Reply to Should I let DS fail in 7th Grade

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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