Should I let DS fail in 7th Grade

[Anonymous]

I'm so sorry, OP. I don't have any advice to give, but I do hope you and your family find a solution soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:military boarding school. you two are obviously incapable of being the sort of parents that this kid needs, and right now he needs to be knocked down a few pegs.

So, since you think I'm so incapable explain to me with your great parenting skills how you would handle this situation.

DS is doing homework, you check it and tell him you can't understand what he wrote and would like him to do it. He says f*** you I'm not re-doing because I don't care. I say that is unacceptable. He says I don't care and punches me in the arm and back. He then runs outside and comes back in garage only to turn off all the breakers in the house and smash two windows with a golf club. Next he throws an outdoor table at me followed by ripping two screens out of the windows. Last but not least he grabs two i-phones and deletes one and smashes the other one in the street.

Since you have all the answer, please explain to me how you would handle the situation.

I'm not the person you're responding to, but if this is accurate then there's something really wrong here. Start with your family doctor or school counselor and tell them your son has serious anger management problems. This is no longer regular teenage stuff. Especially if he is tall and large, he will hurt someone and be arrested if the behavior continues.

Something is wrong and the op knows that, people. Could some of you be less sociopathic yourselves and stop telling her it's her fault? You think she hasn't thought that? You think that's helpful?

Op, it is not your fault. I have one girl, she is much more self destructive than anything (as I was), but I know a lot of parents with boys and some.of those trends ate not atypical. Extreme, yes. But not atypical. Testosterone is a hell of a drug, adolescence is rough, and maybe there's some truth to the fact that we are all.slmewhat hardwired to be out hunting or fighting at that stage of our lives. Not that I'd recommend either for your son, just... Hang in there. I am rooting for you guys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Therapist won't say anything until we get him tested. Does not want to speculate.

We called the police last Friday after an incident but they couldn't do much and nothing really changed.

He was supposed to go to a basketball tryout but refused to go and said he was quitting altogether. Now he will have even more free time.

Never any incidents at school or with his friends.

We have given him his phone back as we are trying to avoid anymore blow ups for testing. Checked the verizon account and he sent 963 texts today alone.

Police? 963 texts? OP, wow.

I started to post earlier because I have a vaguely similar kid. 7th grader in MCPS, very unmotivated to do much beyond bare minimum. Happy with low Bs, tends to lose sight of his work and had several slips into egregious grade territory (an off-the-charts reader who had a 41 in English for much of the second quarter of 6th grade.) Mine is also huge, but he isn't into sports and isn't super popular (surely a connection there.) Would happily spend all day watching Youtube videos of superheroes.

So I too would love to know the magic secret to motivating a 7th grader who is bright but doesn't seem to have a drive to excel in school. But I gotta say, having read your followups, I think your problem really isn't lack of motivation - it's a very angry and disaffected kid who needs some serious help NOW. My son isn't an angel; he can tease his brother mercilessly and will occasionally whack him (dangerous coming from a 5'8" 12yo who doesn't know his own strength.) But mine is still a sweet little boy underneath the pubescent drama. Like, really a puppy dog. The idea of my 7th grader, who obviously shares some things in common with yours, being violent toward his family or charging $500 w/o permission is inconceivable to me. So my advice is to focus on the big stuff. Forget the grades or the school attitude for now, that is not the real issue.

Fwiw my kid doesn't have, and doesn't want, a phone. I know that's abnormal, and impossible to impose on a kid who's in a different place socially, just like it would be impossible for me to take away my kid's tablet permanently. You have to deal with a world of phones and texting. BUT there need to be some limits: a kid who is texting close to a thousand times a day is really in a crisis state. If your therapist is sitting a waiting for the neuropsych eval while all this drama plays out, he's not doing his job.

[Anonymous]

Aggression can be a symptom of depression. OP MCPS schools put a lot of pressure on kids. My DC became very oppositional to school after all the testing in spring and has been angry ever since. The fact of the matter is, grades in MS don't matter. MY DC also has horrible handwriting and I've figured out that the teachers don't really care. I do, but I learned not to criticize it. Let the teachers do their job and comment if they think it's too messy. It's their job to tell him to re-do. Not yours. Try not to look closely at his homework. Yes, this is a good time for you son to see what the consequences are for his choices with school work. The most successful kids know how to cut corners and still get a good grades. Let him play with this and figure it out. What you describe sounds like my DC when he is under too much pressure and the only thing that helps is to lower the demands, so try not to add to his pressure. School will deal with his work if it's too poor. He will likely come around once he sees that not doing any work is yielding poor grades, but he is giving you the message right now to step back and let him be. You can tell him respectfully that you see he needs to make his own choices right now and see what the consequences are. We have a rule in our house that after a one hour after-school break on the internet or TV or whatever, the devices go off and homework should be started. He only gets more time on the devices if he has finished his homework. I am learning not to look at or check the homework but to take mY DC's word for it. It's his choice if he wants to turn in half-done work or whatever. He will learn from feedback from school, not from you.

Some kids have a tough time with transitions, so keep in mind the beginning of the year is a tough transition for many kids and it's best to not add to the pressure. MCPS is a pressure cooker and I believe this damages a lot of kids. How one performs in 7th grade is no indication of how they will do in college. Grades don't matter now. And there really needn't be the amount of work they give for a person to learn. I've known many homeschoolers who didn't do much till high school and they were just fine ultimately. The fact that your son is social is extremely positive. Focus on the positives and let him experiment right now. Just set some gentle limits. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

If he doesn't have violent outbursts at school or friends' homes, he can control himself and is being manipulative. No way you and DH are the only people who stand in the way of him doing what he wants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Therapist won't say anything until we get him tested. Does not want to speculate.

