Help me help Hallboy (School related)

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’m in my 11th year of trying to get my son to do his homework, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. We’ve talked to him until we’re blue in the face trying to get him to understand that if he’d just do it (and hand it in!) he’d probably get at least an B and probably a A in the course. Unfortunately, when he gets the chance to make the decision of whether to do it or not, he focuses on the short term. It’s too boring or there’s something more interesting to do or he’d rather take a nap or whatever.

I think the most success we’ve had is with creating a “homework hour” and enforcing it, whether he claimed to have homework or not. If he didn’t have an assignment to do, he had to read a book for that hour. The book requirement had mixed success - if the book turned out to be too interesting, he’d read that instead of doing the homework, but at least it got him more interested in reading.

I sympathize with you on this, since I know the constant vigilance is wearing, and some of the teachers can be less than cooperative. When they have 30 kids to worry about, most of them don’t want to have to remember to mark one kid’s assignment book for what the homework was that day, so we had a lot of trouble trying to keep after the kid to make sure everything was done. We could always find out after the fact that he didn’t do something, but finding out if he had an assignment on a daily basis was next to impossible.

Just this week I found out that he blew an A in Spanish because he didn’t bother to hand in the last two assignments. There goes his average, and now he has to take the semester final in that class this week. He’s 17 years old, and we still have to remind him daily to to the homework. And he still doesn’t do it.

Good luck.

22

Thank you to all who have put forth some very good suggestions. I’ll weed through them all to see what I think will work best in our situation (and even try those that I think might not, depending on the rate of success).

Hallboy began at a charter school (in 1-3 grades) where he was physically bullied, so badly that it only ended when I threatened to call in the media as well as the police to press charges if he was ever harmed again. In 4th grade, I got him into the small private school where he is now. It’s taken him about two years to emotionally heal from the three years of hell. Yes, he’s gone through extensive counseling in the mean time, and the school has been fantastic. Those first two years were focused on his emotional health, and honestly, academics went by the way side. (Made it through the day without sobbing and having a major meltdown? That was a success. Does Hallboy look forward to going to school, rather than having physically ill symptoms at the bus stop? That was a success.)

The good news is that his social skills are fantastic. He’s friendly, outgoing, gets along well with kids of all ages and can form healthy friendships. The social/classroom behavior report is excellent. The academic however…

He’s been tested for learning disabilities (there were none) and his peditrician says that he’s healthy otherwise. (No ADHD/ADD.) His therapist said that he was doing so well, she released him from care a year ago (with the provision he could come back any time he wanted). He participates in class, is involved mentoring the younger classes, does volunteer work…but just won’t do his homework.

The first year he was at the new school, he did the statewide testing. Hallboy tested way below his ability. Why? Because he was bored and stopped answering the questions midway through the tests. The second year, I explained to him that he needed to answer all questions. So, each question had an answer, only it wasn’t the right answer–he just selected an answer at random. Yet again, he scored well below his ability. The following year, I clarified the directions. Answer all questions with the *right * answer. Bingo! His testing was much higher. (Imagine that :smack: ) In most areas he tested well above his grade (1-3 grades higher).

23

So far people have listed some excellent suggestions. My first piece of advice for you is to encourage Hallboy’s involvement with an extracurricular of his choice. Homework was my worst enemy in school. I never did it and I did not really see the point in it. I hated the fact that I was in classes where half of your grade depended on turning in homework assignments and freakin notebook checks. It was an all around waste of time to me so I did not do it.

Some relief came when I started running track in 8th grade. You needed certain grades to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities and I figured I would be able to coast through in my typical fashion. Not so, my parents got together with my coach and set a bar that exceeded the district requirements. They wanted B’s during the season. I was pissed, but I got straight B’s during track season. In 9th grade I did not participate in any winter activities and my grades took a plunge. I was upset because I knew that I would lose out on doing the only thing that I enjoyed about school. Next season, my grades rebounded.

The only other relief to my grades came from two inspirational teachers who significantly contributed to my ability to gain admission to college. My sophomore history teacher allowed us to choose whether or not we would be graded on tests only or on homework and tests. I choose tests only and ended up with an A+. I took two more of her classes before graduating. In my junior year, my physics teacher confronted me about the fact that I did none of the assigned homework. We struck a deal in the middle of the year that he would no drop homework from my grade if I got at least a B on the midterm. In the end, I was the only person who got above a C on the exam and he stuck to his end of the bargain. To be honest, though, these situations did little to resolve my own problems with organization and homework.

As a result, when I got to college the cycle just started all over again. Reading my transcript can make a person dizzy with confusion. I got A’s in classes that relied on testing for grades, A/B’s in my studio and drawing courses and D’s in anything where homework was a significant portion of the grading process. This may be a stretch but it would be helpful if there were a way to convince Hallboy that good work habits now will make his life in college easier. I am doubtful, however, because everyone told me this in high school and I ignored their advice anyway. Still, not all people react the same way.

Recently I have made peace with busywork but its too late. For one, I do not have any more busywork classes since I am at the start of my final year. Secondly, the damage has already been done to my QPA. I am fortunate to be in a creative major where grad schools tend to favor the portfolio review over grades. Still, my academic life would have been much easier if I had learned to deal with the issue of busywork at an earlier stage.

I failed to understand that busywork was something that everyone had to do until after spending six months working in a software and web development firm. Every now and then we were given projects that were extremely challenging and rewarding. For the most part, however, we constructed cookie cutter sites that people would request to match other sites they had or other sites in their respective industries. This is where my final suggestion comes into play.

Exposing Hallboy to real life experiences like the ones I had in my internship may help him to understand the importance of homework and busywork. Even the most creative careers have to occasionally wade through inane tasks.

You are already 3 steps ahead of most parents in that you are so actively involved with his life. Stay involved and good luck with everything.

24

This will be a short post, because everyone else has said all the things I wanted to. My one piece of advice is just five words: Show him why it matters.

If someone had done that for me, I would have finished University.

25

There you have it! He’s bored out of his skull. See? You already knew what the problem was!

Now you have to work with him to find what will motivate him. I’m yet another one who got much worse grades than she should have… but my parents never worked “with” me or listened to what I had to say. They knew better, thought they.

He’s old enough to be responsible for his own life. So, let him design what will be his punishment for not turning in homework and what his reward for doing it. Since homework is something that happens more frequently than grades, the punishment/reward is also faster, closer to the actual problem point, than if you link it with grades.

Once he’s grown better study habits you can make the reward/punishment larger and link it to actual consequences… i.e., grades.

Will he be able to choose some of his courses next year? Maybe if he gets better grades he’ll be able to choose more defying courses that don’t bore him blind… if it’s so, does he know it?

26

Wow, you’re son and mine must have been separated at birth. He recently graduated high school and no, it never got any better. After years of begging, bribing and punishing, I finally figured it out. He simply did not care. He wasn’t a genius that was bored and he wasn’t an idiot that couldn’t do the work. He was a happy go lucky kid who really didn’t give a hoot and didn’t see what the fuss was about. IN his mind there were more important things to do and he did them without giving the work due a second thought. When it was time to turn things in, he had a minor twinge of embarrassment but that quickly went away.
I don’t have an answer for you because I couldn’t find the answer for me. However, my son is currently in college (yes he buckled down slightly in his last couple of years) and never gave me any trouble. No pregnant girlfriends or emotional adolescent outbursts or drugs or alcohol. He just has lalalala through his childhood and will probably be this way his entire life. He puts no pressure on himself and doesn’t understand what the fuss was about.
I guess the reality is that some kids just aren’t students but that doesn’t mean they won’t be productive in other ways.

27

If hallboy is anything like me then there really is nothing you can do. Usually the only homework I did was whatever I could get done during class/free period. Rarely I would do it on the bus to the way to school, and if I was doing it at home then it was because I was doing it with a girl. I remember that my middle school gave out effort grades and I got more than one F in the category. Luckily those didn’t count.

I especially hated English and almost failed it twice. The first time was in 8th grade and the teacher told me with a few days left in the semester that I was failing. Actually she asked me if I wanted to tell my parents or have her, but that’s unimportant. I was failing because I was a missing a paper on a subject that I deemed to stupid to write about.

Second time was my senior year of high school. I didn’t turn in one of the major papers, for the same reason as above, and I wrote the other one the last day of classes. I do mean that literally, as in I was in the computer lab writing for half the day. I am pretty sure that by all rights I should have failed the class. But because the teacher really liked one of the papers I did turn in, and she liked me personally, she passed me with a D-.

Anyhoo, the point of the story is that if hallboy doesn’t care about school no amount of cajoling, threatening, or force will change that. In fact, the more effort you put into forcing him to do schoolwork, the more he will hate school. If he is as smart and socially skilled as you say he will be fine. Look at it this way, he is developing excellent weaseling skills at this point. The ability to massage seemingly fixed deadlines, charm someone to distract them from shoddy work, and learning things with minimal effort are important skills.

