Unmotivated teenager.

[lollilou2]

I’m at a loss what to do with my 17 year old. He’s always been bright, average achieving boy until he hit 14/15. He started missing a lot of school to the point I nearly got fined, but he scraped through and passed his English GCSE.

He enrolled in college last September, which was going well to start with but now he doesn’t bother going. I helped him start volunteering at a local charity shop, he done a 4 hour shift and never went back.

He lost his friends at school as he was hardly there, and never had a chance to make them at college, so he’s very lonely. He sleeps all day and wakes up through the night and plays video games.

although we’ve looked for work, not many places are taking on under 18s, and even less want someone with only one GCSE.

I have took him to the GP, who said he doesn’t see any signs of anxiety or depression - he’s literally just unmotivated.

This is actually typical teenage behaviour. It up to you to help him change. Dont put labels on him. You need to stop the all nighters, make him get up at a reasonable time. The problem with gaming and chat is a lot of the world
are on different timelines so night time half the world are awake and he probably has online freinds. All is not lost though, my son was the same.but he taught himself to code and now has a very successful website building/ hosting / marketing businesses . Try to encourage him to use his skills to build some sort of income producing work. Once be starts he will become motivated. The social side in outside life is harder. Unless he finds something he ‘clicks’ with

There are a lot of online courses he could do, try skillshare. Also online learning like open university