Reply to 15 y.o son--smart kid; hates school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We're seeing some deep unhappiness with our son, who is a freshman, with school and "the point of it all." He's at a good private school with a good faculty, but he hasn't seemed to really connect to his teachers and his classes. He feels, despite the school's insistence on learning being the most important thing, pressure on grades being the most important thing there. (This is not one of the typical DMV pressure cooker schools, and he says he doesn't think it's different at other places. He HATES homework.g) He's got a strong friend group and is social, if also an introvert (and so can get tapped out after too much people time, but he has a good sense of calibrating that for himself).

I know this is impossible to judge from outside, but I'm trying to gauge how much of this is high school transition, how much is the current climate (lots of recent research on how disengaged students are with school, especially at the high school and college level) and, well, everything in these strange times. I think there's some anxiety and depression going on beyond garden-variety teen apathy and grumpiness that reaches into sadness that he's shared with me.

If you saw this with your son around this age, what were your next steps? Upping physical activity? (He's not a sporty kid.) Therapy? Medication? I'm not sure how to help him fully. And while I think the school counselors both at his previous and current school are well trained to talk to kids this age and give them tools for managing stress, he's mostly scoffed at their guidance to the whole class group, and so talking to a therapist is going to be a hard sell (but maybe a necessary one).

Open to perspective from folks who've been there, done that. TIA.[/quote]

This pretty much describes my three boys their freshman year.

This attitude turns around the end of sophomore year or beginning of junior year.

My two oldest are both thriving in college and my youngest is a junior in hs. [/quote]

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