Your best bet at this point would be simply to say to hallboy, I love you no matter what, and I’ll come visit you in [insert crappy area around you] when you are working as a busboy. Maybe he will get the message, and maybe it will take repeating a grade, but in the long run it will be better for him and save you a lot of hassle.

28

Wow, this is the reunion for all of the unorganized gifted kids who never did their homework. Awesome!

I was exactly the same. I was a talented and gifted kid, spent half the day in the grade above (my school didn’t want to socially promote me)… and there is a line of bullshit I was fed early on. The testing people would say to me, “You’re bored in class, aren’t you?” Well, if you say so… sure. Smart kids get bored. Average kids get bored. Even the below average kids get bored too.

There is excellent advice in all of the posts. I like the suggestions of helping your kid understand that homework, and doing well in school, is his job and responsibility. You can certainly monitor what he does to an extent, but you simply cannot rearrange your life to ensure he does his homework and check it every single time. (Well, you probably can’t. If you can, I guess you could go for it.) At the age of 12 or so (am I right?) he needs to be able to handle some responsibility. You might square up with him and let him know you will be watching him closely, and when he demonstrates that he is handling the responsibility, you’ll periodically check, and so forth. Independence and not having to be checked on every few minutes is a reward. It’s a type of trust that is hard to earn but will likely make him quite proud.

I think you should really explore with him why he has such a hard time keeping up with his assignments. Something else, as many posters have noted, is probably going on. Maybe talking with a counselor, a former teacher, someone your son really likes - with you - will get to the bottom of it.

I didn’t mention that I am a former elementary/middle school teacher. Pedagogically I believe in minor rewards, but realistically helping kids understand doing what you’re expected to do is not reason for a reward. A kind word perhaps, but even then, that can’t be expected every single time. I went through this in school - hell, I’m almost finished with my doctorate at the top school in my field, and I still forget the minor, mundane stuff unless I write it down. But you’d have to know me well to do that. I actually get complimented on my organization, which I’m quite proud of, because it is so hard for me to keep it together. I probably have to try twice as hard to keep my stuff organized and together but it means I can avoid that “book smart but lacks common sense” tag that people stuck on me all my life.

Perhaps you can facilitate your son getting a homework buddy - a friend he can call and check in with to make sure they have the correct assignment, maybe even work together periodically (if the teacher’s okay with that). It’s good training for high school, college, and the workforce, where you have to work well with others. It also helps him to see that other kids have ways of keeping track of homework, and he might learn a few tips from his peers.

I would really encourage you talking to your son about how this challenge is linked to his future success. High school, college, grad school, the workforce - his success in those endeavors is connected to how well he learns habits now. The world is full of smart people who didn’t get it together and are suffering financially and emotionally because of this. Taking responsibility for his work is something that will only get easier with time.

A minor rant related to this - I think most kids have way too much homework nowadays. If a kid has to spend more than 90 minutes on homework on a nightly basis, that’s wrong on so many levels. My opinion.

29

I was just reminiscing my high-school years. Something that worked well for me was pairing up with dumber friends who were truly desperate to get the grades to pass. They had the motivation and pushed me to finish assignements with them. I know I would never have passed Civics without them.

30

Wow, a lot of good ideas and suggestions here. Thank you all so very much. It’s given me a lot to think about.

Just a quick update. Last night, as Hallboy was finishing his Science Fair project (it was due today), he asked me how many people I thought should be in a study group. We talked about it, and I could tell he was putting feelers out to see if I would be receptive to hosting a study group (I am, and conveyed that to him). When I was going over his pre-algebra homework (of which I have absolutely no clue how to do), he was explaining triangles and degrees and all that stuff and I said to him (having heard this by the posters in the thread!), “Do you know why it’s important to learn this?” He looked at me like I was nuts. “Because it’s homework,” he said. “No,” I told him. “It’s important to learn this because when you get older and start to build bridges or design Bionicles, this is basic information you’ll need to know to do your job the best that you can. This will help you build and design things even better than you can already.” He was impressed (and shocked) that he was already “learning” how to do something he already loves to do. (He really wants to design Bionicles.)

Maybe there’s hope yet…

31

Ok, yet another unmotivated “smart” kid checking in. I tested well in school, was placed in “gifted” programs by the district and was a constant source of frustration to my mother who couldn’t understand why her child couldn’t eke a “C” out of algebra class.

