She doesn't spend a single minute at home studying. She comes home at 6 to 8 pm daily after hanging out with a boyfriend she got in February this year... On weekends, she goes out to be with him for entire days.
I've gotten emails from her teachers in the past few mths about her non-submission of work during lockdown and her exam grade of E, embarassing parents evening last December where the teacher said she got an E for her assignment and what can I say about that..
I have to say, it's been going downhill. I have no control of her other than limiting WiFi. She walks in and out of the house as she likes... Her boyfriend is okay personality wise though he's a real underachiever - flunked his GCSEs and now in college doing carpentry but only bothers to attend half the time. They get on very well together like peas in a pod, so I can see why she likes spending time with him. His mum "loves" her apparently, when he took her to his house one day and introduced them.
It's her first boyfriend too..
Anyway, so she refuses to consider the prospect of leaving the school as it's a top school locally and she likes the prestige - she had good enough GCSEs to get in - she worked quite hard for the GCSEs, despite having dyslexia and already finding studying challenging. But nobody knew that once she got in, she would just suddenly slack to this point. The school, I feel, is being quite nice to her. Last month, they gave her predicted grades of BBC so she can apply to uni via UCAS, even though the entire family didn't expect it due to her laziness and her previous assignment grades. Even she said she was surprised and felt she didn't deserve it, on the day she got it. Then a few weeks later, cue now, she's telling us she's totally fine and doesn't need to work harder because look at the grades she's got...
I don't know if I should be doing more, setting more rules, or just leaving her to it. I feel embarrassed to even approach the school for any help, and I don't think they'd be able to do anything anyway since she seemed nonchalant about anything the school teachers say - not at all embarassed. Is it just a case of waiting for her to finish her A Levels, get a job and grow up?
Sigh.. it's so difficult to watch. Personally I have no confidence in her achieving the predicted grades in the actual exams. I told her to consider doing BTEC or apprenticeships before but she seemed to look down on those qualifications and don't want to touch them.
My husband stopped giving her pocket money in order to encourage her to go to work part time perhaps, but she's just happily going about with no income - she does have some savings from when she used to have a weekend job during her GCSE days. Not much. I'd estimate around £200 and maybe she's being very economical with it so haven't spent it all.
Yeah, it's like she's now just totally changed... where did my daughter go? Any advice? I'm hoping I'm not the only one going through this. And no, I don't suspect any drugs involved at this stage, though she said her boyfriend is alcoholic and self sabotages like he went drinking the nights before GCSEs which was why he failed them, but when we met him, he didn't seem to be on any substances and was very normal. He does seem to be someone with a bit of low confidence. She said he used to be bullied. She was too. Hmm... I'm not against him being her boyfriend at all, and I accept she might be with him for a long time - it's clear it's not a purely physical or sexual relationship. They get along so well. My husband thinks her boyfriend is just somehow boasting about being an alcoholic because he thinks it's cool or whatever. 🤷🏻♀️
Hoping it will all pass and she will be a productive member of society. She's totally not interested in getting a job at the moment, and she says she is interested in studying but she clearly doesn't do any work when she's home, and when she stays out, she's just hanging out with friends or the boyfriend, not doing work.
What do I do? Just sit back and not rock the boat?