We called the police last Friday after an incident but they couldn't do much and nothing really changed.

He was supposed to go to a basketball tryout but refused to go and said he was quitting altogether. Now he will have even more free time.

Never any incidents at school or with his friends.

We have given him his phone back as we are trying to avoid anymore blow ups for testing. Checked the verizon account and he sent 963 texts today alone.

Who is he texting? This could very well be harassing and get him arrested.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fucking stand over him and put his nose to the grindstone.

NO other fun until his grades improve. No TV, no phone, no internet, no sports, no friends.

We tried this approach and it did not change anything. Just made him more irritable and angry, which lead to violent and destructive outbursts.
He has gotten to the point where he has gotten physical with both of us. He is large for his age.

I thought poster #1 was kidding. But OP was doing this. Tells me that OP needs to look at parenting skills. Try PEP. You are killing your kid and it's YOUR FAULT.

Both of these posts are ridiculous. The person who suggested PEP obviously has never even taken a PEP class because the first thing they tell you is that you should not blame yourself. OP-- it is not your fault. Of course you tried what the first poster suggested... We all did with our children who hate school and found that strategy to be useless. You don't want to be battling your son on a daily basis. Have you tried a reward system? Is there any one thing that might motivate your son even the tiniest bit? We don't allow computers during the school week. A motivator doe our difficult kid was to allow an hour of computer time after he went to school and did his homework. If there is any time to fail, it is 7th grade when grades don't matter.

[Anonymous]

PEP is great for some parenting issues, but this is extreme behavior in response to a reasonable expectation of a child. Unless he has a mental illness, the parents are somewhat to blame. I know several adult men who fly into rages over tiny frustrations. All had permissive parents who radiated helplessness during childhood temper tantrums. I don't yell at, shame, or physically intimidate my kids, but I made sure they were very unhappy with their post-tantrum life. They quickly learned the consequences for these outbursts were much worse than whatever initially set them off. By three, they learned how to calm themselves and then self-advocate. My older child is an adult now and credits her ability to avoid social drama as an adolescent to those skills.

[Anonymous]

Just, wow. The odds are he has a mental illness.

"Unless he has a mental illness, the parents are somewhat to blame."

"By three, they learned how to calm themselves and then self-advocate."

I know a kid who learned this by three, as well, from parenting like you describe. By six he could talk his way out of anything in school, like Eddy Haskell. You might think of him as a self-advocating savant. By twelve, he had scammed enough of his friends that their parents got together and went to the police. In HS, he was elected student body president with a very Trump like platform. He got thrown out of office for self-advocating himself into one too many girl's pants. Not sure what he did in college but after he was involved in several election campaigns. In just a few years, he was elected to a small county board of commissioners. He now sits in jail because he thought he could get away with taking bribes because the county was so small and backward.

The point is everyone is a mixture of their nature and their nurture. The only thing a parent can do wrong is not asking for help. The OP knows this and is asking, loudly.

While, you and your kid's personalities/experiences meshed so you could help them, many parents and children can never really see the world from the same view point. Parents have to recognize this and find someone to help.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you have professional help already, but if you need a referral for a psychiatrist, I recommend Dr. Nora Galil in Chevy Chase. She has been excellent with my DD and is the mother of a middle schooler herself. She was highly recommended to me by my pediatrician.

[Anonymous]

Sending you good thoughts that the path to healing starts soon. in the interim, please get a new therapist. This one is not helping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fucking stand over him and put his nose to the grindstone.

NO other fun until his grades improve. No TV, no phone, no internet, no sports, no friends.

My parents tried this with my brother. Now he's an adult, has moved to the other side of the country, and has as little to do with them as possible.

But he didn't flunk out of school, right?

As a parent, if I have to be strict so that he succeeds in life, and he decides to hate me for it forever, so be it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fucking stand over him and put his nose to the grindstone.

NO other fun until his grades improve. No TV, no phone, no internet, no sports, no friends.

We tried this approach and it did not change anything. Just made him more irritable and angry, which lead to violent and destructive outbursts.
He has gotten to the point where he has gotten physical with both of us. He is large for his age.

Your husband is a pussy.

But more importantly, you BOTH have utterly failed to establish your moral authority over this kid. Now you are reaping the bitter fruit of your flabby, weak parenting style.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fucking stand over him and put his nose to the grindstone.

NO other fun until his grades improve. No TV, no phone, no internet, no sports, no friends.

We tried this approach and it did not change anything. Just made him more irritable and angry, which lead to violent and destructive outbursts.
He has gotten to the point where he has gotten physical with both of us. He is large for his age.

Your husband is a pussy.

But more importantly, you BOTH have utterly failed to establish your moral authority over this kid. Now you are reaping the bitter fruit of your flabby, weak parenting style.

Really, explain what your manly husband would have done? Hit him?

You are an idiot.

[Anonymous]

OP, you keep referring to a "therapist." You need a psychiatrist ASAP. Your child sounds like he is in crisis.

You should know in case you need it:

In a mental health crisis, you have options. The very best is to get your child to the ER for an emergency psychiatric evaluation.

If you cannot safely get the child to the ER yourself, you can call the Mobile Mental Health Crisis Team or an ambulance and explain that your child is in an uncontrolled mental health crisis. This is a better option than calling the police.

Here are some resources (first link includes the phone numbers for the mobile mental health crisis teams in MD):

http://namimd.org/uploaded_files/574/What_to_do_in_a_Psychiatric_Crisis_PDF_for_Web.pdf [note that the process on this page sounds like a lot of intimidating red tape, but once you are in the ER they help process all of this IME]

http://www.safeteens.com/resources-for-youth-in-crisis/

You are not alone. Call for help.