What to do with a un-motivated kid in school?

[Buck531]

Ok, I'm kinda stuck here. I've tried everything I could think of. Here's the deal.

 

My son is 11 (5th grade). He's doing incredibly shitty in school. Not turning in work, missing assignments. Basically, not giving a shit. Right now I think he has 1 D and all the rest are F's.

 

I've spoken with his teacher and she says it's "Lack of effort".

 

Prior to this, he was doing "ok". He's basically a C student and I dont' expect much above that. My wife and I were both C students in school so that's what I'm expecting.

 

What can I do to get him motivated? I've tried giving him things. I got him signed up on a bowling league on Saturday mornings like he asked. Nothing I do seems to be working.

 

However, he has been diagnosed with ADD (or so they say.. back in 1st grade). He has had just about every medication out there. Right now he's on Stratera.

 

Phsychiatrist? I'm out of answers.

[Total Sign]

$ talks.

 

Yes it is bribery, some will say this is wrong, tell him you will pay him x dollars per C/B/A

[morabu]

worked for me

[AngryBMW]

Originally posted by Assured Risk:

$ talks.

 

Yes it is bribery, some will say this is wrong, tell him you will pay him x dollars per C/B/A

Worked for me

 

I would suggest paying him $5 per C, $10 per B, and $15 per A. It doesnt seem like much, but it adds up. Also, let him know that it is only for report card grades, and that if he pulls all A's he gets a bonus.

-Marc

[Primera]

i'd tell him to improve or he's out of the bowling league. i think if it means that much to him, he'll try atleast a little harder.

[Brandon]

show him what it will be like in the future if he just dosent care. And show pictures and videos of homeless people, or real poor people. Better yet drive through the projects muwhaha

[LJ]

Originally posted by Assured Risk:

$ talks.

 

Yes it is bribery, some will say this is wrong, tell him you will pay him x dollars per C/B/A

Yep, it works

[Guest powers]

i would say that the best thing to do is to be more invovled. Not saying thatyour not now, but i went through a stage of this when i was about his age. One of the things that my parents did was just make me do it.

When i got home I was allowed to do nothing until i showed my mom what my assignment was and again when completed. After that I was rewarded with the freedom to do what I wanted. My parents would check up on a monthly and sometimes weekly basis to see how I was doing in class. As I did better I was rewarded with items that I had been wanting. This more than anything set at least a pattern for me so rather than my parents having to stay on top of me I had changed my habbits so I was self sufficient. My parents continued to check up and when the reports were good I was told about them and was rewarded when bad I was told about them and had and freedoms taken away. But it for sure took a good amount of time to set the pattern. almost a full school year.

[AngryBMW]

Yeah, having your freedom taken away sucks at that age. I had mine gone for an entire summer, and I did everything and anything to get it back.

-Marc

[Tractor]

I may be a rare case, but I was like that. I didn't care what anyone did. I didn't want to be in school, didn't care about school, and just wanted to do things my way. By the time I was in 5th grade I had had teachers and my parents try bribes of money, candy, stickers. I had punishments of loss of activities and beatings. I didn't care it only drove me to resist more. Finally everyone had about given up and the school was suggesting other forms of education. My parents finally decided to try homeschooling me and it worked out great for me. Of course I resisted that as well, but I only resisted in the since that I did my learning my way and learned mostly what I wanted to learn.

 

Is your child smart or are you serious that there only a C student at best. I was a D and F guy, but only on paper. When I took the yearly exams that all other kids in convental schools had to take I was in the 99.9% group in all areas, but spelling.

I still can't spell worth shit, but I feel I'm a well informed person and at 26 now I'm doing pretty well for anyone my age.

 

I don't believe people are dumb. Just ignorant in certain areas. Maybe you need to expand and grow your childs areas of interest and try to integrate the other stuff into there hobbies.

My parents saw that I liked using a computer very much. They also saw that instead of playing games I would write games. I'd do it 16 hours a day or more if they let me. They looked at what I was doing and it wasn't just messing with a computer. I was a 11 year old that could type at 80 words a minute write in 3 old school programming languages. I was learning and using mathmatics that were way out of there league, and I was also writing technical documention to go along with my programs using techniques I learn from books at the library on technical writing.

