My School's DL is Awful and I'm Angry

Anonymous
DS's school is the worst. It's 4 hours a day of the teacher reading aloud from a slide show, then several hours of homework. All the assignments are multi-step projects that take several weeks to finish and have no clear instructions. DS is in 6th grade. He is miserable and depressed. He is refusing even to log in to class and throws a fit whenever my husband or I try to get him to do some of the homework. My husband says my son is lazy and gets angry at me for not somehow fixing this situation, and I get angry back, and we are completely stressed and unhappy. The school could not care less. There is no understanding or "grace" on their end. My son is now failing everything. He was a very good student before DL. He is enrolled in some outschool classes and does very well in those, because there is an actual person teaching and not just a slide show and a bunch of Google decks. He will work with strangers online, but will do nothing at all with me or his father. I sometimes can get a tutor to help him get his work done for the school. But I can't get enough outschool tutors often enough to get enough done that he won't be failing. I wish I could just find a daily online tutor - any high school kid with a good personality would do - to go through the Google classroom with him and help him get some of the assignments done. But I can't find that. Any suggestions for something like that? Commiseration welcome, but please I don't need snarky comments or insults right now.
Anonymous
Can you find another classmate he could pod with? Alternate if they go to your house and theirs?
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Can you find another classmate he could pod with? Alternate if they go to your house and theirs?


No, unfortunately his close friends are either anti-maskers or extremely high risk, and we wouldn't really feel comfortable approaching anyone else. We're also high risk and therefore wary of having anyone in anyway.
Anonymous
UGH. This would make me want to punch the computer. Can you talk to his teacher about this? Let them know the challenges. If they don't respond or don't care, I'd elevate. Also, please email the school board and let them know how bad this is for your kid.

As far as tutors, I've seen a ton advertised on local facebook and NextDoor pages. Some are people running pods at daycares, but there are a lot of college kids too. You could also call a local college and ask if they will take a job ad for it.
I'm so sorry. This sucks for so many kids (mine included).
Anonymous
Sorry OP. Which school district is this?
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:DS's school is the worst. It's 4 hours a day of the teacher reading aloud from a slide show, then several hours of homework. All the assignments are multi-step projects that take several weeks to finish and have no clear instructions. DS is in 6th grade. He is miserable and depressed. He is refusing even to log in to class and throws a fit whenever my husband or I try to get him to do some of the homework. My husband says my son is lazy and gets angry at me for not somehow fixing this situation, and I get angry back, and we are completely stressed and unhappy. The school could not care less. There is no understanding or "grace" on their end. My son is now failing everything. He was a very good student before DL. He is enrolled in some outschool classes and does very well in those, because there is an actual person teaching and not just a slide show and a bunch of Google decks. He will work with strangers online, but will do nothing at all with me or his father. I sometimes can get a tutor to help him get his work done for the school. But I can't get enough outschool tutors often enough to get enough done that he won't be failing. I wish I could just find a daily online tutor - any high school kid with a good personality would do - to go through the Google classroom with him and help him get some of the assignments done. But I can't find that. Any suggestions for something like that? Commiseration welcome, but please I don't need snarky comments or insults right now.


OP, I have been in exactly your position with my son when he was in 6th grade during non-pandemic times. Our efforts to discipline, punish, shame, reward, entice, schedule, structure, unstructure, or motivate our son into being a decent student wound up almost costing me my marriage and my son his life, as all our efforts sent him into a severe depression it took him a year to recover from. I understand how you feel.

You are absolutely on the right path in your plans to get someone outside of your household to work with your son. That is what you need. I would see if you can find a college or even high school student with time to spend time with him each day. Can you try college job boards or Wyzant?

In your situation, would you consider pulling him out of public school and homeschooling? That might take some of the pressure off in terms of his family grades. Again, you will need outside resources to keep in on track, but at least you would have more control over the schedule.

Other suggestions:

1) A counselor for your son to talk through his feelings. When my son went through this, he was feeling hurt, anxious, hopeless, and emotionally shut down. I honestly believed at that point that the only thing he derived any pleasure from was watching him suffer. He is likely too immature and not self-aware enough to sort through what he is feeling. An outsider will help.

