I'm making myself ill with worrying about my ds's lack of motivation (particularly at school). Any advice???

[fartmeistergeneral]

He's 15 but really immature. His friends all did well in their recent mock exams but he did poor to appalling. I did well academically as did my dh (who is in fact a HT) so this is so alien to me. I've not handled it well up to now - going from encouraging to motivating to nudging to nagging, nagging, nagging for him to study. He didn't do much, hence the exam results. He has more exams in January and has done sweet FA.

Is this just immaturity? I've gone through everything from telling him what his future might be if he doesn't do well at school, but nothing sinks in. In fact, he looked a bit upset for about half an hour when he got his last results, but nothing has changed. My dh just says back off and let him take responsibility for his own life - I totally see the logic in that (and I'm constantly worrying about his lack of motivation which makes me feel genuinely ill) but the idea of him failing is awful. He's a clever boy, did well in primary but is really lazy with one proper hobby (thank God for that) and has a real 'can't be arced' attitude.

Anyone with similar problem? Should I dig in or back off?

Maybe try and get him to agree to some structured homework revision time that you can supervise/help with along lines MaryZ suggests. Not too many so it has a chance of success. You could add a reward chart of some sort with points for each successfully completed session (almost guaranteed they won't all be ..). Important that you can consistently be there to remind, cajole, encourage etc in attempt to get him to stick to agreement (I think this is where a lot of parents including me fall down as it is just such hard work that we give up). With my DS I asked him what grades he thought he would get and what grades he could get in his subjects with maximum effort and worked out financial rewards for each subject grade - high enough that DS did want to get the money. I found the only way to motivate my DS was some sort of reward. Also good advice on here about planning future. Check grades needed for college course applied for and link with rewards. And in the end focus on the most important subjects and just accept there may be poor grades in others. But nagging won't work and may well be counterproductive. Also check with school re: revision sessions etc. I discovered late on that my DS was not attending the after school sessions but no-one had told me about them. Private tuition for key subjects perhaps - though my DS used to disappear and switch phone off.........

I spent the whole day yesterday pep-talking dd through her overdue coursework. We worked out she had 6 hours of work to do. She was still doing it at midnight because the minute I turned my back she was on facebook. I foresee this is going to be a full time job.

She's had a week to write up a basic revision schedule and hasn't done it. I did it for her and said she can change it if she wants to.

We went through a couple of revision tests and she got some basic things wrong and told me 'they haven't learnt that bit yet'.

This is going to be a full time job for me.

But I keep looking back to myself at that age, completely oblivious, revised the day before, out all the time, parents didn't care, got average results.