 

I wouldn't advise medication or labels though since that is just bandaiding a problem instead of dealing with it.

 

Evan

[nathan]

No TV, no phone, etc. then reward good behavior with the above stated, and/or movies games and stuff. The comment by the teacher of lack of effort would indicate that he/she feels that your kid can do the work. Most teachers (my parents and spouse are) know who can and cannot do the required work. Sometimes a tutor can help, but the kid has to want to learn in that case. I guess the big thing is what are the consequences for not doing what he is supposed too??? BTW corporial punishment does actually work!

[wendemac]

I also have an 11 yr old son. He was un motivated as well. More so last year than this year. My husband goes up to the school each evening and write down the assignments on the board. Our son should also have these written down in his agenda book. We ask him every day what was the home work assignment if he lies, he's busted. No PS2, no company nothing but studying. Basically you may find yourself sitting down doing the homework with him & making sure he understands what he is doing. After a few month of this he did a complete turn around. I guess he got tired of us ragging on him everyday & sitting down treating him like a 6 yr old. We tried to stress to him we are doing this to benefit him. We also told him if he brought home all A & B's we'd buy him a new Bike. We also promise that if he can keep an A & B average the whole year we'd buy him a go kart. I must say we will be buying a new Bike for Christmas. He received his first A/B honor roll certificate last month.

 

Sorry for the long long post but I truly know how you feel.

 

Wende

[Tractor]

Yeah I started my I don't give a shit stuff before 1st grade and no punishment ever worked in the least. I wouldn't even except the bribes. I felt I was compremising my intregty. Pretty cool for a very young kid ain't it.

 

yeah my spelling still sucks.

 

Evan

[Guest busteryhyman]

my nephew was like that. his older brother is so good in schoool but he just refuses to learn or go. My sister decided to switch him schools and he's doing better. I believe a lot has to do with the environment, especially if the kid refuses to accept bribes/.rewards

[PonyPimpstress1647545491]

I know that it seems like a ton of work. But buy him an assignment book. Every day, make him get his assignments and write them down in pen (so they can't be changed) and have the teacher sign it at the bottom and the # of assignments that he has. Check it EVERY night. At the end of the week, have the teacher write yes or no (end of day on fri) if he has completed and turned in all of his assignments.

 

If not, make sure that the punishment will last one week with an impact.. i suggest something like TV or video games. Stick to it. It will be difficult on your part, but giving in and not sticking with the origional punishment lets the child know that he has a sort of 'control' over his parent(s).

 

Also, if there are two bad weeks in a row... continue the punishment from last week and add a new punishment. This way the child knows that if he doesn't do good then his life will have none of his wants. Believe it or not this is a motivator for even kids that are not motivated.

 

I know this may sound a tad silly, but this is how some psychologists would handle it. I have done extensive research with child psychology and developmental psychology, and these are some of their suggestions!

 

p.s. bribes are not the best way. they will get used to and expect it for something they should do. surprise him every now and then if he does good. Do something with just you and him out of the blue, but remind him of how proud you are of his good work that week/month.

 

hope this helps smile.gif It worked on my cousin!

[Buck531]

Thanks for the replies. Here's a few more things I'll tell you.

 

1. Tried bribes.. Don't work for shit.

2. He already has an assignment book. His teacher signs it every day. When he comes home, his excuse is "I left my books at school". My reply "well, go back and get them". He went and got them and did his missing assignments for the last few days. His other excuse is "I already did it and turned it in." bullshit.

 

3. I've taken things away from him. I already told him earlier today that if nothing happens, that I'll pull him off the bowling team. This is only his 3rd week of bowling and he's doing pretty damn good for 3 weeks of bowling.. i'd really hate to take him out of it.

 

4. Big papa. We've been trying that since the middle of the 1st 9 weeks. Here's the kicker though, when he gets in trouble at school and has detention or whatever, my wife won't fucking tell me cause she knows I'll be hard on him. It REALLY pisses me off. But that's another story. It's hard to tell when he's doing good or when he has bad days because my wife won't tell me. She stays at home with our other 3 year old and she sees him before I do.

 

5. Wende. For the assignments, see above. He writes them down in his log book every day and the teacher signs them at the end of each school day. We then get to sign back on it saying that we've seen it. It's working out on that end, but he's doing the excuses now that left his shit at school.

 

Basically we've tried just about everything that has been mentioned here smile.gif . I'm generally on his shit every day about doing work and so on. I'm just not sure why he hasn't turned around yet. He's basically banned from the x-box. No game boy, playstation, etc. Next is TV cause he's been watching a LOT of Tv lately.

 

sigh.

[wendemac]

We've taking him back to the school on many occasions to get his homework. He also tried the I turned it in during class stuff too. When we had our 1 on 1 with his teacher we asked her if it was ok for him to bring the assignments home for us to verify. She agreed as long as they were turned in the next day. (anything they don't finish in class is considered their homework) Licking Heights has a web site where the teachers post upcoming projects for parent to check out. We also have her email address.

 

Don't give up stay on him he'll one day thank you for it!

[black00ws6]

Or just tell him every F equals 1 beating.. worked on me. I graduated in the top 5 of GPA's in my school

 

j/k.. You can take him to the "bad" areas of columbus and show him what his future will be like if he doesn't get his shit together.

[Buck531]

Originally posted by Blowzilla:

Or just tell him every F equals 1 beating.. worked on me. I graduated in the top 5 of GPA's in my school

I'd like to do that, but I don't believe in smacking my kids ass. When he was like 5.. yeah.. not 11. smile.gif .

[excell]

I was the same way. You need to find some way to challenge him. I couldn't (and still couldn't) give a flying shit about school because it was boring, and for the most part, useless. The only shit I took intrest in was shit I liked, and at 5th grade there wasn't much.

 

I actually flunked the 6th grade. Not because I'm stupid, not because it was too hard, but because it was boring and I felt it to be useless - so I didn't do shit. Bribes don't do shit, taking stuff away doesn't do shit. I was always smarter than my mom, who once tried to deactivate the TV with a lock. I simply "hotwired" our TV so that I could watch it.

 

Have you tried having him take an offical IQ test? I'll bet that he isn't stupid. I'll bet that he just doesn't give a shit because he isn't being challenged. He doesn't take an intrest because there is nothing intresting to him.

[COLD AIR]

Its in the genes tongue.gif

 

If you dont belive in smacking his ass, Fix up the basement.

 

Smack his ass or Her's

[nismo]

I was kind of the same way although I didn't have A.D.D.but I was in a class for slow readers. Shit to this day I still don't pay much attention to things that don't interest me. I raced 1/4 Midgets when I was younger so cars were a big interest for me so my dad starting giving me his old Hot Rod mags and car related books and my reading improved greatly. So I would say try to incorparate(sp) what he likes in his learning and don't push too hard.

[Tractor]

I agree with the previous guys about helping through encouraging interests. That is the only true way of learning. All the other stuff might work, but will only work in that he does what he must do to either get to do fun things or not feel pain. He won't really learn. In learning there is math, reading, spelling, history, sciences. How far you take a child in each area depends on the childs interest in the subject. I wouldn't be afraid of a medical doctor that can't fix a car or fly a plane, or even just do algebra. I'm a field service tech for an IT company so I don't expect to know how to be a medical doctor or engineer, but they call me when there office shit breaks. I don't need great grammar, spelling, advanced math, or things of that type in my job, but I do need basic communication skills, advanced mechanics, electronics, and physics.

 

Evan

[Dave1647545494]

military school.

[dragknee66]

Wow.. ya what most of the people here said worked for me too. I was almost the same way in school. The money and awards things worked for me.

 

My grandmas sister has a boy my age now.. he was the way your son was, nothing worked for him. He was a HORRIBLE kid, he pissed on his house and did the most worse things you can think of at school... they ended up sending him to military school for a year.. WOW DID THAT CHANGE HIS ASS lol. The kid is straighter than an arrow now.

 

If all else fails.. send him away for a year. It sounds bad, but in the end, even he will appreciate what you did for him. Obviously if he never changes and keeps this attitude all through out his schooling years, he wont be much more than a manager at McDonalds by the time hes 30

 

Keep us informed though, Im curious now as well.