Posted by hopeless, please help! on October 18, 2001 at 16:26:00:
This is going to be long...but PLEASE stick with me, I really need some advice.
We've been having ongoing problems over the years with my 15 year old son. He refuses to do his school work, and has an all around bad attitude. He's failing all of his classes...like he does every year...but manages to squeak by with me forcing his work on him and by taking summer school.
We've been in communication with the teachers & councilors at the school in an effort to work with him. He lies to us about what homework he has. Ex: "no homework"..."it's not for a grade"..."we've moved on and aren't doing vocab this quarter"..."I already turned it in." etc... He also lies to his teachers.
Even with daily calendar sheets signed & with close contact with the teachers we do have an idea of what work he has...but the lies and avoidance just gets more elaborate with him. Frequently, assignment calendars, worksheets & text books get "lost" or "forgotten" at school...and the assignments I see him complete fail to get turned in.
He rarely completes classroom work at school, purposely bringing it home along with his assigned homework to complete it all here at home.
Sometimes we're up until 1am working on one days work.
The school & teachers will NOT hold him accountable for this work...they just issue a failing grade. This is not a concern to him...as he's already stated this to us. He does get detentions for eating in class, creating trouble, etc. (things he sits and does while other kids work because he's "bored" and doesn't want to do the work that he "saves it for later".)
He's capable of being a B student, and we've always said "c" and above would be fine with us. He's been tested by the school Psychologist & a mental health physician who say he has no learning disability.
He told us last weekend that he's weighed the consequences and no matter what reward we offered or what restrictions we set, nothing is enough to make him want to do the work...he only gets it done when I'm standing over him making him do it and he knows I'm not giving up...I think he relies on it.
He doesn't even care that he's missing out on evenings with his friends, family activities and so on because he's stuck at home doing the homework all evening.
We try to impress on him that he's spending more time and effort on not doing the work than if he'd just get it over with at school.
His attitude is terrible, he's always trying to manipulate us all. His lies get out of hand. He's lazy, unreliable and uses "I forgot" as an excuse for everything...and nothing is ever FAIR to him.
This is taking it's toll on the family. We have a 10 year old daughter who does well in school and we hate that she has to hear see this ongoing struggle all the time. My husband and I have been happily married for 17 years, we aren't parents who ignore or neglect our children, or each other. We' are a happy loving most often open-minded family with values & morals. We do family activities often. The only real stress in the house is our son. He's the direct cause of any arguments in this house.
Friends & family that have seen us going through & know we've tried everything with him agree that they don't know what else we can try.
Please help...if anyone has been through this before, please let me know that I'm not alone...I just keep taking it day by day...thinking maybe I can make it through the next 3 years of school with him.