The homework nightmare

If it is any consolation (it probably isn't) I teach mainstream secondary and nearly ALL Year 12 kids have homework 'issues' ... it seems to be that they have lived in a very controlled environment up to year 11 (no free periods, everything closely supervised) and suddenly in Year 12 they are given liberty and privileges such as free periods to help prepare them for independent study at university - and the freedom goes to their heads!!!

Somebody above mentioned supervised free periods ... that should be possible to arrange at least some of the time - the school I teach in has a quiet room for Year 12 students to go to with a teacher supervising and they get on with more work there than in the common room where they tend to chat!  There might be a teacher with a couple of free periods at the same time as your son who wouldn't mind sitting with him (I would be fine if asked to do that because I could get on with some marking while the student did some work - it shouldn't actually cause any extra work for the teacher doing it).

Another possibility is to approach your son's teachers (probably there aren't too many of them if he's on 3 AS levels?) and ask to exchange email addresses?  Personally I hesitate to phone parents sometimes unless the issue is a medium/high cause for concern but if I have their email address in my organizer it is easy for me to drop them a line for a minor issue - e.g. 'Your son has a project due in next Wed. for me, please nag him about it!!!'

My son is 12 and has recently started at Secondary school.  We always had huge problems with homework at primary school, and often ended up not doing it. 

The secondary school has a very strict policy with homework, and teachers hand out detentions routinely if it isn't done.  This seems to have done the trick.  He will come home with a task to be done and say, "I've got to do my ... or I'm toast!"

We still have to remind him to actually do the work; and sit beside him as he does it (interpreting the task for him and scribing if it has to be done in his book - we try to do as much as possible on the computer); but we don't have the melt downs we had in primary school.  There was even one memorable occasion when he just did his maths homework (online) without being reminded.

It does make me uncomfortable, though, that it is all based on this "culture of fear". 

I know exactly how you feel Johnsmum... My son fights homework also and always has done. ( he's 9).. For the longest time it was because "work" was done AT school and he refused to accept it was done at home too! Then he started developing "rules" of what was acceptable to be done at home.. It took me a while, but I realised that if he had  done something similar in school that day to the work that was sent home as homework, it was acceptable. But if he had not "gone over" the work in school- it was not acceptable. 

Working closely with the school, we made sure that he had some "experience" of the work sent home prior during the day at school, even if it was completely explaining to him only what the homework was.

My son and I also worked out that if my son and I agree to a time that the homework is to be done (usually on the first day it's sent home, and usually the same time of day, every time too) and we do not do more then 20 minutes at a time and then have a break, it is more acceptable to him and he doesn't immediately just refuse to do it.. We also break up his work into smaller manageable sections so he's not "overwhelmed" and I get   " It's too much, I Can't do it all!"

Like your son, my son is also very bright and like others on the Spectrum, he excells his peers in certain subjects and also seems to be able to "get by" as it were doing minimal work in these subjects. So what I'm struggling with is getting him excited and motivated to do more than the minimal in the subjects he enjoys and actually excelling in!

Just adding the reply from AndrewC from the guide, so people don't miss it -

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