When a child won't do homework

[user1466222549]

I feel really low as I feel that I have basically failed as a parent. I have a 15 year old DS, who is doing a french controlled assessment which will count towards his GCSE tomorrow morning. I have tried so hard all weekend to get him to revise and he has basically done nothing. It seems to be a case of you can take a horse to water but can't make it drink. Nagging just results in a row. He is six foot and when he starts to shout, I find it intimidating and usually back down.

Despite being academically able, he is doing poorly at school as cannot be bothered to do more than the bare minimum. Actually is doing less than minimum. I feel that I haven't the parenting skills to deal with this. Is it just best to accept that however much you want the best for your children, there is only so much you can do?

Also, preparing the language CAs are a skill in themselves.
The kids aren't used to learning stuff off by heart in English let along in French.
I think it could be very daunting for a disorganised person, because they won't see how to break it down to learn it, once it is written.

DD used to take 7-10 days learning each one, adding 50 words a day for 6 days, then working on fluency/accuracy for the last few days.

My DS was like this.

He got through A levels by winging it and continually resitting exams.

At uni, he failed and his girlfriend dumped him.

Do what you can to see if he can be assessed for dyslexia/asd problems etc. At DS's school, I think they just thought 'he is clever, he will learn to organise himself' but he didn't. I think we did far too much to help him and got far to little support. It was just looked on as a typical boy thing.

He managed to wing it through GCSE (apart from Tech where we had to imprison him in the study to finish his coursework and drive him up to school for extra practical time after school. Thought he would learn his lesson but didn't.

It is worth looking at:

a. If he has any hidden disabilities that he has managed to cover up.

b. If he does actually want to do academic work - look at the alternatives.

c. Bear in mind it is much cheaper to 'fail' at this stage. I have known children who spent 3 years in 6th form or took a year out between Y11 ad Y12 to find out what they actually wanted and to work out what was going wrong.

Mine knuckled down at easter, just before the exams. Heaven only knows how well he's done. We have a plan b too.

teta I must admit, I was extremely surprised to see in his last report that they are still predicting "A"s despite his ongoing problems of disorganisation and not handing in homework. HIs actual achievement grades have gone down over time rather than up in the past year. Getting As in anything looks unlikely I would think.

At parents evenings each one of his teachers flags up the same issues and asks us if he has problems in his other lessons. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of communication between them all.

However, recently, one of DS's teachers spoke to us while we were attending Parents' evening for my DD. She told us she was concerned about DS's poor progress in her subject. It turned out that she was completely unaware of his OD. It seems that information is not really shared between teachers as much as I imagined that it would be. On the plus side, this particular teacher has been amazing ever since. She has given DS loads of extra help and it is making a massive difference already. So impressed.

Cherylene Very interesting post. We have constantly had friends and family saying to us since Year 7, that it is a boy thing and he will come good when it matters. I think that they are just trying to be optimistic!

I am holding out hope that CAMHS will assess for any hidden disabilities. Whilst waiting for his talking therapies to start, CAMHS have asked both us and the school to fill in countless questionnaires which appear to be for the purpose of assessing if he might have ASD.

I agree that it is better to "fail" at this stage rather than getting to uni and failing there and landing up with loads of debt to pay off. I am currently googling apprenticeships as this might be more successful than academic work for him possibly.

TeenAndTween Thank you so much for all of the helpful advice on coping strategies. Funnily enough, I struggle with organisation myself and have to use every single one of the tips you have taught your daughter. Makes me think that I have undiagnosed Dyspraxia myself. Anyway, I digress. For my son, the fundamental fly in the ointment is that he is probably not sufficiently motivated to go to the amount of effort that is needed to develop compensatory strategies.. Nevertheless, it is definitely worth encouraging him with regard to this and I intend to give it a good go. Thanks again for the input you have given as it is really useful.

Could you contact the Head of Year? Perhaps some mentoring or monitoring via a report card thing? Collecting info from all teachers might help?

*Wolfiefan In the last few weeks, the French teacher has asked the school Pastoral Care to help DS with organisation as a result of our recent talk with her. They have actually sent someone into a selection of his lessons when they have someone spare, which is fab. They can' t do it all the time however as resources are not always available. The input of this particular teacher has been amazing. He has had more practical assistance in the past few weeks then the whole of Years 7 - 10. We are incredibly grateful.

How did the CA go?

Any idea how long it will take to get CAHMS into motion? My DS struggled a bit (same as yours: predicted wonderful things but never lived up to expectations), and in the end I got fed up of trying to get the school to take his problems seriously and sorted out an assessment myself. I was horrified when the report came back because even I had underestimated how much he was struggling. He had a nice assessor who asked the right questions and he opened up to her. He said that he has difficulty comprehending prose: sometimes he has to read the same sentence six times before he gets the meaning. Imagine how exhausting that must be! It explained a lot of bad temper and not-trying.
However, once he had his diagnosis, he seemed to perk up. It may have been age and maturity, too. We'll never know, but I think it helped to have an impartial person understand his dyspraxia and explain it to him (i.e. you may be brilliant at X but you really suck at Y which is why you struggle. Y is inherent; you cannot cure it, you can only come up with strategies to minimise its effect).