I’m going to skip the “I was too bored 'cause I was so smart line” because I don’t think it was true in my case. Subjects that I was smartest in: biology, history, English, I did anywhere from “ok” to “great” depending on how heavily the homework weighed into the final grade (the less homework, the better my scores since I did well on test). But classes which were a challenge to me such as mathmatics didn’t gain my interest either and I did even worse in those since I didn’t do well on the homework OR the tests.

Looking back and trying to decipher what my 13 year old mind was thinking, I think a lot of it was just because I was self-absorbed and mired in my own self. I had a couple friends but not much of a “social life” and wasn’t making any progress with the girls. I’d come home and play on the computer or read or watch TV or some other self-only activity and the rest of the world wasn’t any concern to me. I say this because it sounds as if your son is in the same spot – you say he has great social skills and maybe he does but, from how you put it, he comes home and does his own solitary activities until it’s time for school again. Schoolwork is a bother dragging him away from what he wants to do, even if it’s only staring at a game screen.

I can’t say it’d work because I never tried it back then but I’d say the kid needs some extra-curricular social interaction for a start. I think a healthier social life will help his attitude all around including regarding schoolwork. Obviously I’m talking about a “healthy” social life and not sitting behind the shed with his n’er-do-well buddies and a stolen pack of cigarettes but if there’s any sort of organization he could perhaps join or park district classes or something to get him out there. You say he’s outgoing and friendly so maybe stimulating this part of his growth will help spark the other things along. It’s so easy to sit there and say “Screw all y’all” when you’re sitting alone in your bedroom every afternoon and evening.

All of this is, of course, still dependant on keeping on him to get things done and all that. I’m not saying “reward his bad schoolwork with karate lessons and wash your hands of it.”

32

phall0106, if he’s ever interested in finding out specific ways in which his courses relate to what he’s interested in, GQ awaits :smiley:

Gotta love this place.

33

Another bored student (I’m 56, and STILL learning) chimes in…
That seems to to be an "Oh crap, I get it! ‘Cool Moment’ " experience I had when trying to figure out why I needed Algebra (which eventually led me to take classes in Physics, Electronics, Computers, etc.).

Teachers make a huge difference also.
In high school, I went from failing to A+ grades in all areas because of one teacher in Algebra.

The reason?
Exactly as you have stated above (bolded).

What is a Bionicle anyway? :cool:

34

Bionicle is a part of the collection of theme sets put out by LEGO. On a side note, LEGO sets actually led me to major in architecture.

35

Another post about how much that’s like me - I dunno, I was (and am, to a certain degree - see the housework threads I’ve started all of a sudden) just lazy. And bored. I did well in classes I cared about, but I still didn’t do homework or turned stuff in late or whatever. I’m a born procrastinator. Just my nature. I got better as I got older and more mature, that’s all.

36

If he’s like me (which he may well be; or I’m like him, or whatever - as evidenced by my putzing about online rather than studying right now) it could be any combination of reasons, most of which were already mentioned.

I snapped out of it when I flunked out of college and had to take a year off last year. “Well, crap, that wasn’t in my plans. Study habits? What are they?”

I wandered out into the real world. Decided I wanted to go back to school and not screw it up so badly. I still have a lot of bad habits to unlearn, but I now understand why.

My advice: Be there for him, try to be supportive but keep rules in place. Chances are he’ll figure it out on his own.

37

Whee! Count me in the “That was me” category.

Most of my resistance to doing homework was simply that I didn’t see a good reason for me to do it. Yeah, grade, but those are just some artificial measure of what you know or can do, and I knew the subject matter already. Or, I thought the subject was pointless, or that the work was just something to keep me busy, or… So for pretty much all of school, I didn’t do most of the homework, got As on tests, and kept going. For one example, my AP physics class spent the quarter before the AP exam just on practice tests. After getting nearly a perfect score on the first few, I didn’t do any more… Got a D in that class, and the top score on the exam.

Now, like so many other posters, I’m in college and this is all biting me in the ass. I can’t just learn everything by vaguely paying attention in class – that homework has a freaking purpose, and if I don’t do it I can’t learn the material nearly well enough to do well on the tests. So, I’m trying to make a conscious effort to be better at this.

Thinking back, there were a couple of classes where I would strap down to get the work done. One was with an absolutely inspirational history teacher. The other was a biology class that was an honest-to-goodness challenge. And in the aforementioned physics class, I would go nuts on those “build the strongest bridge” sorts of projects.

If your son’s school is flexible, you might want to see what extra challenge they could give him. Or, as other people, work in groups. Any group project I did, I’d hold up my part of the assignment. I didn’t care enough to work and earn my own grades, but I wouldn’t let anyone else down either.

38

My younger daughter went through almost the same thing last year - she’d deny having homework, or she’d claim to have done it, she wouldn’t study, etc. We had all the teacher conferences, we did the taking away of privileges, we tried various strategies (most of which have been mentioned in this thread). We ended up not letting her go on a trip to the Destination Imagination World Finals in May - every other year that I went with her sister’s team, I’d taken her along, and it was a Very Big Deal to her - because, as we told her, a kid who’s getting D’s in her classes really can’t ask her teachers to let her leave school a few days early. We also told her that if she failed any classes and had to take summer school, we wouldn’t be able to send her to band camp as well.

She ended up turning things around enough to pass all her classes with C’s or better, which was still far below her potential but got her into eighth grade. She also improved enough to convince her math teacher that she was still a candidate for the advanced eighth grade math class, and she aced the test he gave her. This year, she’s done her homework every day without any reminder, she’s completed her practice records for band, she’s studied for tests, and she’s getting straight A’s. After I read this thread last night, I asked her how she was able to reform so completely, and she told me that she just finally figured out that it was way easier and took way less time to just do the work instead of fighting it. As she said, “This way, I have a lot more free time.” She’s also discovered that if your teachers think of you as a good student, they’re a lot more likely to let little things slide.

I hope it works out that way for Hallboy, too. It sounds like you’re doing all the right things, but the bottom line is that he has to realize that it’s all on him. He has to take responsibility for his own future, and seventh grade is an excellent time to start learning that.

39

This was me, and it currently is my daughter. She’s in 11th grade and I’m exactly where you are, ready to go to school with a rolled-up newspaper to whap her upside the head.

We had a HELLACIOUS year last year. I talked to her teachers and they showed me their grade books. For every single assignment she handed in, she had received an A. She had passed all her tests. And she had gotten zeros on most of her homework, because she hadn’t handed it in. What made me crazy was the lying: “Do you have homework?” “I did it in class.”

We tried everything, too - took away privileges, bribed her, tried to reason with her, everything, and nothing worked at all. I finally told her, “Look, I know high school is not your gig, it wasn’t mine either… but you can’t move on to anything better until you can get through THIS.” I also made her get a paper signed every single week by every single teacher stating that she had indeed turned in every assignment. She bitched that she wasn’t ever going to be able to PROVE she had gotten more responsible unless we didn’t make her have the paper signed, but we told her if you can get through the first quarter and you don’t miss any assignments, we’d relax that restriction. She pulled nearly straight As on her report card.

Her progress report for the second quarter showed slippage and a few missing assignments, and now report cards are due home again soon, and I am dreading this. I seem to be hearing a lot of “I did my homework in class” again. If this report card doesn’t show some improvement from the progress report, we are going back to the having teachers sign a paper every week.

I KNOW it is her responsibility and that she has to want to succeed in school to do so… but I am not letting her lose ground like that while she learns it.

So…no advice. But LOADS of sympathy.

40

This is my son. I spent his 9th and 10th grade doing everything previously suggested: getting him the notebook to write assignments in that never got used, sitting there supervising homework that never got turned in, printing the weekly emailed status reports showing the missed work, pulling completed and semi-completed work from the black hole called a backpack, listening to “I don’t know” I don’t know how many times when asked why completed work was not turned in, removing all his fun stuff, giving it all back, only to remove it again.

And then it hit me, it all boiled down to one thing: control. This was the one thing he could control completely. I wasn’t going to do the work for him, nor would I turn it in for him. It was all him.

So I let him have all the control he wanted. If you want to know what that felt like, try pulling your fingernails out with plyers. I no longer told him to shut off that PS2, get off that phone, stop playing ball, etc. to get to his homework done; hell, I stopped asking about homework all together (although I did increase chores around the house but that was subconscious (I think)). Now, in his last semester of 11th grade, he’s taking a full load at school and 4 nights of night school to fix his credits so he can graduate on time. Now, I get to hear, “why didn’t you tell me to do my homework more?” To which my response is usually a mumbled “asshole.”

Hope it works out for you, you just need to find the strat that works for him.