Lazy DS and school grades!

[probablyveryunreasonable]

Not sure where to start!

DS 1 is almost 15, in year 10. I think the term 'lazy bugger' sums him up pretty well.

First issue is school work. He has always done bare minimum of anything he has to do. With homework as as long as he hands something in, he thinks that is all he has to do. We have had this for the 10 years he has been at school. He is naturally pretty bright and has always got by without much effort. However, parents evenings and reports are never happy reading.

So a few weeks ago we get a letter telling us that he is not doing well enough in his art GCSE. Speak to teacher, have a chat, chat to DS etc etc and he knows he has to put more effort in. I rang the Head of Year to check this wasn't across every subject. Having seen his books, I was sure it was. Got a call back - all is fine, apart from one subject where the teacher has already spoken to DS.

Two days later get a letter telling us DS has just failed first unit of another subject and he has to retake it after school - still don't know if this was actually for the GCSE or just a class test.

Friday we got a progress report from school. DS's targets are B for every subject. He is only achieving this in Science, where is effort is listed as unsatisfactory and all other grades are listed as satisfactory. He is getting C's in 2 other subjects and the rest are D's.

Ds's response? "lots of my mate's are worse". Folloowed by a few hours later "I know I have to work harder".

Then yesterday after telling him to do some homework, he spends literally 10 mins on it and he thinks this is enough. Obviously we sent him back to do more work.

Lots of his classwork seems incomplete, but he will always insist "that was all we had to do". Lots of it will be a title, followed a a learning objective, followed by .... absolutely nothing.

What do we do? We have doen everything we can for years. He has even had a private tutor for English because his teacher was off sick all last year. But even then, it's not that he can't do it. He just doesn't bother and we are stopping the tutor because he is not transferring what he knows into school work.

Lots of his school books have doodles on them and the presentation is appalling.

I am now at the point where I feel that he is old enough to put the effort in himself and it really is up to him. But it's such a shame as he could probably get quite a few A's if he would just bother.

But then should we stop him going out if he can't be bothered, or just let him make his own mistakes? I am trying not to live in a constant battle zone really.

And as an aside. I am thinking of getting him to do his own ironing, make his own lunch for school etc? Problem is I am a SAHM, so do feel bad if i'm here all day and making him do it. But I also hope that it would make him more responsible? Any suggestions?

DH is pretty fed up going round in circles with this and TBH I am too. We don't have parents evening til March and who knows where we'll be then!

Does he have any ideas about what he wants to do when he leaves school? My DN was like this in year 10 and then in early year 11 ( this September) he got a bit of a wake- up call when he failed some GCSE english module thing and my DB had to pay for him to do a resit or something ( which they took out of his pocket money!) and then he had good careers talk at his school and found out about a couple of uni courses he was interested in. He then discovered that in order to be able to do the A levels he needed he had to get at least a B in those subjects at GCSE. So now things are way better- admittedly about 80% of his effort is concentrated into the 4 subjects he wants to carry on with, but he is doing enough to get C passes in the others now. But the point was it kind of had to come from him- the sudden realisation that this is now important dawned! In his case it was a kind of carrot that he could look forward to getting out of school and do something he really likes! Good luck!

He has a couple of ideas for a career, but TBH I think it is more that he is trying to think of something he wants to do, rather than actually wanting to do it iyswim.

The thing is, I don't know whether to punish, make him stay in to do work (that he insists he doesn't have) or just let him get on with it.

Mary - horrible isn't it. I usually sit there feeling like a told off pupil. The thing is, if the school actually punished him for doing appalling classwork, we may actually get somewhere!

You have just described my DS! His prelims start on Friday, up until this weekend he hadn't done any revision.
He is looking at the army (cough splutter) so a friend of mine, who is an ex-army recruitment officer 'had a word' on Saturday night (we were having a party, so she wasn't too sober, or too tactful) but he got his books out on Sunday and made a start on typing up his English coursework too. Have booked her for a repeat performance when the effect wears off

OMG you just described my 16 yr old ds. Just started A levels (ha that was a shocK!). Scraped through GCSE by doing ALL his revision in the kitchen with me - or he simply wouldn't have done ANYTHING. I know that doesn't teach him independence, but it was that, or he ends up with 9 D's. He got 3 A's, 6 B's and 3 C's. I felt very proud of myself, as I had helped him get them! A levels is a whole other matter of course. Much harder. Way more independent learning needed. For the first time, the school has actually got on his back and shaken him up a lot. He's doing very little work and underachieving in every subject. He's finally, getting the message that he has to work a lot harder. Think he may have to take me to uni with him if he ever wants to go, so I can continue to nag him!! Good luck x

Nooooo, you're all meant to be telling me what to do, not telling me your Ds's are the same

Although maybe if pretty much all males are like this, it all turns out ok in the end??

Just to give you all some hope. My DS was extremely lazy at school and school refused for most of year 10. His GCSEs were As in subjects he could do with little effort the rest were Fs. He made an awful mess of his AS year. He left college and worked in Burger King before travelling to the US for 3 months. He went to stay with a girl he had met on line. I was terrified about the whole thing

However he returned a different lad. Mature, sensible much more caring about me. He decided he wanted to go to uni, but had no A levels. So he completely off his own bat enrolled on 3 OU courses, revised for the exams with no nagging at all from me. He is in the 4th year at a RG uni and is doing very well.

Interestingly he is studying one of the subjects that he got an F in at GCSE. So all it took was the motivation. I told you that there was hope!

DS1 (17) the same here. Couldn't tell him. Got 10 GCSEs, mostly Bs and Cs with one A. He's realised now, I hope, that he has to do some work. He's staying on at 6th form doing 4 ASs, then 3 As, again hopefully. He's finally chose a career now so that's something to work towards.

You can't tell them. He was a bit upset as with a bit more effort he could have got higher grades, but otoh, he says look what he got without any work . I don't know what it is with some DSs (have two, DS2 completely different). DD (15) is different again, much more studious, but putting too much pressure on herself.