Reply to 12 year old son has no motivation/isn't happy

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My oldest child has [b]always[/b] been a child who needed more....more Legos, more time by himself, more allowance, etc.  This trait alone would be enough to handle, but it also comes with a total and complete lack of motivation to do ANYTHING: do sports, homework, clean his room, invite friends over, talk to new people, go out for a walk with his family, play with his sisters, basically LIFE!  The only time we ever see him motivated to do anything is when it's physically making something, like a volcano or a new Lego - then, complete focus.  He does well in school, but only because we are constantly checking the teacher's websites to make sure he doesn't miss anything.  9 times out of ten he says they never told him there would be a quiz or a test, however teachers do not agree.  We have a rule that his special toy (a model train set) goes away when he grades go below a B, a rule he came up with when we agreed to buy the train for him.  He made a 3 page plan for how long it would go away for, and for what circumstances.  All very mature, we thought.  But now the times that it actually needs to be taken away, he yells and complains that it's not fair.  This taking away stuff NEVER motivates him, never did.  Nothing does.  His swim coach tells him over and over again not to bend his legs while swimming, he's been doing it the wrong way for months now, completely ignoring her feedback.  My husband and I sit down with him on weekends to do review of school work, and he absolutely hates it - we think he gets mad because we are holding him accountable.  Sometimes he ends up crying because of it, and let me say we stay completely calm the whole time even though we are jumping out of our skin! He rarely writes down his homework, and I think his 900 person school isn't helping.  He seems so scattered, but [b]mostly he doesn't seem happy[/b].

All this leads me to think....he needs to go to military school!   :lol:   Of course that isn't actually true, but with two other kids who never give us this kind of trouble, mostly do what we ask of them, want to participate in life, and usually wake up happy and ready to embrace the day...we are wondering, is there something different about him that we need to investigate further?  Should we have him see someone?  [b]We aren't meeting his needs[/b].[/quote]

Just a refresher. OP's DC has always been this way, is not happy, and OP feels he has needs that aren't being met.[/quote]

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