Coping with GCSE year with DC needing a lot of support you're not good at giving

[Echobelly]

DS has ADHD, in Y10. Doing OK in sciences, psychology and drama, hopefully getting back on track with maths after a wobble, although still needs to learn to revise more effectively for theses. DH can help with sci and maths where I'm no use at all, I am trying with history and English and at the moment, he can't even sit a test in them bc the essay/creative writing is just too much. I have got an English tutor recently, but he can probably only do so much.

I feel awful and selfish because I just cannot face an entire year. I felt sorry for oldest DC having to lock down for Y11, but this time it feels like DH and I will have to be locked down into revision the whole year too.

I can't do consistency, I won't be able to revise 1:1 with him for hours like some parents seem to be noble enough to do. I don't know how to explain things that I was just able to easily do myself, and there is just so much stuff I don't remember or understand how they do it now, it's totally ovewhelming and I'm worry that if I try he'll just pick up on my despair at it.

Are there any parents out there who are totally unsuited to this but managed somehow in Y11? I'm not asking for him to get top grades, just enough to get onto the next stage somewhere and this rate he won't have many choices.

Thanks - I was wondering about an incentive, in DS's case a Switch2, which he would dearly love, but the advice was to create incentives for efforts, not results, as those are much less in someone's control (eg could have a bad day, particularly hard paper) but effort is. And reward for marks could just create extra stress about getting them.

The only problem is I'm not sure how to measure effort, and if so, what is a reasonable measure. Eg you could do, I dunno, pages of notes, but what would be a 'big effort' amount? 100 pages, 500 pages, 1000 pages?! Hours of revision, but then we'd literally need to have a camera on him or he'd have to be in a communal area and we'd have to keep an eye on him to assure he's working and not looking at YouTube for non work stuff.

My DD (ADHD), currently Y11, has mostly needed lots of support with planning and timetabling revision, and prompting to get started. She doesn’f want help with the actual revision. So it hasn’t been too onerous once the planning is done. The very best thing we did was make a quiet, distraction free space downstairs for her to work. We, and she, knew that in her bedroom she would drift into a world of make-up/drawing/trying on clothes/gazing at the ceiling while listening to records 😆 If space allows, I would recommend doing this, even if it means repurposing a space, and other family members keeping pretty much out of it, just temporarily. Oh and she absolutely cannot have her phone while revising (tbf that’s a must for any young person, I think).

I’ve been super impressed with how her ADHD brain seems to kick her into hyper focus - she has been surprisingly absorbed for long stretches ( longer than timetabled) at times.

He has phases where he's really good and gets down to it - I generally tell when he's in the zone and when he's not. DH 'banned' him from working in his room for much of this year and had him in the lounge, but we've let him work in his room but then I have no idea if he's working or watching YouTube. Our lounge is open plan, though, so can be distracting for him.

I do wonder about getting him to use our front room for working. DH was going to use it for when he WFH, but the wifi's generally not good enough for conference calls (fine for other stuff though), and oldest DC will be off to uni this autumn so there will be fewer of us in the house.

That’s what we did - used the front room (previously a playroom) and made it into an office of sorts. Obviously it’s a massive privilege to have a second living space downstairs, so not everyone could do this. But it’s been a total game changer.

This is extremely common for ADHD. Getting started and engaged in a task tends to be the hardest part (task initiation is an executive function skill) but once we do get into that mode we can actually have a hard time stopping. I've learned to lean into it by not trying to do a bunch of short periods of work/study; I try to block off big chunks and, while I allow myself small, in-place pauses if I'm having trouble focusing, I try to avoid taking real breaks that then create a need to properly re-start the task. For that same reason, rewards frequently work best when they're small, frequent, and focused on any forward progress rather than setting big far-off jackpots. You're breaking the mountain into individual steps to make it easy to just start moving and stop the tendency to stare up at the top thinking "oh that's really high, that's going to take so much effort and misery to make it all the way up, maybe I'll try later".

I mentioned parallel studying in my comment up front and I do highly recommend that. Neither DH nor I spent hours helping DS study in the proper sense - I frequently didn't even know what he was working on and more often than not we both had on headphones. But I created times when we would work independently in the same space and manage distractions together. For me that just made sense because one of the most helpful things I experienced at boarding school as an ADHD student was mandatory prep time (we called it study hall) where everyone was studying independently. My DS has friends who board so he could relate to that concept as well. In terms of a time-commitment from me it really came down to scheduling a block of non-conference-call work (or reading/personal email & life admin) time that could also be a study time for him and making sure we had a space where there wasn't house activity going on or younger siblings wandering through. Sometimes a sibling joined for their own quiet time as well. If DS was having trouble getting started I would help him with identifying and ordering tasks (start with something easy just to get going and sandwich the onerous stuff between the easier things) but I wasn't setting him tasks or checking work.

Just stop incentivising. It's bribery and if it backfires creates more problems and bad feelings. Instead praise praise praise.

You help him by watching the videos with him and helping him mark what he does. If he asks a question, you can help by googling for him.

You can also help by making his favourite food, fixing him a drink, taking him for a walk, bouncing a ball with him, testing him and telling him to take regular breaks.

Don't be his tutor, be his cheerleader, caddy and praise dispenser.

Thanks - we haven't actually tried any incentivising yet anyhow.

I should try the parallel study thing, although it's tricky as I'm usually finished working when he's ready to work, and he's quite a 'do things late' person and I like to have work done by 6pm. I do feel he needs to not be squirrelled in his room, I suspect he's often watching a lot of YouTube or he maybe sometimes working too long without a break.