2) Remember, even if he fails sixth grade, no grade is more important that his mental health or yours. This was something our therapist said to me and it helped me to manage my own catastrophizing. A bad year in sixth grade is not going to ruin his life. You will get through this, but you don't want to continue on this unhealthy path.

3) You all need physical activity. It is essential. If you choose to homeschool, it might give you more time to work physical activity into the day to increase his energy and keep him from getting frustrated. In our case, we ultimately switched our son to a private school that had more unstructured time during the day, including longer recess and PE every day. That made a world of difference.

4) No matter how bad it seems, believe that this will pass. The pressure the correct an unhealthy situation feels unbearable, but you need to make sure your son knows that you love and support him. The more you and your husband fight about your son and call him lazy, the more dysfunctional your entire household will be.

5) There are some books I read that helped me get through this, including He's not Lazy: Empowering Your Son to Believe in Himself and Boys Adrift. You didn't say if your son has ADHD, but it sounds like he could use help with executive function issues. In addition, you didn't mention screen time or video games, but that was a huge part of our son's problems. There are some good books on that issue too (Glow Kids) is one. You can look on Amazon for some suggestions.

I don't have easy answers for you, but I hope that you can find some ways to address these issues. I've been there, and I completely understand where you are coming from. Sixth grade is a hard age, and some of these problems will improve as your son matures. You will get through this . . . believe.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:DS's school is the worst. It's 4 hours a day of the teacher reading aloud from a slide show, then several hours of homework. All the assignments are multi-step projects that take several weeks to finish and have no clear instructions. DS is in 6th grade. He is miserable and depressed. He is refusing even to log in to class and throws a fit whenever my husband or I try to get him to do some of the homework. My husband says my son is lazy and gets angry at me for not somehow fixing this situation, and I get angry back, and we are completely stressed and unhappy. The school could not care less. There is no understanding or "grace" on their end. My son is now failing everything. He was a very good student before DL. He is enrolled in some outschool classes and does very well in those, because there is an actual person teaching and not just a slide show and a bunch of Google decks. He will work with strangers online, but will do nothing at all with me or his father. I sometimes can get a tutor to help him get his work done for the school. But I can't get enough outschool tutors often enough to get enough done that he won't be failing. I wish I could just find a daily online tutor - any high school kid with a good personality would do - to go through the Google classroom with him and help him get some of the assignments done. But I can't find that. Any suggestions for something like that? Commiseration welcome, but please I don't need snarky comments or insults right now.


OP, I have been in exactly your position with my son when he was in 6th grade during non-pandemic times. Our efforts to discipline, punish, shame, reward, entice, schedule, structure, unstructure, or motivate our son into being a decent student wound up almost costing me my marriage and my son his life, as all our efforts sent him into a severe depression it took him a year to recover from. I understand how you feel.

You are absolutely on the right path in your plans to get someone outside of your household to work with your son. That is what you need. I would see if you can find a college or even high school student with time to spend time with him each day. Can you try college job boards or Wyzant?

In your situation, would you consider pulling him out of public school and homeschooling? That might take some of the pressure off in terms of his family grades. Again, you will need outside resources to keep in on track, but at least you would have more control over the schedule.

Other suggestions:

1) A counselor for your son to talk through his feelings. When my son went through this, he was feeling hurt, anxious, hopeless, and emotionally shut down. I honestly believed at that point that the only thing he derived any pleasure from was watching him suffer. He is likely too immature and not self-aware enough to sort through what he is feeling. An outsider will help.

2) Remember, even if he fails sixth grade, no grade is more important that his mental health or yours. This was something our therapist said to me and it helped me to manage my own catastrophizing. A bad year in sixth grade is not going to ruin his life. You will get through this, but you don't want to continue on this unhealthy path.

3) You all need physical activity. It is essential. If you choose to homeschool, it might give you more time to work physical activity into the day to increase his energy and keep him from getting frustrated. In our case, we ultimately switched our son to a private school that had more unstructured time during the day, including longer recess and PE every day. That made a world of difference.

4) No matter how bad it seems, believe that this will pass. The pressure the correct an unhealthy situation feels unbearable, but you need to make sure your son knows that you love and support him. The more you and your husband fight about your son and call him lazy, the more dysfunctional your entire household will be.

