Son hates school, has no aspirations, spiraling towards being expelled

[928393mdhdkw]

My son has always hated school but since starting year 10 and the pressures of gcse's its all going very wrong.im going into school tomorrow for a meeting, the second one , but nothing ever changes.
He messes about, has no respect for staff, is late to lessons, doesnt do homework, doesnt attend detentions . There is work experience coming up and hes now refusing to do that
Says he doesnt want to so anything when he leaves school
He has adhd and is struggling terribly. Socially because he feels he has to be stupid to fit in. And academically because he finds the work hard and cant focus. Instead of trying hard or asking for help, he gets himself sent out so he doesnt have to do it.
He is on report permanently, that does nothing to deter. Hes on the highest level of report. We are at the end of our tether and dont know what else to do.

Outside of school where there are no pressures hes completely different. Hes fine at home, hes fine with friends and family. Never caused us an ounce of trouble outside of school. He has different friends outside of school.
He is scared of a lot of things. Has health anxiety. So wont vape, take drugs , drink. He can be sensible and is very polite and well mannered. Everyone loves him who see him outside of school. Hes got a great personality.
But in school hes a completely different person . We dont know what to do . And we dont know what to do after he leaves school next year either as college would be just as bad. And its a 2 hour bus journey away.
At the rate he is going he is going to fail all of his gcses. He wont do any revision. Doesnt retain anything that hes learnt because hes not listening in the first place. I wish I could just pull him out but what good would that do?
We have other kids not like this and husband and I are high achievers with alot of qualifications, went to uni and have senior jobs. We cant relate and everything we say to him he says is nagging and he doesnt care. He does care, alot actually, but for some reason hes choosing to deal with it by being stupid

I'm sorry but what you are suggesting is very wrong.

It doesn't matter how much you berate or punish a child with ADHD, or show them how terrible their future could look, they can't change how their brain processing works - they have a neurodiversity that needs support.

@MrsWinslowsSoothingSyrupSo just accept he’s likely to be a NEET then. I didn’t actually say punish at home. School is punishing though. What evidence is there that anything much works? Why are 1 million young people doing nothing? Many have had interventions and help. Change had to come from within and employers simply are not interested in young people with poor behaviour and academics. It’s retrievable but realism had to dawn first. Sorry - but where has softly softly got the op? Nowhere so far. By all means remove him from school, get tutors and try something different but I would not put money on this working.

The more we talk to him about it the worse he gets. He knows all of his issues. Hes not a fool. But does not know how to cope.
He wont take the medication at the moment due to his health anxiety . He has had therapies / but again doesnt retain the information and cant put anything into practice.
When hes out of school hes calm . As soon as he steps foot in school his adrenaline shoots up. Then he is more and more impulsive and the poor behaviour starts to ramp up.
He actually has a huge amount of friends and gets on well with all ages including adults. His friends outside of school are not idiots. He does not misbehave when he is with them. They could go anywhere , the cinema , bowling etc and be perfectly behaved
He is also perfectly behaved on school trips and activity days and during pe. He gets top marks. Its just anything classroom based.
We dont have long to go now. In 18 months he will be finished. But we need to get him through this time without being expelled and hopefully pass maths and English. If he can do that I will be happy.
At the moment things are highly stressed because he has all of his teachers going on at him, head of year, then us when he gets home and also his grandparents.

Really don't know what to do for the best with him. Have tried praising, ignoring , talking in depth, consequences. Nothing has any effect. He will make promises to do better and within an hour of getting in school he will be in trouble for something.

Every day I am anxious waiting for his app to update with what hes done wrong this time. My stomach flips every time a notification pops up

You called a child an 'idiot'. You are not helping.
Please stop. I don't think you actually know what you are talking about.

People become NEET for a very wide variety of reasons. It's a complex and rapidly changing picture.

There is no need for the OP to remove her son from school.
ADHD medications have worked for a huge number of children. My child is now a model student due to this.

So please refrain from any more of your uninformed 'advice'

@OhDear111 I think unless you've had a similar child yourself, your advice is fairly limited in its usefulness. Several of us on here have been in the exact same situation and can advise what did work for us. We have children who have come out the other side and are not NEETs. A different approach very definitely has worked for us - the problem is that school does not work for kids like this. As I've said in my earlier posts, my ds has thrived in his part-time work (which he did more than full-time in his gap year in order to pay for travelling - no issues at all with his work ethic) and at uni.

