14yr old boy - bad school report

[Shell449]

Does anybody have ideas on how to get things back on track at school ? My sons report card shows no effort in most classes, he says he never has homework, he barely talks about school. Last year it was much better - he has changed friends this year to a group that he doesn’t talk about much, won’t invite them over “you don’t invite the boyz over mum” ! I can see what is happening here but feel at a loss to know how to fix things - he is mopey most of the time now, used to be the happiest beautiful boy. Just hangs out for his PS4 and phone and gets shitty when I take his phone from 5-8pm every night. I feel like he needs a huge overhaul in life and to get some stricter rules ? I regret letting him have Snapchat- that’s when things went downhill but if I threaten to take it off him he really begs me like he couldn’t cope. My husband just leaves everything up to me and goes along with whatever I try to figure out. I feel so much pressure to try to figure things out and what to do as our son has so much potential. Sorry this is all over the place - I’m really looking for some practical tips - things you have done that has worked.. I feel like taking the phone and PS4 completely but I don’t know if this is too harsh and will backfire with a worse attitude. Appreciate any advice... thanks

I have 3 teens
I go over school work with younger two 13 and 15 if they don't have homework I get them to read over what they done in class in a few different subjects and ask them questions like new words In a language a page off science history or Geography.
He probably just needs a bit of guidance
I would let him keep snapchat as they do feel left out if they don't have it.
My 13yo ds hasn't asked for it yet.

Thank you - your response was helpful. I haven’t been guiding him very well just expecting him to do well. It’s a wake up call.

I don't think taking the phone and PS4 away completely is a good idea. Can you use carrot instead of stick, ie reward him for good behaviour (extra pocket money, extra tech time) rather than punish him for bad? Does he have an App or homework diary to keep track of his homework that you could keep an eye on?

Could you talk to them about career choices? Is there something he is passionate about that he could think about working towards? I do think he has got in with a bad crowd - kids who are too cool to try at school and who peak in school before the real world shows that it's not great to emerge from school with no qualifications. Is a change of school possible next year? Are drugs a possibility? I'd be inclined to talk to his teachers about their view about what is going on.

My youngest really struggled at school and I tutored him all the way through high school. He'd do homework and I'd make suggestions and proof read. I read up on essay structure and so on. We worked through previous exam papers and tutoring ramped up for exam preparation. He did very well in his final exams because of this unrelenting focus. He is now at university and believe me when I say that when he was 12, his teachers would have thought that extremely unlikely.

The thing though was that he was a hard worker and willing to be helped and never lied about homework. I'm not sure that this kind of regime which is really hard on the parent too would work with a child who didn't want to work. Also my husband pulled his weight by doing a lot of the cooking and so on so I could spend the extra time in the weekends.

Careful subject selection can be important - we did let him drop science after year 11 but we made him keep doing maths because it kept career options open for him. He hated learning Spanish and we never continued with that.

I went to all parent teacher evenings so I could find out about his progress and hopefully intervene before it was too late. The teachers were very good and keen to help and make suggestions. You don't want to get the news that they are hopelessly behind six months in. He had ADHD and we medicated for school and homework and that helped but was no magic bullet.

I'm a young mum, so my teens were not so long ago and I'm a millennial. Perhaps I could give you a different perspective. Taking his phone from 5-8pm removes his independence and inhibits his self control. Social media is built by psychologists to be extremely addictive and I believe taking it is only going to make it worse for your son in the long run. Everyone in his class is more than likely to have snapchat so not letting him have it will lead to him sneaking around with it. I wouldn't make his life harder by turning him into a outcast by prohibiting what social media he can use or taking his phone away completely. I'd recommend guiding him in being responsible and ready for the real world because once he's too old for you to control his usage he won't know how to control it himself. If he's got his phone throughout the night he's probably up until late nights on his phone which might be contributing to his poor behaviour in school because of sleep deprivation. I'm not saying to take the phone at night but not allowing him to use it in the afternoon probably makes him feel like he has to make up for the lost time after 8pm. Taking away all gadgets isn't going to help in the long run because these methods of discipline don't actually teach him to be an adult. He's off to uni in 4 years where he won't have mum controlling his phone usage, what then? I know adulthood might seem like it's still a long way away but it crept up on me and I honestly wish I had been taught the concept of consequences and self control with technology. It can get to a point where I'm not getting much done simply because I'm scrolling on Instagram. Older generations weren't born into tech and it's become a big part of daily lives and all you can do is navigate around it and accept the fact that it's here to stay. Taking it away isn't effective which you can probably already see as it's not helping his performance. There's most likely a root cause that you need to get to the bottom of. Try to get appointments with a few teachers to get an in depth view of what actually happens during class times and how he behaves. Who his friends are and how they behave in class etc. Talk to him as well, maybe he's not comfortable talking about his life with you because he's afraid you might put in place stricter rules with the phone. You can't control who he's friends with and who he's not but you can control how he's influenced by friends and how he responds to bad influences. As he gets older and gets exposed to more it only gets worse, drugs, alcohol, sex etc. It all starts in around year10/11 where they start having sex or smoking. By the time he's 18 it's a norm and just about everyone has tried some sort of drug. Educate him on making the right choices and maybe encourage his dad to get involved so he feels like he has someone to turn to. You're the only people who will have his best interests at heart so you have to be the people he can trust. Good luck.

Year 9?
I would email HoY for a phone call. Get teachers to help you out here!
Talk to son re changes in friendship group and now horrible attitude.
Get him to agree to make more effort and engage and do homework.

Your'll have to check up on him more.
I leave both my ds's to get on with it completely but they are very good and I very very occasionally peruse the homework app and I can see that they've handed in everything and done all pieces of work so all good. reports from teachers, notes in their diary, maybe you haven't been paying quite enough attention or you were only just monitoring it sporadically, maybe you need up that now?

5 to 8 is prime social time for my kids who are around the same age. I make them leave screens for half an hour for dinner together but they go back to their screens til about 9 so they can chat to friends.

I have teens slightly older and slightly younger than yours. At 14 we have parental control on the phones (we use the family link App). We ate open to sime negotiation over time limits and extra time, but no phones or internet access of any kind overnight is non negotiable.DH and I also stick to this and leave our phones downstairs, which I believe midels this as normal, healthy behaviour - and we talk to the kids about why - there are no rules they don't understand the reason for.

I'd drop the 5-8pm removal of tech and instead enforce no tech overnight (no tech at the dinner table either, but otherwise no daytime forbidden time but time limits - so use Family Link to set 3 or so hours total of social media access per day after which his access is cut off, but he can control at what time of day).

We removed our eldest's time limits at 15 because she is doing really well,self motivated etc. etc. but she still leaves her phone downstairs when she goes to bed, as do we all - this is so important IMO.

In terms of carrot rather than stick you certainly can offer to increase his social media time in return for looking at completed homework/ improved grades/ helpful behaviour etc etc.

Another thing to do is open chanels of communication woth school. If you're in the UK his head of year may be willing to put hom on homework report and have him made more accountable, woth each teacher actually signing off whether or not he has homework, and you and hos head of year also signing. This is a short term thing to get him back on track if he's been lying about not having homework. My 13 year old son has to choose between reading a book for 30 minutes or reading through what he did at school that day in text books/ exercise books if he has no homework, as he defaults to screens and has to be reminded to read - my other two read for pleasure so I don't make it a chore, but it's worth it being an option for a child who never reads voluntarily.

Keep talking to him and make sure he knows that your job as parents is to make sure he has the best chances in life, and that isn't the same as making his life easy or doing what he wants! Explain your reasons briefly if he's willing to listen, don't make it a battle of wills "because I say so"!

Good luck!

Sorry about fat finger typos! Hopefully that's still readable!

TLDR: Use Family Link to set total time limits, let him use his phone between 5-8, take away all Internet over night.

Get him on homework report (talk to his head of year). Keep talking to him and explain your reasons.

Offer increased internet time as a reward for improvement at school (and being helpful at home if you want).

I would firstly discuss with school - we can log in to a system which shows all homework and what is done/not done and a daily chat of grades / lessons attended or missed etc. See if there's any system for that then you would at least know what he should be doing - I also have my child's log-in as he's ASD and from that I have access to all the materials. I would ask them if they have any ideas why he's so disengaged like is he struggling in subjects, is he depressed, trying to impress his friends and what is his friend group like and see if any clues to issues.

I would let him have phone on return from school - my DS is ASD and won't use one so I don't have that issue. My daughter I don't place limits on but she always does her homework and does well at school. My son is 14 and also doesn't do homework and the school think in his case its part of his ASD and they said its common for ASD kids to refuse to do schoolwork at home as its not the place. I had to read out all his work in lockdown and type it etc.

I would try and talk to him and see if you can get anything out of him, not in a critical way just in a what is going on in your life concerned way. I found looking at careers and the money you can earn and what you need help motivate both mine and they said there had been nothing at school and they said before that they didn't realise the point. If he could be depressed I would try and encourage an activity, even if he's not an activity could be good either with or without you, something sports based may be good or a club like air cadets. Anything really though difficult at the moment.

Not an easy age especially with lockdown, my husband is the same leaves everything to me though maybe ask him, mine will occassionally come up with ideas if asked.

@Andi2020

I have 3 teens I go over school work with younger two 13 and 15 if they don't have homework I get them to read over what they done in class in a few different subjects and ask them questions like new words In a language a page off science history or Geography. He probably just needs a bit of guidance I would let him keep snapchat as they do feel left out if they don't have it. My 13yo ds hasn't asked for it yet.

bloody hell. I have 3 teens aged 18, 16 and 13 and I am a teacher.,

Not only have I never done this, but I think it is pretty OTT and my three would kick up a stink. The school would also not want us to be so hands on, they expect the kids ot be more independant. This is way more intrusive than the school would expect.

BUT we have had a lot of problems with out 13 year old through the last year, due to lockdown. She has not coped well. I think the older ones, both in exam years, had more reason to stay on track.
I know quite a few aged 13 and 14 whose interest in school has plumeted due to lockdown.
We had an issue as the homework piled up and she felt overwhelemed. There have also been a lot of friendship changes. None of this was a problem before lockdown.

Does your school use any kind of online homework system? Dds has it all on class charts. So we can check what is outstanding and what she has done. I now get her to tell me what her plan is for work (having checked class charts first) and she then has to work out what she is going to do. We also talked to school, and they have arranged for her to go to a homework group twice a week after school, which is now really helping. As she is getting back in to live school, things are settling down and she is getting back on track.

While I wouldn't remove snapchat, I would insist on phones downstairs overnight. I would be asking him to show you his plan for his work for the week, but also, and I think this is really important, talking to him about how he feels about school, and the last year, and so on.
What ambitions does he have, what does he see for the future etc.
Best way to get teenage boys to talk is to do something side by side. Drive/walk/washing up etc

my ds now aged 18, had a significant wake up call when they did a careers thing in year 8.
They first filled in an online form about the lifestyle they wanted (car, sky TV, 3 bed house, new iphone etc) then the computer asked them where they wnated to live (London obviously as that sounds exciting) and then it worked out what all that woudl cost per month. Then it suggested annual salary, and then a listof jobs that would achieve that by the time they were 30.

It was a serious eye opener. The last step was that it want back, so to be an engineer earning xxx you need to do YY degree, and have 3 A levels with these grades and 8 GCSEs with these grades etc.

It made him realise that the life he wanted in future needed work now.

I’ve got teenagers and I’ve always checked what homework they’ve got, prompt them to do their hw and tell them to put their phones away somewhere so they’re not being distracted.
They used to do their hw at the dining table so I could keep an eye on them but as their getting older now, they’ve become more independent.
I don’t check what they do but I’d often glance at an assignment and tell them to do more than their poxy paragraph if they needed to do an essay.
If they don’t have hw, like a pp, I’ve asked them to go over their language vocabulary, watch a YouTube clip on a humanity subject they’re doing, go through bbcbitesize on the science topics they’re doing. They don’t take long but it helps to keep on top of things and gets them decent grades.

I agree with steppemum : the levels of over monitoring and over mollycoddling, no independence is shocking!

However, in this particular case OP's dc just needs a bit more monitoring.

Thank you everyone- I so appreciate you taking the time to respond. Some really good tips here that I will definitely take on board. He doesn’t have his phone overnight (never has) and he also is not interested in his school work ... so a bit of work needed here. Great tip re rewarding improvements instead of punishment with PS4 removal... I am a bit out of touch ! I do know this but just get so cranky. But love all your suggestions. Thanks

How did you daughter get on after