Managing Year 11 homework and mental health- HELP!

[RedRug1972]

Hi, DD is in year 11 and I'm worried about her. I'm honestly very empathetic in real life, but for brevity's sake I'm going to summarise the issue in quite blunt terms rather than writea heart felt post.

DD suffers from low mood and is prone to self harm when overwhelmed. She is bright but part way through a CAMHS assessment for ADD (she's not got the 'H). I can't see this being finalised or any support being put in place any time soon so I'm trying to liaise with school and support DD without much guidance.

A main issue currently is that DD puts her head in the sand with homework and gets more and more behind. When I try to support her with routines, she will often say she has no work as she cannot face doing it. She is very, very anxious and when she's behind, not doing the homework is an avoidant behaviour rather than 'laziness'. She also misses loads of instructions as she zones out and not all teachers use their online platform.

On top of this, she often leaves key items at school so is unable to do the homework- there is plenty of work that cannot be done on line (eg art or practise papers/ booklets) plus she will say she has no homework / has everything she needs but this turns out not to be the case.

What on earth do I do? I'm now micro- managing her quite a bit as left to her own devises she did no work at home for ages.

In her darker moments I worry for her safety IYSWIM and so with this in the background, I am loathe to put any academic pressure on her and we absolutely are not pressuring her at all about grades.

Also, she does quite a few extra curricular things after school (eg dance) as these are her passions and seem to boost her mental health. She refuses to drop any of these but then is too tired for homework, even if she's remembered that she has it!

I'm just looking for some advice with these issues, really. Hope someone can help. She's struggling to get through the day as it is and homework is just a tipping point for her, it seems.

devices not devises

Oh dear, that wasn't brief after all!

Year 11 is so tough! As a GCSE teacher and current owner of a Y11 dc as well I would say go and have a chat with your dd’s Head of Year. Tell them that your dd will do as much as she can while maintaining her mental health. This means she sometimes will only do parts of homework or no homework at all. Depending how “strict” your school is there might be a lot of pushback. Some schools just pile on the pressure.

At home I would make a homework timetable. Schedule in her extra curriculars as well as homework and revision time. Make sure to have some completely free time as well.

Year 11 is tough, but she has you fighting her corner! Talk to her about realistic and unrealistic targets as well and what will happen if you mess up in your GCSEs - whatever messing up means to you, dd or the school.

If I've understood correctly the things stopping your DD doing her work are

1. ADD
2. anxiety

The process for dx the ADD is in hand. It may be helpful to make sure your DD has a calm (including visually) and quiet environment in which to work, as far as possible. It's also important to be realistic about how long she can work for in one go. I'd suggest trying the Pomodoro technique (Google will provide you with a more articulate explanation than I could).

The anxiety. I think that, perhaps because in English we have a scale that runs from 'uneasy' to 'petrified' to describe fear, and 'anxious' tends to be viewed as at the mild end, that quite often the effects are underestimated. It's clearly severely impacting on your DD's day-to-day functioning. I would ring up whoever you know at CAMHS and say you want to get your DD help with the anxiety asap. I suspect from your description that your DD may not really realise quite how many of her own behaviours are driven by anxiety, and some decent quality psychoeducation could really help her.

I think getting help with the anxiety has to be top priority. If she is finding doing a homework task overwhelmingly anxiety-provoking then she is really going to struggle when she has to sit the exams. She needs help now to understand what's happening to her and to get some effective strategies to deal with it.

Your DD is correct that things like dance class are good for her mental health. I would not be advising her to give them up. Teens who exercise regularly do better in exams than teens who don't.

If you talk to her about "what if you mess up your exams" it needs to come from a supportive point of view that says she will still have plenty of options and things to choose from, ways to progress in the world and have a meaningful career. It sounds like she is already terrified of messing up, and that terror is preventing her from being able to work. If you can get her to work out that doing well in exams is Plan A, but Plan B and Plan C exist and you would still be proud of her and love her and life would be good, you might find it calms her enough for her to work on Plan A. I usually tell anxious kids that if they fail in school they might end up like Alan Sugar or Richard Branson.

Does your school use any online system for homework e.g. show my homework?