There's no evidence that the OP is being too soft. We also issued plenty of punishments before we fully understood our ds, as did both schools he went to. Punishments didn't work.

@928393mdhdkw would you be in a position to take him out of school and allow him to self-study/work with tutors/attend online school? Others are saying medication allowed their kids to continue at school, but if your ds won't take it (my son was the same, for different reasons), you have to think outside the box.

The fact that your son is sociable and well-liked outside of the classroom is really positive. He sounds very like my son. If you can take school/the classroom out of the equation, the stress will disappear. And if my son is anything to go by, he may do better academically that way too.

I've had ohdear111 on some of my previous posts before. Its best not to engage as they are very argumentative and judgey.

I am asking for help. I am not making any excuses for him. I know he must be a nightmare to have in the classroom and dont blame them one bit . I struggle to relate to him and worry so much about his future , it breaks my heart. But he is my son, my first born child who I love with all my heart and want the best for. He is not an idiot , he has a lot of issues and he has chosen to cope with them in the wrong way.
I am very worried that the more this goes on and the more we all lay into him he may become very depressed or worse. He already talks very negativly about himself and says what's the point. He does amazingly well with encouragement and support which is severely lacking in school at the moment

If classroom environment does not suit him then I'm not sure anything the school does is going to help, learning for GCSEs in mainstream schools is classroom based. There are other education providers that can offer alternatives but access to them (at least where we live) is very limited. Realistically speaking (unless you can get him to take medication and this leads to an improvement) he would be better off being home schooled but this is not something everyone can do.

@928393mdhdkw

Has your son got an NHS neurodiversity team behind him?

I find their support very helpful and they are great at talking with my son about how ADHD affects him. It really helped him knowing they could completely understand what he was experiencing at school.

They also signposted to lots of extra things I could do to help him: the 3 step processes, watching the classroom input with earplugs in so he could watch what was being written on the board without also having to listen to the teacher speak at the same time (the trying to listen and also watch what they write at the same time drives him crazy - I even found that turning the sound off on sparx maths videos enabled him to understand the maths as long as the tutors spoken words weren't interrupting his train of thought).

10 minute homework sessions, bitesize revision is all helping hugely.

I have organised all his school revision as he has so many bits of paper from school he gets overwhelmed. It's now filed and labelled. He just could not do that himself.

Obviously every ADHD is different but there are lot's of things to try out.

Is the SENDCO at school talking with you?

Get him through English and Mathematics. The others don't matter so much. Do you have any relatives or know anyone who works on a building site? If so, I would ask them to take him on for a year after school. It is hard work. If it is for him, great, and if it isn't, maybe it will change his attitude towards education.

Well, the Neet young adults are very much a thing in my village north of Oxfordshire. All scrambling around looking for work with lack of qualifications and unable to drive. Parents pulling their hair out.
My son asd/ adhd has worked in a pub since 15 and now at 18 is working full time,in the kitchen.
He did a year at college doing plumbing and retook his maths and somehow got a 4,but couldn't grasp the plumbing so hasn't gone back.

Perhaps your son can get a lot washing job Op, give him a purpose and some money .
Just here to say this is very common.

@MrsWinslowsSoothingSyrupthat is so interesting about the maths videos. My son would do almost anything to avoid watching Sparx videos, it used to drive me mad when he had no idea how to do a question but wouldn’t watch the videos that literally showed you how to do it. Funnily enough he gets on fine with the myEdSpace lessons but he usually watches them a bit late and speeds up the recording to get through it quicker - he still seems to take it in.

My experience:

punishments don’t work
school and parents putting on pressure led to my dd self harming

in your shoes I’d focus on his mental health. Get grandparents etc to stop laying into him.
find something his is good at - for my dd it was singing.

Behaviour at school - what reasonable adjustments does he have? Loop earbuds help, having an exit pass may help and having somewhere to go to cool down.

He only needs English and Maths, so tell him to put all focus on them and not worry about the rest.

What does the SENCO say?

I found this out by accident when I needed a cup of tea so just left him sat with the video open ready to play (on the first screen where they show the completed problem), when I got back he'd done the question and said he could understand it better by just to looking at the completed question. The talking disrupted his train of thought.

Try it - I remember this being such a big break through and we only discovered this a year ago when he was in Year 10!

