Reply to How to motivate 6th grader who is disinterested in school and careless about his assignments?

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "How to motivate 6th grader who is disinterested in school and careless about his assignments?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]
OP,

I posted twice before, about my 5th grader with ADHD. You are expressing healthy skepticism, which is right. A few months ago, DH and I were saying exactly the same thing.

All we're telling you is to keep an open mind, and be ready to invest money on an evaluation. Even if your son does not have a diagnosis, the evaluation will be extremely informative and will tell you where his strengths and weaknesses lie, which is always helpful in knowing how to coach him and which path might be better for him. Please go to a reputable practice, since pediatricians are not experts and may mis-diagnose him.

The truth is that old attitudes about high and low-achieving students need to go away. Many under-performing students really do have issues that can be fixed. The field of mental health has been the last to make progress in recent years, unlike more traditional medical research. Instead of saying: "he's unmotivated, there's nothing we can do", psychologists can now say: "he has X,Y, Z form of ADHD or whatever it is, and we recommend such-and-such a routine at home, such-and-such accommodations at school, and possibly meds". Much progress can be made for many disorders, unless your child has a low IQ, and even then there are certain interventions that work! People need to embrace the novel idea that the brain can be prepped and coached, just like the body. It's not Tiger parenting, it's just parenting using our modern knowledge of how the brain works. Why shouldn't we prep atypical brains to be more functional in our society, if it doesn't take away their creativity and uniqueness?

And it's not cheating. Cheating is when you're perfectly healthy, don't need accommodations, and you still take them. I know that to a certain generation of parents, who saw classmates being put in the corner of the class, or sent to the principal for various school misdeeds, including inattention stemming from ADHD, it seems weird to treat instead of punish, but when you think about it, it makes a lot more sense and it's a lot more fair!

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics