You can lead a kid to homework but you can't make them think.

I'm not saying to expect less. I'm saying to expect 'different' sometimes.

I expect functional. But what some people need to function is different from what others need to function. And it doesn't always occur or click in at the same time.

I can't expect my children to be me - they have to be them.
But I still want them to be good people.
I don't think that's expecting less - I think that's acknowledging their unique gifts.
It would be like my daughter expecting me to be able to draw like she does because she can.
Well, I can't. But I can write like she can't.

People, and especially children can't be poured into the same moulds.

If I had a child who was exhibiting rage, fear, confusion, etc...I'd put that first and then later ask him or her to learn how to spell- that's all I'm saying.

I wouldn't ask them to learn how to spell as a priority when it was obvious they were confused about how to function day to day.

Not always, but often this is true.

That has got to be incredibly painful. It also explains why you do/did devote a lot of time to internet sites for kids, if I am remembering correctly. I imagine that would be excellent therapy.

Did you think that he was lying??

not saying that the above applies to your kid dp... but..

That behaviour is how I figured out Bean is severely dyslexic. But, for HER.. she wanted to do every thing else.. except reading. No matter what she would not do as she was told.
Granted, it was not a knock down drag out fight and all it took was me to pretty much just let her know that there were no other options. But, we have never HAD extreme reactions to anything so I can not speak from any other point .
She knew she had to, but the resistance was enough to make me ask questions.

Your kid is probably just suffering from severe teenage laziness.. too bad there isnt a diagnosis for that. he is capable of getting ANYTHING, just doesnt want to..

Hmmm...

I saw this topic early this morning when I was at the computer for a short time, and read only the first several posts, and had a lot I wanted to say because this is something I've been dealing with and thinking about and I enjoy having parenting discussions about this sort of thing.

Then I came back, full of the things I wanted to say, and find that it's all kind of taken a turn.

A lot of accusations being thrown around. Boomer has been very proactive about dealing with the school and trying to make things work -- she has been very, very far from just lying down and saying "oh OK, two hours of homework, groovy."

On the larger issue of "making" kids do something, if I can come back to that:

First, I think JPB's posts here have been very good.

Second, I really identify with the stuff being talked about re: the father saying "just make 'em" and the mother saying "it's more complicated than that." We've gone through several permutations of this and in the early rounds (which were the most intense) I was able to pull M.Ed rank and haul out old textbooks and point at stuff.

One of those things was the idea of intrinsic motivation vs. extrinsic motivation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_motivation

Not everything works with intrinsic motivation of course. But the point I made then, and which we have had to keep coming back to, goes something like... He says, his dad was quite strict with him, and look, it worked -- he's very successful in a really difficult field. I then say some variation of yes, but what were your teen years like? (He was HORRIBLE. Rebelled in 10,000 different ways, to the point where it's pretty lucky he survived.)

That's the problem with "strict"/ iron fist parenting -- it works until it doesn't.

He has a friend who is a very similar personality in general, and this friend's wife is pretty similar to me. There are a lot of parallels in how we parent. The friend took his son with him on a trip -- just the boys -- and in his words "wouldn't let him get away with anything." The friend has been crowing that since their return, the school said that his son is a "changed boy."*

That, for a while, made E.G. want to take the more authoritarian tack again. It really didn't work, and just created a lot of tension in general.

So it's something I've been thinking about lately.

We don't have the homework problem, thank goodness. (Most nights the only "homework" is reading, which she does every night before bed whether there is homework or not.) But the whole issue of us wanting her to do something that she doesn't want to do still comes up a lot.

The biggest one is ballet. I hate this one because I absolutely don't want to force her to do something that she doesn't want to do. And before ballet, she often is pitching a fit about how much she doesn't want to do it. But the thing is that AFTER ballet she's smiling and happy and pirouetting and showing me the cool new thing she learned and basically on cloud nine about how much she loves ballet. This drives me absolutely batty.

Another "natural consequences" thing that I have a hard time with -- she is very forgetful about water bottles. (They bring water bottles to school and drink from them throughout the day.) Obvious natural consequence -- if she forgets all of the water bottles in succession and none are left at home, then she has no water that day. Problem -- whether she actually has cyclic vomiting syndrome or not, mild dehydration is a major risk factor for her to get sick. And when she gets sick, it tends to be epic. That affects me in a direct way as well as her -- I have to tend to her, miss work time, and sometimes take her to the ER. I don't want her to get sick.

At any rate, some of the stuff we have been doing that seems to help is talk about the intrinsic motivation stuff (without calling it that). Example -- even though she's tired and doesn't feel like going to ballet, once she actually goes, she's happy that she went. I say that the same thing happens to me with working out -- I pretty much never want to go, but I'm happy I did once I've gone. For cleaning her room and other responsibilities, once she's done them then she can do her own thing with the knowledge that nobody can bother her about other stuff she should be doing. Etc.

That's hard for homework though. About all I can come up with is the feeling of accomplishment, and the freedom to do whatever you want once it's done.

We have had talks about how nobody likes it when we're in a situation where she should do something and she's not. She doesn't like it when we're bothering her about it, and we don't like bothering her about it. Nobody likes the drama, so let's work together.

Taking care of her hair has been an example there -- she wanted her hair long but she couldn't take care of it on her own, and it started to be an ongoing drama ("OW!" "What, I was being so careful!" "MOM, that HURT!" "Argh....!") So she got a haircut (so it was easier to handle) and started taking care of it on her own. That whole drama has been (mostly) removed. (There are still struggles about how often she should wash it -- I think she should more often.)


*While to the friend and E.G. the moral of this story is that their wives let their kids get away with too much, to me the moral of the story is that the kid really benefited from having so much time with his very-busy, not-very-present dad.

I agree with you completely. He does have a diagnosed learning disability and we do get some accommodations with homework. Like I said, I don't even care if it gets done. I'm not trying to make him a straight A student but I do want him to get through school and homework counts.

The accommodations caused their own set of problems when the other kids in his class found out about them. He was teased. He asked the teacher to switch him back to the regular homework. Things went to hell again. I had the teacher switch things back but we can't find "normal" again.

I've told Mo that I don't think any kids should get homework. There isn't one study that shows homework makes a difference until kids get to high school.

Mr. B and I do not agree on this issue. That only adds to the stress. The best we can do is compromise. Seriously, I sometimes wonder if I'll end up divorced over 4th grade homework.

I think Mo is very smart. His grades don't reflect how smart he is because school is about a different kind of smart.

I think Aidan has said exactly what I would have said so I'm not too sure of what to add. (Thanks Aidan.)

Hitting is out of the question. I don't have it in me to hit anyone, especially a child, and most especially Mo. It simply isn't going to happen.

I have gone to the teacher. I've gone to the principal! I've tried everything.

We've even tried the stop watch idea: you're going to do an hour of homework. Just one hour. But if you get mad or off track or need to run around the block to clear your head then the stop watch stops and starts again only when you sit down to work. We still spent 3 hours on homework.

I know that it doesn't take him all 3 hours to do the work but the fact is -- it does take 3 hours to get the work done.

I'm almost back to the point of pulling him out of school and going for the unschooling thing. I'm pretty sure that would be the end of me and Mr. B though.

Anything more than 1.5 hours is too much homework for a kid Mo's age. Is this 2.75 hours of homework because he doesn't do it and it drags on? Or is this 2.75 hours of work?

How many times have you used the no baseball practice thing?

Oh, dadpad, I'm so sorry.

When I look towards the future that is the kind of thing I fear. It's not even like you can say to yourself "if I'd only ...." because you tried that too.

My niece was a mess, a drop out, a junkie, in jail, the whole nine yards She's 30 now and almost has it turned around but I think she will always be the most self-centered person on the planet. My sister gave up years ago. They will never have a good relationship again even if my niece does somehow manage to grow up.

I worry about that happening to us.

I didn't resist any diagnosis. The school said he had ADD/ADHD. I took him in for testing. The diagnosis was that he did NOT have ADD/ADHD.

Saying I resisted a diagnosis is completely absurd.

Ha! I could go on for days about Mr. B and his strict step-father who have a terrible relationship. The guy was a dictator (he still is). I guess that's why I can't believe that Mr. B pulls the same kind of stuff with Mo. I suppose it's what he "knows".

After things calmed down last night Mr. B and I had the "how do you think I should make him do this stuff...." conversation and his answer was that Mo's life should be stripped down to the bare walls.

Over homework.

It's the anger and frustration and meanness that make Mr. B mad, "not the homework" but the fact is in the absence of homework there isn't the anger and frustration and meanness.

I don't know what to do.



Mo and I have had this conversation so many times. It doesn't make a dent. He knows it but he can't seem to stop himself.

i cant really say how similar the situation is here... but.. wow. The only thing that is different is HOW bean reacts . She doesnt do the screaming personal attacks. But she really hits a wall too.

I thought exactly that myself. .. then I found alternative schools.

I do NOT have the patience, nor do I have the desire to be a homeschool parent. This is no judgment on those that do, Im just speaking for myself and I know that I would sabotage it because i dont want that.
But as you said earlier, public schools are a different kind of "smart" and it is a very low smart too.
A lot of it is equating to read and repeat with memorization being the biggest component.
No, this isnt AL.. but.. dang.. its a huge piece of the pie.

Bean can construct a full on working board game at 7 years old. She is also very mechanically inclined. She is a do-er, a fixer and a problem solver.
read and repeat style stuff does nothing for her. Which is why her homework helps make a bit more sense when we can physically DO it. This concept is understood by parents, but here in texas ( which is my only experience, so everyone please dont hear me accusing or pointing the finger at ALL public schools) but here intexas the testing is done in such away that it tests your supposed smarts based on that concept alone. And for her, it makes her appear very behind. Yet, when you sit and talk to her, talk her through her english and reading assignments she gets it completely.

I started looking into alternative schools over a year ago, but the separation took precedence for many important reasons. Now I am back to it and finding that the alternative ways of teaching not only accommodate dyslexia, but do not have to be done in a separate class room known as special ed where kids lose their ability to socialize due to stigmas attached with it. ( among other things... dyslexia is not the only issue going on with her.. )

do you have any in your area?
Yes, this will create a disruption. Yes this will affect the routine that drives Mo's sanity and yours frankly. yes yes yes... it is a scary thing..
but...?

Baseball practice just started so last night was the first time it's come up. He knew he couldn't go if the homework wasn't done and he clearly wasn't going to do the homework.

I questioned him as to whether he really wanted to play baseball and that if he didn't that was okay but that to get out of playing by not doing his homework wasn't the right way to go about it.

He insists that he wants to play. He loves to play.

Here's his homework schedule:

Daily: 30 minutes of reading, 10 m. flashcards, 10 m. spelling = 50 m.; plus one page of "language arts" - anywhere from 10-30 minutes for a total (on a good day) of 60 m.

Two days a week: 2 pages of math (about 30 problems per day)

One day a week: book report

One day a week: reading with questions (read the front side, answer questions on the back)

We usually do the reading, flashcards and spelling in the morning and do the rest after school. On a good day we'll spend about an hour and a half. On a day like yesterday we'll spend three and a half.

There are several good alternative high schools but the lower grades are all private -- and very expensive (the cheapest one I looked at was $15,000 per year). The economy sucks and money is tight so unless I win the lottery that isn't going to happen within the next year.

I like his school and his teacher has really tried to work with us but we can't expect her to take every kid's psychological status into consideration when she's trying to run a classroom.

The fact that Mr. B and I are at such odds on this isn't helping.

Yeah, that makes it a lot harder. I've definitely been caught between that rock and hard place.

Have u tried to convince Mo of the value of Education ?





David

I think this really sums it up!

I am so sorry that you have such a hardship with your son. It's not mompad's or your fault either, sometimes they have to fall hard in order
to get up again. Just be there when it happens...

I don't really have anything to say about how to make him understand but I do case one strong vote for him needing to learn a critical life-lesson. In my opinion, the main lessons a kid needs to get out of school are:

1) Learning to deal with authority.
2) Learning to socialize.
3) Learning to learn.
4) Learning to think about the future instead of the present (he is still a hedonist).

Does he understand that the real point isn't the homework but that he needs to learn to jump through some hoops in life? I am as anti-authority and anti-stupid hoops as they come but I worked hard to have the freedom not to jump through them and picked my spots. I've seen other kids really hurt themselves with this anti-authority schtick and while I've endlessly debated the disciplinary side of it I don't have any answers.

But here are some other random ideas anyway:

If he is given freedom to pick when he does it (i.e. can he turn stuff in weekly instead of daily) would he be willing to do it?
Can you make it a homework bank? Where he's saving up his homework that he refuses to do and not avoiding it?
Can you go on strike in some way in your social contract with him till he ends his strike?
Can you have a trial? Where a jury of his peers determines whether he is being reasonable and he is allowed to present his case and is willing to submit to the result? I'm thinking a kind of arbitration if he really thinks it's unfair he should try to make his case and be willing to live with an adverse result? Maybe too theatrical...
Can I pay him to blog his homework learning? If he writes a diary of how he beats his homework problem so that other kids can get ideas from him on how to make it less of a chore I'll pay him $100. A "me vs homework" site or somesuch (hey, when you have a good hammer you see nails everywhere and I'm a big fan of the "teach others to teach others" concept).

Many psychologists say that some of these kids just need to hit their own "rock bottom" before they get jolted out of it. I think there is always hope.

I ended up homeless as a teenager because I refused to take a drug test when I'd admitted to taking drugs (thought it was kinda pointless a hoop to jumpt through and there were a lot of other underlying issues as well but ultimately it was a refusal to do what I was told, regardless of my reasons). That was my rock bottom, I had a backback full of CDs, a discman and a gun and was a general jackass. Not that I'm not now and while I'm still unwilling to submit to authority I sucked it up until I could make my own terms. I worked hard because I didn't want to submit to authority but I had to take my lumps to learn that lesson.

I hope your son has a safe landing but I don't think you should feel bad about it either. Not enabling him may seem harsh in the short term but may be the only way left for him to learn.