Another thought: Is there someone who could give him really good careers advice? Maybe starting from how much he wants to earn, what jobs offering that salary range would appeal, what do you need to get those kind of jobs, what GCSEs do you need. What well-paid jobs are available if you don't pass GCSEs at 4+ (there are some, e.g. some truck drivers can be well paid).

So in short: Some reality therapy, ideally by a person that is not you. Maybe some army careers advice? They may expect reasonably good GCSEs!

I do think some boys need to experience working with men who won't mollycoddle them in order to grow up.

Terrible advice.

Supporting a child is not 'mollycoddling' them.

A child should do something they enjoy and are good at - not just strive to earn as much money as they can.

Is he any good at drawing? I wonder if he’d consider a BTEC in art or graphic design and illustration. No exams, 3 days a week, you can get most of your work done at home if you can’t concentrate around others.

DD is thriving doing this. She redid her English GCSE part time in the first year of college and got an 8 after getting a 3 at school. She’s on track for getting a distinction in her art class.

A lot of male illustrators and graphic designers have adhd and didn’t get on well at school.

College is so different from school. No-one obsessing over if you’re wearing the right jumper and shoes. You call the teachers by their first names. As long as you respect them, they respect you.

My son was quiet but not academic at all and I mean at all! Now he’s working on a pitch and putt course and his world has changed, no anxiety, no stress, all lack of study related. I don’t have solutions for you if he’s good at home but I do feel for the kids who act out in schools sometimes, I’d heard a statistic that a crazily high number of kids regularly in trouble was due to learning issues

Would he be interested in joining cadets?

Could he choose 5 GCSEs including English and maths to focus on and let the rest just fall by the wayside even if he still has to go to the lessons? It’s how I got my asd/adhd child through them. Five seems to be the standard for most jobs which even if they don’t want now they may do in the future.

So he has ADHD, anxiety, and possibly ASD.

He is probably overwhelmed and exhausted.

I don't really know about the next 18 months (is there a UTC nearby or a college with 14-16 provision?), but after that BTECs would be the way to go. Dependent on gcse grades he can start at level 3, 2 or even 1, and work up. See the threads in Further Education.

You all need to find a path through gcses that seems achievable for him. The current system sets up too many to fail.

(My DD missed all y11 in second half of pandemic, due to anxiety and other issues.)

as a teacher
-it’s not hormones - many many teen boys manage to be kind pleasant and hard working
I do. Believe what you say about a new crowd, feeling pressured and now probably in a situation where he feels he’s got himself into a place he doesn’t know how to leave. He’s in year 10 though so he’s got some time.

exploe medication WITH him; it can be very helpful and it’s really common for adhd to get very hard to manage at this stage and need some support.
if he can’t have an echp, then get his school Senco to put him on an internal plan. If he’s diagnosed they still have a responsibility under the equality act to make reasonable adjustments which might include things like time out cards so he can go for a five minute cool down before he says something rude. Staff can point out he’s on a spiral and it’s a good time to use it

what does he enjoy? Can that be harnessed to develop his skills?

im 5050 on work experience as im amazed they’ve still got anything useful available - we’ve stopped it because professionals’ kids went to work with their parents and everyone else went back to their local primary school. It wasn’t helpful.

does he know how to revise? If he’s being given homework to revise and doesn’t do well in tests I’m not surprised he does t want to do homework

why did you move him in y9?

My daughter is similar - y10 on permanent report. Has somegood days. Also lots of bad days. Multiple suspensions. Low self esteem and struggles socially. Has a small group of friends she feels safe with. Is bright underneath but struggles in lessons because she refuses to ask for help (and look stupid to other people) so where she gets suspended or doesn’t do homework it then snowballs.

to a PP who said it’s unusual to be rude at school and fine at home, my daughter other than probably usual teen stuff is fine at home - she is highly anxious all the time at school and it wouldn’t take much to tip her into refusal.

i am hoping we get through to end of Y11 but im not sure, i have to be honest one of her friends appears to be in a part school part college placement and i wonder if that would work better for her. I don’t think a change to school would help
anything as she is like a heat seeking missile for other children with challenges and then she wouldn’t have the handful of teachers that she has a good relationship with (interestingly her HOY has ADHD and has opened up to her about that - she is one of the people she has a good relationship with)

An AP unit would worry me as she is very easily influenced and it could all go wrong.

the one thing that school kicked off this week is some 121 sessions which are focused on understanding her adhd and hopefully learning to manage the emotional side of it (she is only recently diagnosed)