2 hour battle over 1 hour homework
- Thread starter 92025
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Used to go there. Don't anymore.
School is school, and home is home.
We decided our relationship is worth more than school.
As a result... school now gives him one period every day, where he can do his homework with school help, and stay relatively caught up. The only thing that comes home is reading. And... it's working.
We also found that the more push-back we were getting... the more fatigue difficult child was fighting. In reality, after 6 hours of high-intensity concentration at school, difficult child didn't HAVE any resources left for homework. But without dxes... it's hard to get accommodations. Even "mood disorder not otherwise specified" helps a tiny bit.
School is school, and home is home.
We decided our relationship is worth more than school.
As a result... school now gives him one period every day, where he can do his homework with school help, and stay relatively caught up. The only thing that comes home is reading. And... it's working.
We also found that the more push-back we were getting... the more fatigue difficult child was fighting. In reality, after 6 hours of high-intensity concentration at school, difficult child didn't HAVE any resources left for homework. But without dxes... it's hard to get accommodations. Even "mood disorder not otherwise specified" helps a tiny bit.
KTMom91
Well-Known Member
I gave up on the homework battle, and Miss KT managed to slide through (in typical difficult child fashion) until her freshman year of high school, when she failed Biology. Natural consequence for that was Zero period PE. A semester of flag football at 6:30 in the morning, during winter, taught her better than I ever could.
T
TeDo
Guest
We had it in difficult child 1's IEP that he was given a set amount of time (a study hall - 1 hour) to do his work at school each day and as long as he worked during that time, what he had done was good enough and he was given full credit. I fought REALLY hard to get that but it worked. Like IC said, he just didn't have energy, focus, ambition, anything left after a full day at school. They also shortened his assignments to cover ONLY the important, main concepts. That was the school's idea and I was more than happy to go along with that one.
I feel your pain & glad I don't have that problem anymore.
I feel your pain & glad I don't have that problem anymore.
greenrene
Member
I am also one who refuses to fight the battle. In my case it was difficult child throwing a full-blown hissy fit over doing homework one day (not the first time it happened, but it was the worst time and last time), complete with tearing pages from the book, throwing pencils, breaking pencils, screaming, etc. I have 2 younger children, and that day I decided that it wasn't fair to them (or me, for that matter) to have to deal with that koi. So I totally backed off from schoolwork and left everything up to her, for the sake of trying to maintain a peaceful household (which is very difficult with her, but still). The natural consequences have been kind of a PIA... She BARELY passed 8th grade and didn't get into the high school she wanted to go to. She is now repeating the 8th grade.
dashcat
Member
I fought this battle and I regret it. In all honesty, I allowed myself to fall victim to the kind of pressure from her school that said "good parents are on top of things. bad parents let things slide". Not so. It all looks different in the rearview mirror. I would have the exact same unmotivated difficult child I have today whether I fought that battle or whether I did not. I would have saved myself - and her - a lot of heartache if I'd just let it go.
A
AmericanGirl
Guest
What are his consequences for not doing homework?
StressedM0mma
Active Member
I was starting to nag about it this year. difficult child started off great, but then when she started school refusal, it all went to koi. So, I have now decided that if I can get her school everyday, that is all I want. I am not telling her this, but like others said school is school. So let them figure it out with her. Not me.
Tiredof33
Active Member
I fought the same battle with my gifted difficult child. He would not do his homework and would make A's on tests so the teachers failed him.
The constant meetings with teachers that did nothing to help. He hated school and skipped so much I drove him to take his GED when he was sixteen.
I was told by a counselor that it is their (difficult child) way of controlling the parent. Still can't wrap my head around that one! I'm so glad that extremely stressful time is over. In addition to dealing with the difficult child the schools try their best to make you feel like the worse low life parent ever.
(((huggs)))
The constant meetings with teachers that did nothing to help. He hated school and skipped so much I drove him to take his GED when he was sixteen.
I was told by a counselor that it is their (difficult child) way of controlling the parent. Still can't wrap my head around that one! I'm so glad that extremely stressful time is over. In addition to dealing with the difficult child the schools try their best to make you feel like the worse low life parent ever.
(((huggs)))
DDD
Well-Known Member
been there done that. I gave up that battle with my giften kid so I know it is difficult to wrap your head around inferior educational when early on you just assume your kid is destined to be President or close. SIGH! Once weed and arrests are part of his world, in my humble opinion, you have zero chance of winning the school battle. I'm not saying your son will change his ways but it's better to have him at home in peace than excaping home to avoid battles. It's a rough road and I'm sorry you are on it. Hugs DDD
T
toughlovin
Guest
I dont have any answers to this...my difficult child barely graduated hs...i remember when he was in 9 th grade cracking the books with him and it was awful and i am not sure made any difference in the end. I know it doesnt feel like it now but if he is using and into drugs school is the least of your problems and it is time to turn over his problems to him.