5) There are some books I read that helped me get through this, including He's not Lazy: Empowering Your Son to Believe in Himself and Boys Adrift. You didn't say if your son has ADHD, but it sounds like he could use help with executive function issues. In addition, you didn't mention screen time or video games, but that was a huge part of our son's problems. There are some good books on that issue too (Glow Kids) is one. You can look on Amazon for some suggestions.

I don't have easy answers for you, but I hope that you can find some ways to address these issues. I've been there, and I completely understand where you are coming from. Sixth grade is a hard age, and some of these problems will improve as your son matures. You will get through this . . . believe.


This is the best answer to the OP!!! Thank you.

I especially like this:
Remember, even if he fails sixth grade, no grade is more important that his mental health or yours. This was something our therapist said to me and it helped me to manage my own catastrophizing. A bad year in sixth grade is not going to ruin his life. You will get through this, but you don't want to continue on this unhealthy path.

I was this kid. I wish my parents felt this way instead of adding to the stress.
Anonymous
OP here - thank you for the helpful comments. We are in Fairfax. I really want to just relax and not worry about this school year, but the school puts so much pressure on us - but unfortunately he goes to middle school next year and has to qualify for advanced classes this year. If he doesn't then for some of those classes there will not be another chance, and that will affect him all the way through high school and ultimately limit his choice of colleges. This is a big source of stress for him because he is aware that he needs to do well in order to stay in the AAP program he has been in.
Anonymous
OP, I am so sorry to read this. These stories are rampant, of course, but every individual one represents a kid and a family in distress. These are real people being impacted by what has become a political stand-off. (Sorry I'll stop there.)

By any chance is private school an option for next year? Even if he has to repeat 6th grade, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Along with the nightmare of DL, the curriculum you describe sounds really weak. Assignments that are multi-step, take weeks to finish and lacking clear instruction (and, I presume feedback) are not age-appropriate.
Anonymous
Pull him and homeschool him with outschool/other online classes for the rest of the semester. He won't learn any less, may learn even more, and you won't have this stressful battle.
Anonymous
Pull him out if school.

Can you try Kahn Academy? If he can do Ann hour or 2 of that everyday, it’s worlds better than what his teacher is doing. Try it out this weekend and see how he responds. Tell him you want to homeschool, see if he has objections. Listen. Ultimately, you’re the parent and it’s your call.
Anonymous
Nothing but sympathies here, OP.

My younger elementary kid's teacher keep sending us emails about how he wanders off. I don't blame him b/c sitting there all day for anyone has to suck. We finally got him to stay in front of the screen (we both work from home for our FT jobs so monitoring this is not easy) but then when she sent one about him turning the camera off for gym, I wanted to scream. SERIOUSLY. My older kid's gym class is literally Tony Banks performing taibo on a video that's got to be like 30 years old. The only thing I can say is that since my kids are still relatively young, it's good that my younger kid isn't missing too much. I know this b/c I know what my older kid learned in lower elementary school before COVID.
Anonymous
I withdrew and did homeschool
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:OP here - thank you for the helpful comments. We are in Fairfax. I really want to just relax and not worry about this school year, but the school puts so much pressure on us - but unfortunately he goes to middle school next year and has to qualify for advanced classes this year. If he doesn't then for some of those classes there will not be another chance, and that will affect him all the way through high school and ultimately limit his choice of colleges. This is a big source of stress for him because he is aware that he needs to do well in order to stay in the AAP program he has been in.


No it won’t! Trust me it won’t! It feels that way but it’s not true. Worry about his mental health.

There was a random thread years ago of adults who were over achievers and I would say half were not doing well and were not happy adults

I had parents who believed this stuff (in FCPS) too. I don’t speak to my mother all now. Ran away from home, self abuse. It was bad.. So so so much therapy to deal. It’s a mixed bag - fiends raised like me who were sucesssful and friends not raised like me who are successful

Happiness - start there

Get an online therapist too
Anonymous
My kid had a similar situation (a little older) ended up suicidal and is now being treated at an inpatient resident program. Please take this seriously, find him a therapist, pull him from this situation. Tell him you love him and his happiness and mental health are more important than any grade. Find a different school situation for this year - tutor, homeschool, whatever, and try to find a private for next year. If this sounds expensive, believe me when I tell you that it will be significantly more expensive if it gets worse.

Good luck!!
post reply Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion
Message Quick Reply
Go to: