed if forewarned' I think.....God sounds like rubbish now, but you know what I mean!

thanks bagsforlife, all of this is really useful.

how are you feeling today, www?

so glad you have ds's dad on side and his family - consistency across the board has got to be beneficial.

i think my ds (i know he is quite a lot younger) would pretty much do anything for half an hour's worth of screen time

I'm really sorry but I haven't read all the postsso this has probably been said:

1. you are not being pushy
2. ten minutes a day is not much to expect but the lazy little so and so is ten and may want to go with his mates to the sink school which I appreciate you're really not going to
3. You have tried really hard to motivate him and it's not necessarily working as he might think he will get all that stuff out of you eventually/he may have enough stuff to not really want the extra

How about you send him for an hour a week to a tutor? That covers his sixty minutes and if you pick a cool and fun tutor who has great modern teaching techniques then he will enjoy it. Most it will cost is £30 (my dh does this for friends). I appreciate others may charge more depending on area.

hth

Maybe he's worried that if he does his best and still fails then he will be labelled 'not bright'...

He could be non-academic, more into sports/arts.

He could just be a bit lazy.

He could just be a bit lazy, a bit non-academic and a bit worried. That combination would have described me at that age if you had sprung the 11+ on me

What a horrible system...is it just in England that they do this?

I am feeling cheered today BK as all this advice was so so helpful. I think we'll go and see what the teacher has to say next week. DH will be with me and is calm and reasonable, bet he doesn't get accused of being pushy.

Thanks Lauriefairycake, that might be an idea tbh. THe tutor he had before said it might be an idea for him to come back nearer the exam so will think about Aug/Sept I think.

MrsM, yes, all of those could be true, I agree. It's only some counties that still have grammar schools, we're in one of them.

Btw, whoever said Oct is ages away, it ISN'T - it's less than THREE months until the exam.

Just an update for anyone who helped (and this thread was fantastic, really sound good advice so thank you to everyone who posted on it):

I saw the teacher today, who smiled wryly when I repeated what ds was supposed to have said. He DIDN'T say this! (I know, I shouldn't be surprised, ten yr old boys are not known for their exact repetition of something someone said to them).

He said he had asked ds how he was because he was concerned he might be stressed / worried about the whole 11+. He said he did think ds didn't try hard enough sometimes or do his best and that he hadn't noticed any pattern to this, he just thinks he is an inconsistent worker and needs to improve on it. He said he had told ds that he really needed to work consistently at school, for SATS AND for the 11+. He had said to ds that beyond a certain point revision wasn't helpful.

SO: once I told him that
a) 10 minute tests were ALL we were doing
b) I am not pushing but I don't want to pay just because ds can't be arsed (explained about random ticking of boxes)
c) I would really appreciate his encouragement of ds, which he agreed he would give
d) I only want ds to be happy but that I think the grammar will be good for him.

Teacher doesn't think if ds gets in he will struggle, he thinks he is able, just doesn#'t work to the best of his ability some of the time. It was a nice conversation, he recognised the boy I was describing (apart from the tantrums, he couldn't believe we were having to deal with those).

He isn't anti the 11+, he passed it and went to the same school we want ds to get into. The teacher didn't work very hard for his A Levels and regretted it when he got the results, a fact I passed onto ds in the car on the way home.

We are going to change our approach with ds to:

• Giving him a break for the first few weeks of the school holidays
• moving to doing 2 x test real 11+ papers a week and going through them with him afterwards to see where he went wrong
• getting the tutor back n Sept for once a week
• immediate reward of PS2 for doing the tests twice a week
• I have told ds that his BEST IS GOOD ENOUGH for me, his half hearted pathetic effort is not.

Thanks all very much, I got some very valuable stuff from posting here.

That sounds really positive www.

www, have just read the whole thread - that sounds all very positive from the teacher. I think getting the tutor back is good - I bet your ds will work better for the tutor (because children can be sods!), and that removes the emotional side of it (ie the tutor is emotionally detached).

Btw, dd is very much in the 'if I think I might not be the best then I won't do it' mould - she is very perfectionist, and if she gets something wrong, she will throw the BIGGEST tantrums - crazy things like when she was writing from 10 to 0 and wrote 10 9 7 - when she realised she threw the book across the room, screamed her head off, got into bed and sobbed herself to sleep. . So there might be some of that in your ds if he is trying not to 'lose face' if he doesn't get in - easier to say 'yeah, I couldn't be bothered to try' rather than 'I did my best and my best wasn't good enough'.

Fwiw, I get dd and ds1 to do extra workbooks at home, and they're only Y2 and YR - they do maybe 20 mins a week and really like them - but I started to do this when I realised that a good number of the class were having extra tutoring in maths etc (Kumon and the like), and I didn't want them to fall behind. A little bit of extra does them the world of good, and it's led by them, so hopefully isn't pushy. But if I didn't, I think ds1 at least would slide down the class, and end up in a group that was an artificially low one (because the higher groups had people who were there because of tutoring, not brightness). Does that make sense? And for 11+ you can guarantee that the other children are ALL being tutored, so there is no point in taking an altruistic view that it should be a 'true assessment of the children without help'. Because it will only disadvantage your ds.

Sounds like you're on the right track, and getting exdh's family on board has to be good! Could your exMIL/SIL do some papers with him? Or your exdh? Good bit of male role-modelling!

Good luck with it all - I am DREADING the whole secondary school thing - you know what our schools are like!

Sounds like the teacher is on your side which is great. The fact that he went to the school your DS is trying for is also a bonus. Don't push the 'not doing v well at A level' story from teacher, might scare your son into not trying at all!! (sorry, just thinking how my DS1 might have reacted 'what's the point then?').

Thanks for these new posts, some good thoughts here, TS, was wondering where you were! And yes, I do know the situation in Bristol and you have my sympathies there. Glad to know your dd is like that too, I do think this is true of ds and so changing our approach is a good idea. bagsforlife, you're right about the a levels, good point, but I think ds is impressed that the teacher went there. I like that he has a cool male teacher, thank goodness there are still some men in teaching.

Batters, me too! We haven't tried to get him to do any for about a week now, we are wimpsforgetful

amic, you might have a point there. He is in the top sets for numeracy and literacy and teacher said his vocabulary is better than most, which surprises me as I tend to think his vocab is a bit rubbish but there you go, what do I know? Maybe I am harder on him than I think I am...

RR, glad you like it.