I now have a easy child daughter who is a senior in hs and it is such a different experience...i am not involved in her school work at all unless she specifically asks me for help and that is the way it should be....but i know never is with a difficult child.
TL
I now have a easy child daughter who is a senior in hs and it is such a different experience...i am not involved in her school work at all unless she specifically asks me for help and that is the way it should be....but i know never is with a difficult child.
TL
SuZir
Well-Known Member
When our difficult child was 14, we had to give up not only the homework battle but also the going to school battle. difficult child run away from school on his first day of Kindergarten and truancy was an issue ever since. And it didn't help that we delivered him to school, to his class room and to his seat in mornings. He just ran away during the day, if he wanted. He even had an aide to keep him in school in one point, but difficult child has always been quick and agile and the aide was not. He easily literally outran her. After trying everything we could think of, we were in the point there CPS was considering taking difficult child into a care and sending him to the Residential Treatment Center (RTC) with it's own confined school. That would had cost our county around 10 000 dollars a month, difficult child would have not gotten teaching in his level (he did well academically, he just didn't go to class) and would have been living and learning from kids, who had much more serious behavioural issues than he had. Our county was not too eager to pay quite that much to get difficult child actually have his butt on the seat in the classroom and to teach difficult child all the criminal skills he would had learned so in the end we were all saved by psychiatrist's (mostly bogus) diagnosis of school phobia that allowed difficult child to go to school when he wished and play truant when he didn't. As long as he made great grades and showed up often enough to those classes there he needed to actually do something (art, music, crafts, home economy, foreign languages, PE he covered with winning school some medals in competitions between the schools in track and field and skiing, I'm not sure how many actual PE class he actually went, not many I think), everyone just turned the blind eye to where he spent his days.
Certainly not a perfect plan, but only one that worked with our difficult child. And surprisingly enough, he not only made it through the compulsory education, he is (hopefully) graduating from High School (not officially compulsory around here) in less than three months (and having his last final exam in just few weeks, after that it is just waiting results) with very high grades. How he has managed to avoid actually showing up in school more than absolutely necessary, juggling his homework and substitutive assignments with least possible effort and usually late, doing it all during the last year and half while living three hours away from his school, is just a state of the art exhibition. To keep sane I have absolutely declined to even think about how he does manage his school and just checked that grades are what we expect (our deal is, that we don't interfere as long as grades stay up.) Now he only has his finals left and about those I do stress some. And when he moved to his current city (to play sport) his team promised to look after and help him with schooling (standard procedure) and his poor positional coach has taken that to the heart even when we told him not to bother and that he will just work himself to ulcer if he tries to look after difficult child's school work. I don't know who of us is most eagerly waiting it to be over. Probably the coach. I'm still counting weeks, difficult child is counting days and the coach is already counting hours left to the end of the last exam...
Certainly not a perfect plan, but only one that worked with our difficult child. And surprisingly enough, he not only made it through the compulsory education, he is (hopefully) graduating from High School (not officially compulsory around here) in less than three months (and having his last final exam in just few weeks, after that it is just waiting results) with very high grades. How he has managed to avoid actually showing up in school more than absolutely necessary, juggling his homework and substitutive assignments with least possible effort and usually late, doing it all during the last year and half while living three hours away from his school, is just a state of the art exhibition. To keep sane I have absolutely declined to even think about how he does manage his school and just checked that grades are what we expect (our deal is, that we don't interfere as long as grades stay up.) Now he only has his finals left and about those I do stress some. And when he moved to his current city (to play sport) his team promised to look after and help him with schooling (standard procedure) and his poor positional coach has taken that to the heart even when we told him not to bother and that he will just work himself to ulcer if he tries to look after difficult child's school work. I don't know who of us is most eagerly waiting it to be over. Probably the coach. I'm still counting weeks, difficult child is counting days and the coach is already counting hours left to the end of the last exam...
My goodness SuZir! That had to be an exhausting facet of your life for so long. I've never even heard of someone ditching Kindergarten! Sounds like many people have decided to stop fighting this. I just can't do it yet. He is so smart. He's from a family that values education. I did encourage him not to sign up for the honors classes teachers recommended him for and to consider voc tech. He was insulted. I can't give up yet.
I didn't give up... I just fought for school to own the problem rather than me. It took some creative work, and a flexible schedule - and a guidance counsellor willing to commit to 4 years of hand-coding his schedule. I fight to make sure the accommodations and interventions are in place. I have enough on my plate.
When we forced the school issue back to school - we've ended up further ahead. Instead of a drop-out, I have a kid who is looking at adding harder classes that he doesn't have to take... even if it slows his schedule down again. He's just starting to enjoy the learning process. And... if he can learn how to learn, and how to navigate the education system (because post-secondary is still part of "the system")... he WILL get an education. The rest of the picture - including homework - is just "knowledge", not "skills".
Learning to love learning is worth more than a report card full of A-level marks and accolades.
When we forced the school issue back to school - we've ended up further ahead. Instead of a drop-out, I have a kid who is looking at adding harder classes that he doesn't have to take... even if it slows his schedule down again. He's just starting to enjoy the learning process. And... if he can learn how to learn, and how to navigate the education system (because post-secondary is still part of "the system")... he WILL get an education. The rest of the picture - including homework - is just "knowledge", not "skills".
Learning to love learning is worth more than a report card full of A-level marks and accolades.
exhausted
Active Member
Its hard to give up. My difficult child was gifted and weed killed her drive. Even sober she is hard to motivate. Can you get any
school support? We have a writing lab and homework support at my school. difficult child also had a tracker (didnt work for her) to
Hold her accountable. Sometimes it needs to come from someone besides mom. Can his court worker help?
school support? We have a writing lab and homework support at my school. difficult child also had a tracker (didnt work for her) to
Hold her accountable. Sometimes it needs to come from someone besides mom. Can his court worker help?
92025--
You can't think of it as "giving up". Of course you will never give up on your child!
But as a friend pointed out to me once - it is easy to become too vested in your child's success. At the end of the day - your child is who he is. You cannot force someone to be a success - regardless of how capable they may be. If he wants it - he will work for it....but it is really up to him.
I have too kids who are pretty smart. difficult child does not do homework. She skips classes. She could care less about her GPA or her education in general. And so she has managed to get herself in all the lowest-level classes that require the least amount of work so that she could skate through. And she has been doing just that - skating through. She is now on track to graduate hs...yes she is at the bottom of her class....but she will graduate nonetheless. And she is prefectly happy with that.
Meanwhile, my DS is driven. He wants that college scholarship. He goes the extra mile on school projects. He does the extra credit. Sometimes he needs help - and I am happy to jump in and help - and sometimes he tells me to back off and let him handle it. I have no doubt he's going to get himself that scholarship.
Two kids - two very different personalities....and that's not a darn thing I can do to change either one.
You can't think of it as "giving up". Of course you will never give up on your child!
But as a friend pointed out to me once - it is easy to become too vested in your child's success. At the end of the day - your child is who he is. You cannot force someone to be a success - regardless of how capable they may be. If he wants it - he will work for it....but it is really up to him.
I have too kids who are pretty smart. difficult child does not do homework. She skips classes. She could care less about her GPA or her education in general. And so she has managed to get herself in all the lowest-level classes that require the least amount of work so that she could skate through. And she has been doing just that - skating through. She is now on track to graduate hs...yes she is at the bottom of her class....but she will graduate nonetheless. And she is prefectly happy with that.
Meanwhile, my DS is driven. He wants that college scholarship. He goes the extra mile on school projects. He does the extra credit. Sometimes he needs help - and I am happy to jump in and help - and sometimes he tells me to back off and let him handle it. I have no doubt he's going to get himself that scholarship.
Two kids - two very different personalities....and that's not a darn thing I can do to change either one.
SuZir
Well-Known Member
Yes, it was awful. All of it. Ditching Kindergarten story we can now tell for laughs, but I can assure you, I wasn't laughing when I was called from school that difficult child had gone missing. We live in the area there even rather young children walk to school etc. on their own if the route is safe. Not Kindergarten aged but for example 7- or 8-year-olds if they are reliable. My difficult child of course was not reliable, but he was very tall to his age so no one paid any attention on him walking alone after running off from Kindergarten. And that made it very difficult to find him. It didn't help that when his disappearance got to the radio stations etc. police got a call that kid looking like difficult child had been seen playing in the bank of the river (with rather heavy flow.) We still don't know if that was difficult child (he didn't tell much about there he had been those five hours before he was found), but they already considered starting dragging the river at the time he was found (playing middle of the busy divided freeway.) And his schooling has been very stressful ever since.
We too value education and have tradition for higher education. Both I and husband have post-graduate degrees, in fact so have all of difficult child's grandparents (even my difficult child parents both manage to obtain PhDs somehow.) My difficult child is also very smart (in high IQ kind of the way.) But for difficult child school has been socially impossible. For us, letting it go in fact helped. My difficult child's grades are very high (he is easily in the top 5 % in nation wide, most likely in top 1 %) and partly because of family background he has always just assumed he would go to University and obtain higher education if his sport doesn't work out for him or after his sport career. So he has some internal drive for doing well in school and that is probably the reason that our letting go of the battle to get him actually go to school has given us so good results. With him it goes better, when we have let him do it in his own way. I'm sure this doesn't work with every kid, but it worked for us.
