What do I do?

[Fleurdelise]

So DS (almost 14) has been a bit difficult lately. As long as you leave him alone and to his own devices he's fine but if you dare asking anything from him you get all the strops normal to teens.

Anyway my main worry has been for a while his school work. No work is done at all. Results are still good enough but have started to drop. On reading the "get out of my life" book I have decided to follow the advice in the book and ask him for the supervised school work. In the book it suggests an hour a day when the child is not allowed the phone but he is just doing homework/revision.

I suggested it yesterday (only 30 min thinking it is a start) and of course he went crazy. Shouting that we are ruining his life!!! and so on.

I confiscated his phone and he said he doesn't care. I said to him he has another chance today and if he doesn't do it he is not going out at the weekend.

He just texted me that he will not do it, that is is going out this weekend and that I can't force him to stay home. And I can take everything he has he doesn't care.

This is now becoming a battle and I don't know how far to push it. He never reacted like this in the past by the way.

What do I do?

By the way maybe I should also say that being a bit desperate for the lack of school work I have hired a tutor for him at the beginning of last year. He kept complaining he hates it so I have cancelled it at the beginning of this week telling him we will replace it with the said method.

So in theory he should have been happy about the change as he was hating the tutor (not the person necessary but the idea).

Is he in Year 9 in the UK? If so, I think that a good part of this might be a Year 9 thing. It's not one thing or the other, they are not really working towards anything now that KS3 SATs don't exist. They are just passing time until they can give up the subjects they hate.

DS1 became much more motivated once his GCSE courses started.

Sorry, I meant Year 9 in England and Wales. Scotland may have the same issue, but not sure which year it happens in.

Yes he is yr 9 in UK.

He did some AQA work for Science and while he got Bs in Physics and Chemistry he got a D in Biology. That was before Christmas.

I don't know when he does his homework as he does do it somehow but the quality of it is rubbish as his report said in December (obviously it didn't say rubbish, it said it is lacking effort).

I also think that if I don't get him into a routine now of studying 30-45 min by the time he will be 15-16 there is no chance in hell to do so.

I don't believe I am being so unreasonable to ask for 30 min (4 days a week as I promised him Fridays afternoons and the weekend free) of just doing his homework. When I hear that other kids his age spend 1-2 hours doing homework I panic.

So what do I do now? I don't think I can back off and to be honest I don't want to give up after all the tantrum he displayed since last night. But I do admit I am scared to hear my son threatening me with going out no matter what.

Do I let him do it and punish him more? Do I show him how upset I am? Do I threaten back?

He never did this before and it scares me the way he doesn't seem to care..

I think I am quite a cool mum generally, he's always allowed out as long as I know where he is, he goes to sleepover parties quite often, I rarely say no unless I have to. I always guide myself by "pick your battles" and I generally pick the ones worth fighting.

He is not bad, he cleans his room when asked and he is very responsible, he doesn't seem to lie (yet) as I didn't want to give him the reason to.

So even though I sound pathetic I don't believe I deserve this treatment.