It might be an idea to check post-GCSE admissions. I think they are only allowed to select based on academics (and that will only be on their best results, not every subject), not other things (like attitude, attendance, interview, etc). Knowing that will take some worry off you.

IDK
Thank you for asking. The CA went much better than the one previously, which was "Ungraded". The wonderful French teacher emailed me to say she was pleased that it was a much better performance on last time. Not a brilliant grade, compared to his predicted grade, but progress none the less. We are going out tonight for a meal to celebrate. Am thinking that reinforcing anything positive may be more effective with him than "Punishing" the negative.

We don't know how long it will take for CAMHS to start sessions with him. I keep ringing, but they can't tell me or even give a rough idea unfortunately.

Well done for getting your son a diagnosis and enabling him to understand the difficulties he was dealing with. How is he doing now?

No screen time or wifi unless he's done his revision

Sorry didn't realise there were more pages

Spandexpanties Thank you for your post. For next set of revision, we are going to make him do it first thing in the morning (at the weekend) before he has chance to engage himself with activities he finds more interesting. Previously I have been agreeing a particular time in the day when he will do his revision. When it gets to the agreed time, he has been angry and hostile that he has to stop whatever it is he is doing.

That's good news. Like you say, "catch them being good" and give all the reward/praise you can. Teenage boys may pretend that they don't want approval, but they do really.

DS is doing fine now. He got good-enough GCSEs, then good A Levels, got into a top University and (with no need for parental nagging) got a 2:1. It is one of life's ironies that Universities are better than schools at dealing with Learning Difficulties - but you never get to find that out unless you transcend the schools' poor provision.

I was going to end on a nice positive note but a thought has struck me: you can't pin all your hopes on CAHMS because you don't know how long they will take. I'll bet that when his name finally gets to the top of the queue you will find that it is too late and he is aged-out. Keep fighting his corner for him, one day he will thank you.

CAHMS referrals can take months

French CA learning, a little and often may work best.
We did 15mins in morning and 15 mins after evening meal across 7-10 days.

IDK Fantastic that your son achieved so well in the end, despite his problems with Dyspraxia. Inspirational in fact.

Hoping my son won't become too old for CAMHS assessment. He's currently 15 and they said it would be months rather than years before the assessment. We have been waiting three months so far.

I have emailed his form tutor today regarding what exactly they take into consideration for sixth form, so hopefully will hear back soon about this.

TeenAndTween I very much like the idea of little and often for the CA revision. That might make it a lot less daunting for him to tackle and perhaps might reduce his resistance to doing it. Thank you!

I'm so pleased that the controlled assessment went better this time and agree that congratulating and rewarding your son for it is appropriate. Well done to him, and to you and everyone who's supported him.

I'm also pleased to hear about his French teacher's efforts.

I'm sorry if this has been mentioned before or is irrelevant, but if your son has any kind of special educational need, then wouldn't the school need to assess him (sooner rather than later) to see whether he qualifies for extra time or any other type of alternative arrangements for his public examinations? In this case, they would be needing to test him next term, preferably sooner rather than later, so that he can sit his mock GCSEs with any special dispensation for which he qualifies and therefore get an accurate picture of his exam. performance before the real exams. in the spring?

Once again, sorry if I've missed something along the way or misunderstood any my point is irrelevant.

Also, your son might know about this website already, but, if not, it's great for practising anything from 1 minute per day of French.

Vocabulary by theme: conjuguemos.com/list.php?type=vocabulary&division=theme&language=french

Conjugating verbs:
conjuguemos.com/list.php?type=verbs&division=verbs&language=french

Grammar:
conjuguemos.com/list.php?type=fillin&division=grammar&language=french

You put in how many minutes you want to "play" for (minimum 1 minute...3 minutes is usually ample to exhaust all areas of the sub-topic) and it keeps track of your score.

In my opinion, it's more effective to say the words out loud as you answer, as well as typing them in.

LockedOutOfMN Thank you for this advice. I think I will contact his tutor to ask whether or not the school would be prepared to assess him for Dyspraxia as he has lots of indicators for this from what I can tell from Internet research.

Thank you also very much for the link to the French practice website. This certainly has potential to be very useful.

Year 10 boys and French controlled assessments aren't a great mix. And yet they count for 60% so they are crucial for a good grade.

You say he won't be able to get into the sixth form due to his poor attitude, but if it is a state school they cannot turn him away due to attitude, only exam results.

Find out what the entry criteria are and his chances of getting back in.

Then look at his predicted grades and see what's going on.

You don't have to be hanging over him and nagging, but you can show your approval or disapproval by removing PlayStations etc while he is not performing as he could.

if it is a state school they cannot turn him away due to attitude, only exam results.

depends what attitude means... our local college only allows "early" applications from pupils with a good attendance record. Obviously this may mean those pupils fill up the spaces by the time the not-so-attendant get a chance to apply.

I'm not sure that's legal.