If not, perhaps you could ask for class teachers to email any homework and relevant sheets to you. This would at least solve the problem of you not getting told/homework getting lost.

I know this doesn't solve the anxiety issues, but at least then you know what is there/what needs doing? And then you can help her come up with a plan for doing some/all of it?

I definitely wouldn't be asking her to give up dance- I think that would be counter productive.

Is she getting any help with her anxiety at the moment?

Wow! I’m so touched by the time that you kind people have taken to reply to my thread. It’s very reassuring to hear that the consensus isn’t to just get on with the homework just like everyone else! I thought I might be told to give up extra curricular and focus on study!

I actually had a meeting at the school earlier and they have been surprisingly supportive and open to a reduced homework timetable.

DD is the most relaxed she’s been in ages tonight as it seems like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. There is one teacher who is pushing her to get a grade 9 and stressing DD out so we will have to be really firm on that. But generally, we are feeling more positive.

I will get back to CAMHS but they are so over stretched and there’s always someone worse off that you so unless they assess you as very high risk I’m a bit resigned to not getting any treatment on the NHS as it seems they only help people when they’ve got even more severe difficulties . I keep emailing and emailing but get nowhere.

I’m going to watch a movie with DD now but your advice has been hugely appreciated.

As a PP mentioned, my DD's school have Show My Homework and the phone app sends you a note when homework is put on it/due in.

Also, my DD's school (Yr8) have a homework timetable so they know what homework subject will be set that day (if the teacher sets homework for that subject) which covers their two-week timetable to stop them getting swamped with homework on the same day. It seems to work really well.

Hope what you've arranged with the school eases the pressure on your DD, OP.

Just wanted to check in - we're in a very similar situation, awaiting ADD dx, under CAHMS, anxiety, was suicidal this time last year - but DD is a year older than yours, she had her GCSE's this summer.

What helped for us was talking to local colleges about their entry requirements, and her realising that it wasn't 9 GCSEs at grade 9. Creating a plan B as to what to do if it did all go wrong on the day - we found a level 2 course that she quite liked the sound of. And quite drastically, which was only done after a lot of thought, dropping three GCSE's so that she could concentrate on taking 6.

She passed all 6 in August and is now really enjoying college.

Hope it works out for you

Contact the school, head of year 11 and if you don't get a response quick enough the head. Tell them exactly what you have told us. They should offer more support with lunch/after school homework/revision sessions. Most schools do this in year 11 and if you get on it now things will be a lot easier. Come January the pressure will
be immense and if she has fallen behind all core subjects will be pulling at her and expecting her to attend revision/catch up sessions. Also ask them if they offer a mentor scheme? This is normally a teacher who will check in once a week to see how she is getting on and offer advice.

If she does any creative subjects that include coursework, encourage her to get it all done by Xmas. Then the last 5/6 month can be focused on exam prep.

I'm a secondary teacher (technology/engineering), I make all my year 11s complete all Coursework by Xmas because they have so much pressure from the core subjects and inevitably they come before my subject.

Good luck xx

Mine is younger but has processing speed problems etc.

These are what we do in case they help:
a) allow plenty of time at weekends for projects/coursework/art homework etc as these take forever when tired
b) draw a big hwk calendar with all the days up to a half term along the top and all subjects down the side. Then we draw a line when a piece is set running across to the day when it's due in. It looks like a project management chart. Then you can see what needs prioritising. You might have six lines going across any one day which is why the kids feel anxious/overwhelmed but you can see on the chart what can be left eg til the weekend
C) a good bit of ADD advice is to have a diary plus a notebook (or an all in one, I use a week-to-view (paperchase) A5 diary with days on one side and a lined notes page on the other). And then write everything in this. Everything. Get used to only having one system. No random post its or to do lists elsewhere. Look at it with her every evening for 5 min.
D) make use of phone alerts but link this to looking up more detail in the system in (c)
E) help her to explicitly practice prioritising things, this is often difficult if have ADD. Practice choosing one thing to focus on for set time, whatever she can manage to begin (pomodoro good idea, also forest app)

Think of it that you're scaffolding her learning some organisation skills for the future not micromanaging- she will needs these for college/uni