No motivation to do well at school

[tamzzzzz]

I've just had parents evening for my Y9 son who is about to choose his GCSE options. The story was the same across all subjects - capable of doing well but does the bare minimum required, constantly needs prompting to finish his work and puts in minimum effort. This isn't new information and we've had so many conversations with him about his attitude to learning. I honestly don't know what else to do ☹️. We encourage him by telling him he's capable of doing well and being successful in the future, but that doesn't change anything and clearly isn't important to a 14-year-old. My husband and I work hard to provide our children with a life full of opportunities but I feel like it's all just taken for granted and there's no motivation to do well. Any tips to help him realise that what he does now is important for later on in life? My daughter is the complete opposite and is so hard-working and conscientious 😔

Have you tried anything other than ‘encouraging’ him to work?

Do they have any passions? Have a career in mind? I'm wondering if he had an (unpaid)work experience week in a good company it might help focus him?

What matters is why he is not working. What I am going to say is one suggestion, I have not met him so I am just offering one possibility for you to think about.

This We encourage him by telling him he's capable of doing well and being successful in the future and Any tips to help him realise that what he does now is important for later on in life? may actually be counterproductive. Schools can be intensely pressuring now - they talk a lot about kid's futures, with lots of negative messaging about what will happen if they fail. This drives fear of failure, which drives protective non-engagement.

My daughter is the complete opposite and is so hard-working and conscientious This may not be helping either. Is she older, do you talk about how well she is doing?

Could you instead talk about what he has to do (do his homework, behave well in class) rather than what he could achieve if he worked really hard? Realistically, a person needs to get decent-enough GCSEs to get into a decent-enough option at 16+ in order to get a decent-enough opportunity at 18+. What are you hoping he will do, do you think he can feel a lot of pressure from you? Has he been given facts about the range of things he could do?

What does he enjoy in his life? Try getting him out of the house and doing something positive wherever possible.

Also third party messaging is useful - is there anyone else in the family who could have a (subtle, not sledgehammer) word?

I sometimes wonder if we do our kids a disservice by trotting out the "capable but lazy" line. I think they only hear the "capable" bit, and figure they'll be fine when they finally decide to pull their finger out at some hypothetical future date.

Exam success is about so much more than just being quite clever. There is so much content to learn, so many exam techniques and essay skills to practise.

For sure there are some who kids need the confidence boost of "you're much more capable than these fairly rubbish results suggest". But there are a lot of kids who need to hear the first part of that message loud and clear: "your results are currently rubbish".

And of course, intrinsic motivation is the gold standard, but while he doesn't have that, you need to provide some motivation of your own from home. Every behaviour point (or expectation point, or whatever they call negative points at his school) that's logged on the system needs a follow-up consequence at home. And every house point/merit deserves a reward.

Tricky. Many boys are bare minimum. He needs to get good enough grades to get to the next stage of where he wants to go. What is that? Presumably he doesn't know? Did his sister stay on for A'levels, he will he need a 7 in a subject to stay?

The concept of adult life is too far away for some teenagers to understand. As long as he gets what he needs to get him to the next stage I'd stop the negative talk around him.

Are there any learning difficulties? My daughter was diagnosed with autism in Y9. It explained a lot. She just can't learn very well in the classroom as her senses are completely overloaded.

We've concentrated on the 4 GCSEs she actually needs for college and paid for a tutor for English and Maths at home. Anything achieved over the 4 GCSEs she needs will be wildly celebrated!

And please don't compare him to your daughter. I'm sure he's acutely aware that's she's smashing school! There are so many other ways into work. School doesn't have to be the 'end of the line' if he doesn't 'get if' yet. So many successful people didn't enjoy or excel at school.

It's hard when it seems like everyone else's child is a high performer but honestly, he'll find his way.

I’d probably save the serious nagging for year 11. In the meantime don’t give him much pocket money and then he’ll have to get a job washing up somewhere which will probably teach him the value of work and earning money without you having to get involved. Don’t think it’s possible to change the able but idle. They’ll come right in their own time.

I’ve told our kids that we didn’t chose to have them for their exam results. (Something I got told by a friend). What they get isn’t important to us but what is important to us is to support them anyway we can in getting to achieve what they want. Our kids are all academic so will do well enough. One is fine with that and so just does minimum that is asked of them; one wants to get top marks so does everything possible. It’s their life and their choice. We worked hard up until they were 10/11 years old influencing them with our values and felt that when they went to secondary school, it was time to support them but let them find their own way. We are forever a safe place to land and will give an input but never really make demands. We never check if they’ve done homework, revised, got pe kit etc (I do take in pe kit that has been forgotten if I can - they’ve only asked 3 times between them). We do warn them of consequences: the better you do in exams the more options you have; if you don’t put your blazer in the wash on Friday then it won’t be clean and dry for Monday etc.
It doesn’t come naturally to me as I like to feel in control (!) but we have found it successful. Our eldest tried staying up all night a couple of times and another time tried existing on a max of 4 hours sleep a night. Soon realised it just made them feel ill. When they were younger we didn’t say they had to do things in the “right” way. We used to say that’s how we do things in our house and you get to choose your own way when you’re an adult.
Exams can be taken again if they regret their choices later on. Teenagers seem to delight in wanting to do the opposite of what their parents want so we said we didn’t have an opinion so they needed to do what they wanted (not quite true as I would love our eldest to work a little harder and get higher grades but I sit on my hands because it’s not my choice and he’ll likely get to where he wants to go).

You say “Capable of doing well but does the bare minimum required, constantly needs prompting to finish his work and puts in minimum effort”. My child was told this. Turned out it was ADHD. There are so many negative messages given to adhd kids about being lazy and not good enough when it is not that. It may of course not be the case but consider it just in case.

Thank you for all the advice. His sister is younger and I really try not to compare but yes, I'm sure he must see that I never have these conversations with her.
Behaviourally, he is fine and rarely gets in trouble. He has a tutor every week but I think you're right that he just doesn't consider the future as very important at the moment. He wants a good job and to be able to afford a nice standard of living and I've explained that this will only happen if he's willing to work hard. I've always said I don't mind the results he gets, as long as he's trying his best and this clearly isn't happening.
I was of the opinion he should be responsible for himself in secondary school, but now I think I need to sit down with him for homework so I can let him know what standard he should be completing and what will be expected. He doesn't get pocket money as such but I've also said no treats like going to the driving range (he's very sporty and golf-obsessed at the moment) until I see a change in attitude. It's so hard to know what to do as a parent and just don't want to fail him by not intervening now 😭

Are his test results at an expected level or is he working below standard?

Hello, how did you get your child diagnosed- did school suggest as this sounds like my dd. I don’t know how to get her diagnosed as she isn’t at the bottom- but even from primary we kept getting told her exams don’t reflect her ability, she is capable etc and this pattern just continues no matter how ‘hard’ she seems to work.

We're having similar issues with our DS at the moment with additional low level behaviour issues coming up. Parents evening two weeks. I'm wondered adhd. He also is giving us expensive Xmas gift ideas eg metaquest which makes me feel like the worst mum as he knows he won't receive this as we don't spend that amount on dc 🫤 we're ok financially and I know he knows we can technically afford it but it's on principle we normally budget max 150 for each dc in total. Is this stingy nowadays? Feeling a pretty useless parent at the moment.