Year 8 approach to homework

[mrssteptoe]

I typed a really long post, then realised I can make this question quite short and sweet.

Is there a body of experience out there of mothers who feared their Year Eight, perfectly bright boys would never really (a) grasp what's required of them in a decent academic answer, and (b) pull their finger out to provide it; and who were then proved wrong in time and whose kids came good and went on to get decent GCSEs, A levels... ?

Instinct suggests that this is a maturity issue, but could do with a bit of cheerleading here. Or, if your experience is that your bright boy just never really did well at an academic school because it just wasn't the right environment, maybe it would help to read about that too.

I feel his main problem is that he sits down to do it, but switches off mentally much too quickly and wants to finish and move on, so does not focus for long enough to produce work of sufficient quality (or indeed quantity, given that you need a bit of quantity to fit in the quality!!).

This will pass, right?

No it won't pass. In my experience it will get worse.

One has got better, one has got worse, and one is still in Y7 so we still have this to come.

Woodlands01
More difficult question, then: with hindsight, do you think there's much you could have done in year 8 to change things?

Restrict screen and phone time-I think this is what i Need to do to increase my attention span, and think it spies to lots of my students, too. Hard to do though!

I am horrid mother. teacher as well. Make them do homework to a good standard. I did this for both of mine through year 7 & 8 and they eventually learned to do it well to keep me off their back. When I said 'only gets worse' I meant from my experience of students in school. If not monitored and made to improve by parent & teachers get exponentially worse.

Haggisfish Thanks for saying "hard to do" - I find it's hard to keep on top of taking away the iPod, and suddenly realise he's been on it for two hours. He is absolutely glued to YouTube on his iPod. We have limited it to a couple of hours after his homework's finished, which is basically the rest of the evening till bedtime, but I think that's too much, and we need to cut to no more than an hour, and not necessarily even that every day. He's not allowed xBox at all Sunday to Thursday.

woodlands01 Thanks for the clarification that it can improve - that makes me feel much better. I am trying to be hands on and make sure that he's keeping up to the mark, but I'm not here four evenings a week so it's quite hard to keep on top of it. Plus I think when I make it clear that I'm worrying, I think he gets stressed because he thinks he's disappointing my expectations. So I find it hard to keep a consistent narrative going because I'm always pulling back so I don't make him stressed.

Woodlands01 I really do appreciate your contribution. As a teacher, that's really valuable. Thanks so much.

*Should have said from a teacher. I'm not a teacher. OK, Steptoe, stop rambling now.