I've given up with DS, 14

[Mumfordsson]

He is a complete nightmare and I have reached the end of my tether with him.
He is in Y9 and due to choose GCSE options soon. Had a call from school yesterday (in half term!) to say that he has not submitted any work for months and wasn't taking part in online learning. He has been logging on for registration then going silent. We have had a few emails and calls prior to this and thought we had been firm with him as issues arose. He always promised he would change, gonna start working, try harder etc but has been lying to us all along.
His head of year said yesterday that he was probably going to be moved from top down to bottom sets, as there were more deserving children than him who should have the top set place. I agree completely but have no idea where to go from here. I looked at a piece of work he submitted yesterday- he was doing better stuff in Year 3! He doesn't care about being moved down, says he hates school and doesn't care if he fails all his GCSEs.
Am I going to end up with a 25 year old waster still living at home and doing sod all?

NosyJosie

@DenisetheMenace super helpful.

Don’t you keep an eye on your child’s activity?

We had a similar issue with DD first lockdown so this time we went against the 'give them a quiet place to work advice' and made her do it at the kitchen table where we are all passing by at various times and can see if she skives off. She can escape to her room only when she's done for the day.

I can sympathise because we didn't realise for ages either. We never had a major issue with DD doing her work before and didn't expect her to lie about it. Plus the school didn't say anything for ages. I think she started out doing it but 1st lockdown they had very little feedback and she realised no one would pick her up if she didn't do it. Charitably you could say she may have been demoralised or maybe just lazy.

Back to school is going to be a rude awakening and standards of personal hygiene and dress code will have to move on from PJs plus hoody and washing only when your parents insist that you stink.
Roll on the 8th

Dennis the woman is a primary school head. Do you think maybe she has had a bit else on her plate?

I don’t understand why you didn’t know what was going on much sooner?
We were in the same situation as OP (see my long waffle post above!) and when we walked in he'd have the email opened and the email would be greeted, meaning he read it. Books w er e scattered on the desk. We did a 'you getting on okay?' Then chatted about something else. It's hard to believe you dont know but my next little man is a get down to business student and so you just forget that there's kids that need to be cajoled etc. I thought he'd just clicked with school

Today 00:40 CovoidOfAllHumanity

Dennis the woman is a primary school head. Do you think maybe she has had a bit else on her plate?

I’m sure, but not knowing for months?

I wonder if he wants your attention?

I've a colleague in a similar situation and their very important job means they are a little detached from their child's obvious misbehaviour - is it possible he feels like no one notices him?

If you are a head - school will respect you hopefully. Get a meeting with his head and get a plan in place. Then help him stick to it.

I am a little surprised you were unaware he wasn't doing any work.

Can't speak for OP but I didn't know my DD wasn't doing hers for at least a few weeks in lockdown 1 because

I am NHS and my mum was ill and shielding so I was kinda busy with other stuff
DD had always been a very good, hardworking trustworthy kid til then so I had no reason not to believe her
I had younger DC who took all my and DHs very limited time to support
School did not notify us of any issue which I assumed they would
It's all in Google classroom which I can't log on to or understand so it's not as easy as just looking at her books
At secondary they are supposed to be more independent. The school heavily encouraged that. I am not a helicopter parent and I thought she was getting on with it as she always had done up to then.
She's my eldest so my only other experience of teens was myself long ago. I definitely used to lie to my mum about doing work but I somehow thought DD wouldn't
Lesson learnt.

How do those who do know exactly what their kids are up to know then because a few of us on this thread have said we didn't know?

Does the school alert you? Ours didn't. They emailed DD and she ignored it.

Do you routinely check their work every day? I never had done before with homework unless she asked me and I would not think that normal at secondary school.
Also I don't have access to her Google classroom stuff unless I stand over her so I can't check independently

I had naively hoped she'd tell me if she was struggling but she didn't and then she started to lie about it when I asked and she couldn't get back from that I suppose. She probably did feel neglected compared to the younger DC too.

As I said lesson learned here and it won't happen again.

This is a prime example of how this mess is affecting people in different situations. Those of us that are working full time and often extra hours and have multiple children, simply do not have the facilities to do homeschool several hours a day.

For people to sit and wonder how someone who is an effing head teacher and trying to deal with running a whole school through this is not capable of also monitoring a crafty teen all day long, is perhaps the most depressing thing I’ve seen for a long time and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Do you routinely check their work every day?

Routinely, no. Every day, no. I have the login for classrooms and take a ten minute rummage about twice per week.

I'm ft if that concerns people.

I don't think anyone is suggesting they monitor all day, I am certainly not!

Just to add our school tells parents not to look at school email or their lessons so there is literally no way to supervise. Op I hope next week kicks him back into touch- good luck.

Good luck with the transition back next week! Our senior school is drawing a line under all remote work and they don’t have to retrospectively submit (I forgot to tell ds as he’d have just taken the week off) and the first week back is “light touch” - no testing, no kicking into touch, just welcome back, let’s get to know eachother again and be positive for the future. Fingers crossed ....

Tbh i think this is very common...my dd has more or less given up with home schooling ss she is going ba k next week. Granted shes not doing gcses but after a blazing row this week i realised that she will catch up.
If he dosnt excel at gcses does not mean he wont ever do well. Plenty of people are not academic but have decent jobs.

We are in a similar position with my 13 Yr old dd. She started high school in September (we have first, middle, and high school here). She has had some friendship difficulties last term and episodes of recurrent abdominal pain (which I think is likely stress/anxiety, been investigated and seen paediatrician)
She simply will not get up in the morning. Last night DH blocked Internet to her phone and tablet from 11pm. She refused to go to bed and then eventually slept on the sofa. I am out at work 3 days a week so cannot check she is attending her lessons. Even when she does she barely interacts, never answers questions and rarely submits her work. School have not been chasing her up at all. She is a bright, intelligent teen and in top sets but probably now significantly behind a lot of her peers. I have contacted school a number of times with my concerns and today eventually had phonecall from deputy head but she refused to speak to her. We have tried multiple tactics, bribes, rewards, punishments, love bombing. Nothing works. Had to step back today as I am finding it very frustrating. I want her to do well and fulfill her potential. I am very guilty of making comparisons to my friends and their kids who seem to be doing well and achieving and I feel like I am failing her. It does help to read on here that we are not the only ones really struggling at the moment. She says she will refuse to physically attend school later this week and she doesn't care about the outcome. She has gone from being a happy, active child who engaged well with school and had lots of friends and hobbies to a withdrawn, argumentative, sad, demotivated shell of her self.

It’s so hard. DS1 is in year 9 and totally lacks motivation. I’n torn every day between hovering and nagging versus leaving him to it and hoping the teachers can help him find some motivation. He just cannot be bothered. We’ve spent every school holiday so far since the first lockdown catching up and he’s been miserable working in the holidays and said he’ll never fall behind again and then within a few weeks of each new term he’s done it again. It’s infuriating!! I also work full time as does my husband so maybe he is looking for attention as someone else suggested. But whether that impacts his motivation per se, I’m not sure. Maybe he sees us working hard and doesn’t want that for himself. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a teenager.

I wonder if school will draw a line or expect them to catch up. He starts back on Friday.

Anyway, as the previous poster said, it’s good to know I’m not alone.

All I can say is don't give up! It sounds all related to mental health issues around lockdown and not being at school. I know a couple of children around that age, gone from being bright and able, one to school refusing when lockdown last lifted and she has not gone back or engaged in online work since and one who is at early stages of developing eating disorder. My own older boy has done pretty much same as yours but he has never been in top. This year, an exam year for him, has been a write off academically.
I wish schools would quit the "not deserving" attitude. Yes some children have coped fine with online learning, but clearly not every child has. Look at the massive increase for CAHMS referrals. IMO schools need to quickly identify those who have struggled with lockdown and as a result fallen behind their capabilities and offer every single bit of support, tailored to that child, to help that get back to normal.

And to everyone saying did you not check his work. Well even if OP did, if he he is in the mindset and place he is, simply saying you've not done your work, do it, or offering to help them, is not going to work. I really feel for you OP and hope within a few weeks his attitude turns around and there no longer lasting effects.

I feel sorry for him. Clearly he is one of those pupils who struggles with self motivation. That's not necessarily laziness. He could just be the personality type to thrive in a busy classroom and has got utterly lost along the way.
I'd be really kind, not at all angry and say gently that he's a bit young to decide school doesn't matter because it will impact on the rest of his life. Ask him what the hardest part of remote learning is, what he hates most about it. Then ask him what he thinks helped him get into top sets when he was at school - what motivated him then. Ask him to help you work out some ways to replicate that atmosphere of learning. Also tell him that it's worth apologising and asking for a second chance and really pulling out the stops to get his work back on track.

Go through every subject with him and make a snagging list of every single piece of work he's not done. Help him organise his files and books and materials. Focus on the core subjects - Maths, Sciences, English and a couple of his other favourite subjects. Agree to let one or two subjects fall by the wayside for now - as long as they are not core.

Set him up to do a piece of work. Check he has all materials he needs, give him a timer and tell him to do his best. If there are pieces of work he doesn;t understand, put them aside and focus on ones he can do relatively easily. Use brilliant Khan Academy to explain maths issues.

Get him to submit the work with a grovelling apology saying he lost his way and he really doesn't want to drop down two sets. Get him to make a good case for staying in top set for his favourite subjects and core subjects if possible and maybe accept he might be in set 2 or 3 for some of the others.

I say all this because DS struggled massively at that time and we thought of moving him as he was at a selective school. But it turns out he had ADD and just hadn't a clue how to organise himself - not his stuff, his thinking, his planning, his approach to tackling an issue. Each stage needed to be very careful designed for him and he had to be taught how to tackle things one by one. But he learned. And now he is the most organised student, getting firsts at uni with an immaculately tidy bedroom. He just couldn't work it out for himself without masses of initial support.