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Helping son with schoolwork

MumNicola

This is my first time here, I am hoping someone can give me a bit of advice as I am so worried about my son. He is 14  nearly 15, diagnosed in January. We are also waiting now gor an ADHD assessment. He is very clever and at a highly academic grammar school. We have been worried about him for 5/6 years, and with his diagnosis it is much clearer what he has been struggling with and why. The school is helping - a bit. But the school workload, exam pressure etc is mounting. He has refused to go to school a few times and the school have now let him have reset days which helps. But I don't think it is enough. He does most of his homework, but doesn't catch up after he misses days and won't revise for exams. He doesn't appear to care at all, which I had thought was a reaction to overwhelm. But I think it goes deeper - he says he sees no future, no point in exams, cannot imagine working. He has three GCSE exams this year for RE, other subjects will be next year. The first is on Tuesday, and he has done nothing. He had Thursday and Friday as reset days, he did no work yesterday and we left him to it, which I hoped would help him recover.Today I asked how I could help him, he said he didn't know. I try to support. I have offered to help him, to help organise the work, to sit with him, but he shouts at me. I have bought a whiteboard for him, and try to give him advance warning of things, and suggested we plan out schoolwork on that, so there is a visual plan but he doesn't want that. All the advice talks about organisation and giving control, which we try. I don't know what else to do. I feel like I am failing massively.

  • in reply to Homebird

    Thank you, this is really helpful advice.

  • in reply to Stuart333

    Yes reducing the pressure is probably the best thing I can do right now, thank you.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    Thank you, this is really helpful, wise advice. 

  • It sounds as though he's suffering burn out and needs a total break. It's hard to see a future if you're burnt out, just getting through the day takes all your energy.

    You are not failing as a parent, you're a parent navigating an incredibly difficult situation to which there are no right answers, but lots of wrong ones or ones people will tell you are wrong, just think back to potty training and setting up a bed time routine. 

    I got no O levels or CSE's as they were then, but later I got a degree in medieval history, in my 40's, all is not lost if he misses out in his teens, I think piling all this pressure about exams onto teenagers probably comes at about the worst time possible, theres so much else going on in their brains and bodies, it amazing that so many cope at all!

    I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up and I'm 64, I still feel like I'm teetering on the edge of the same precipice I was as a teenager when people ask me what I want to do. SOme of us just want to be a human being, not a human doing. It's alright to have a job that supports the things you want to do, to work to live, rather than live to work, I think society puts us under huge pressure to decide these things far to young, I know few people of my age whov'e not been made redundant 2 or 3 times and the work they do is nothing like what they trained for. 

  • I did almost no revision for my O levels (GCSEs). If you know the stuff, I couldn't see why I needed to revise. I also got injured playing sport and didn't go to school for 3 months before them and was on painkillers and anti inflammatories. I got a bunch of As.

    I did my maths O level a year early when only 14. I passed it. But I didn't know why I was doing it. I just did it to keep people quiet. Work was an abstract thing in the future I couldn't relate to.

    I'd not worry too much. Maybe it will be fine, if not there is time to recover or resit, if this is a subject that matters.

    It is probably the pressure. The avoidance is part of that. Compartmentalise, distract and pretend it will go away.

    I don't know if there is much that can be done. I suspect inverse logic may help, i.e. the less it matters and the less expectation there is, the more the pressure comes off and the easier it is to do and perform.

  • It may be that physically he is too exhausted. If he is exhausted, perhaps thinking about working is too much. From my personal experience, when I was at the worst stage of burnout, I could not see how I would ever be able to work again. In my experience with my son, I have found if he was unable to attempt something, there was no more I could do other than to be available as support when needed. He did most of his revision, via classroom activities. 

    From my personal experience at school, when I knew nothing about autism, I found revision difficult because I didn't know how to absorb lots of information. I could revise Maths for example, as it meant practising known patterns. I did best in exams that involved following a process or were practical.