Year 8 DS has no motivation

[Blackcurrentjamtart]

Would really welcome opinions here as having a difficult time with DS who is 13.

DS attends a normal run of mill comprehensive. Parents evenings have never been much fun. We are always told he is bright but does not apply himself. He’s silly in class and disruptive. He does well in exams, in the top quartile of his year for all subjects. But is not engaged at all in what he is learning and never has been, even from being little.

My concern is how I can get him to apply himself. There is just nothing coming from him in terms of motivation for school work whatsoever. If I wasn’t keeping an eye on his homework, he just wouldn’t do it. He has exams after half term and I’ve asked him repeatedly to do some revision this week but he has done the absolute best minimum of 10minutes of language exercise on his phone. He hasn’t read a book in a year. It’s so alien to me this just absolute lack of interest in school, or the future. It’s just all amount gaming. My concern is school work is going to get harder and he’s going to be left behind.

I’m at a loss of what to do for the best. I’ve talked to him about it till the cows come home. Can anyone help?

To be honest I think this is pretty normal especially for boys and especially around this age. If he’s naturally rather academically intelligent then I’d imagine from a young age he learnt that he didn’t need to apply himself to get results, from that he probably just doesn’t see the point in it. On top of technological distractions and just being that age.

Have you tried rewarding him when he does do school work/revise? That might be some form of motivation. The opposite is taking away things like games consoles until he’s done something, but from what I’ve seen from others, this can just make things worse.

My advise would be to encourage him to find an aspect of education he enjoys (like history) and lightly push him in that direction. Most kids don’t like school because they have to do things they don’t care about for years. And for some, no matter what you do it’ll never fully go away so In my opinion it’s best to encourage him in the things he does enjoy if that makes sense?

Thank you so much for your reply. You have made me feel a bit better about it all. I think we had realised ourselves that punishments are not the way forward on this, but rewarding is yet to yield great results either. We shall try to look for the hints of what he enjoys to tap into more. That’s a great idea. Thank you.