More of a WWYD...DS trying to annoy me.

[LynetteScavo]

OK, I annoyed him first. His school report wasn't very good, but not awful. Basically he is academic, but lazy. His report included the levels he is working at now, and also includes a sheet to show the expected GCSE results for whatever level they are working at now (He's just finished Y8). DS, if he keeps putting in minimum effort will achieve mostly B's.

Over dinner, I casually suggested he may want to put in a bit more effort next year, in order to eventually get A's in his GCSEs. He has mentioned he would like to study law, which he would be really good at, because he only needs to read something once, and remembers it. (The issue is getting him to actually read it in the first place). Can you even study law if you only bet B's and C's at GCSE? I take it a RG uni is ruled out?

So, he stomped off, started playing the play station in the living room, then really stormed off to his bedroom and was crashing and banging around. As I was in the room directly below, I went half way up the stairs and called "DS, that's rather loud downstairs." He than started moving lots of stuff around, making a really big din, obviously to annoy me.

So, what does a good mother do when teenage boys try, and are very successful, in annoying them?

tbh, I'm pretty hung up on academic achievements and its nothing to do with wanting my kids to be middle class

I think most of us want better for our kids then we have

It depends what you have just now as to what your comparing what you want for them

Dh and I are in low paid, very menial jobs that we're both too bright for, we both should be doing jobs better than we are in. We both left school without much in the way of qualifications, I went to college and did a course that required 1 "O" level. I should have stayed on at school and got some decent qualifications, but I didn't get any advice and left as soon as I could. It didn't occur to me to ask my mum or dad their advice, they were elderly parents, dad would be over 90 now if he was still alive. So I left and have worked ever since, but never in anything well paid or enjoyable. Dh was similar, now he's in a job low paid, no prospects ever.

We cant afford to chuck work and return to study, wouldn't have a clue how to anyway.

So all I want for my kids is for them to leave school with some qualifications that give them choice, something dh and I never had. Whether its the choice to work in Adsa, or train to be a nuclear scientist is up to them, but to me to have choices you need to try hard at school and get some O/A levels under your belt or the future can be very narrow, and living with a narrow future is bloody hard, especially financially, as we have done for years.

Thats why I get upset,worried when ds1, who to me (or in relation to me) is clever, with a good brain and a good memory, doesn't try too hard and scrapes through exams, getting less than he should get.

I want more for him than getting min wage and struggling every month, for years on end

ssd, it's really interesting to read your experiences. Mine are so different: I got 11 'O' levels, 4 'A' levels, then went on to uni, then did a post-graduate course, and was a college and university lecturer, and a university researcher, for several years. All in all, one way or another, I've spent something like 24 years of my life in educational institutions! As my eldest son has grown up, I have been so conscious that I was a 'girly swot' and that he didn't much enjoy academic study, that I backed right off and always made it clear that he was free to make his own choices, and I didn't expect him to follow the same academic 'path' as me. I didn't push him with homework, and I haven't pushed him to do a degree. When he wanted to do bricklaying last year, that was fine by me...

Now, I am faced with a situation where my son has 5 GCSEs and an NVQ level 1, is likely to drop out of college and become a 'NEET' (no job, no college place), and has absolutely no idea what he wants to do. He is bright enough to go to uni if he decides to do some work, but he has no aspirations. All his life, he has had me as a 'model' of what it is like to be very well qualified - but he doesn't want what he sees. And I have absolutely no idea how to deal with it.

wow flow4

that's hard

I know, from having 2 kids, that its as much personality and drive, than it is brains

I told ds1 I wanted him to study as I want him having more than me and his dad, and not struggle so much, and he said but we have a nice house and you and dad don't have good jobs. I said yes but we bought our house when prices were lower than the prices now.....also he doesn't know the penny pinching/saving/extra jobs/using vouchers/struggle it all is ...and I don't want him to know, I want him earning, well, we get £25k between us, if he earned £40k eventually I'd be over the moon for him

its not the earth, but its a slightly less struggle than us

one thing I feel I have taught the kids is the value of money

I wrote above ds doesn't know about our struggle with money, using vouchers etc. but the truth is they both know very well. I discuss money with them often, loans, mortgages, spending what you don't have, buying what you don't need, working and saving and not spending on the latest fad, not laving heating or lights on all the time, etc etc

I don't burden them with worry, but lots of their pals have parents who earn a lot more than us, and their kids get a lot more than mine and we discuss why, the pro's and the con's

ssd, your post of 20:58:22 rings very true.

I wasn't DS to have choice. Something DH and I don't have as we dropped out of A'levels.

If my DC choose to become a gardener, or hairdresser because it is their passion fair enough, but I would really like them to have decent A'levels so they can choose which path to take next. And I'd like them to be able to earn enough to have life experiences such as traveling to far off places if they want to, or have their own DC without lying awake at night worrying how they are going to afford X Y or Z for them.

Yes, our DC do need the tools to help them fly the nest and live independently (I do pride myself on DS1's cooking ability and financial management).

Today I backed off completely when his cousin casually asked if he started doing GCSE work next year. DS said he would, so I asked if he wanted a tutor to make sure his maths was as good as if could be. DS said he didn't (his face said; "No mum, why the hell would I want to do any more maths with some old teacher you drag round every week?". I totally backed off and didn't push it. (Can't really afford it anyway! [girn])

And yes, it is as much personality and drive as much as brains!

Thank you for that lovely post, poshbird1!

He did have his eye on a automotive engineering degree (which he picked form a university brochure he found from the local uni when he was 7 - seems really funny now, as DD is now that age, and nowhere near capable of reading something like that, let alone understanding it!). I do wonder how much such an industry is dependent on the economy, though. DH has been hit very hard by the economy, although I guess most professions can be hit when times are as tough as they are now.

It's so interesting ssd - and frustrating... So often, our kids don't seem to learn from us what we try to teach them! And they won't really understand the value of money or education, I suspect, until they are working and earning for themselves...

If he's predicted mostly Bs now, and he's clever, I'm sure he can pull his grades up in time for GCSEs, if he wants to. Your job is to keep him engaged enough for that possibility to remain open, without pushing him so much that he is determined not to achieve it in order to spite you. My older DD is 17 and has just done her AS levels. She was very unhappy at about 14 and underperformed academically in year 9; the only way I could persuade her, at that time, to put some effort into GCSEs was to tell her that she needed them for any path in life and that if she genuinely wanted to leave school when she'd got her GCSEs, she could. She is at an academic school where not going to university is almost unheard of, and so saying that A levels weren't mandatory was a big deal and, I think, made her feel much less trapped and forced into things. She got excellent GCSEs and is on track for great A levels, and will almost certainly be going to an RG university to study 3 languages, but she wasn't really willing to think about that route seriously until I had done my very best to stop pushing her down an academic route and done my best to genuinely let go of my own expectations - once I had accepted that any productive role in society should be fine by me, as long as she was happy, independent and useful, it removed the conflict from the situation (mostly).

At the moment, I'd suggest you don't try to plan beyond the next stage. Let everything beyond GCSEs go, mentally, and just support him as needed to get through GCSEs. If he does the same thing as my daughter, backing off may rekindle his interest in further study anyway. If he really decides that he doesn't want to pursue an academic path in the long run, that's his choice to make, but he'll need GCSEs for almost anything. You don't need to worry about his university choices yet. I think that because four years seems such a short time to us, we can easily overlook just how much a teenager will grow and mature (hopefully) during that time.

Disclaimer: I don't have any experience with situations like flow4s or with weed, so I appreciate things may be more complicated than this in many cases.