…my son… he’s 13. He’s bright. Socially well adjusted. Great sense of humour. Kind hearted. Makes friends easily. Never any behaviour issues in school. Teachers always say he is a pleasure to have in class…
In fact, that’s how most conversations with his teachers begin when I’m called to meet with them… “Your son is a great kid. He’s a pleasure to have in class… but he can do better.” And so I sit, face to face with one, two, sometimes all of his teachers, and we discuss why he isn’t doing as well as he should. They ask me question about his study habits. They ask me questions about his home environment. They ask me if I can enlighten them in any way about his consistant under-performance. And you know what?.. I can’t. And they can’t enlighten me either.
The list would be too long in what I’ve tried over the years to remedy this situation. You’ll have to accept that short of seeking a professional therapist’s help, I’ve tried everything.
Forget assignments not started or not finished. In a nutshell, the problem seems to be an inertia so deep that it even prevents him from handing in an assignment that he’s actually completed. At times, I see the inertia in his face while doing math homework. The pain in his eyes in having to do simple multiplication like 8x7 seems almost physical. It’s not that he isn’t capable… he simply cannot will himself to do it at times. But fine, I say. Math has never been his strongest subject. I am learning to accept that.
But in the past year or so, the inertia has become much more pervasive. I will ask him to get up on the weekend and tidy his room and come down to breakfast (at the ungodly hour of 10am!) and he will be up but he will not come down for an hour. He just gets stuck in his room. When I go up to check on him… he’s still in the same position I left him, as if I’d just left the room a second ago and walked back in. What’s more, he acts as if I had done just that. He’s puzzled why I’m irritated with him. He cannot explain the passage of an hour or what he’s been doing in that time. And this happens more and more. Last night, he went to do his homework and when I checked in on him 45 minutes later, nothing had been done and he could not account for what he’d done in that time. He sat there, music quietly playing in the background, staring into space.
And when I ask him to explain and account for what he did or thought about… he can’t. He’s an articulate kid. He is engaged and fun over dinner and generally in all situations. But not when he needs to focus on school work or simple every day tasks like getting up and brushing his teeth and making his bed or clearing the dishes off the table after dinner. Left to his own devices and without intervention, he’ll just go into mental pause mode.
I don’t get it. What’s more, I fear he won’t get through highschool with these habits. Certainly he won’t have the marks for college. And how will he be able to hold a job without constant supervision?
This actually keeps me awake at night with worry.
Any of you experience this with your kids? What advice can you impart? Am I dealing with an issue that needs to be escalated to a professional of some kind?