smart, yet unmotivated teen

[leeannpal]

My 15 year old daughter is in her second year of homeschooling. She is a 9th grade student. She is so smart in many areas, almost a in a wise beyond her years way. She can write very well, vocabulary is off the charts and was in an advanced pre-algebra algebra class at a private school in 7th grade. But even there, getting her to complete work was like pulling teeth. She will do her work each day but she seems to have such a sense of dread. I am under no illusion that she will love to get up and do school work each day, but there seems to be nothing that really interests her. She doesn't want to switch curriculum. She says she just doesn't like to learn things she is forced to learn. Full disclosure...I am a high school English teacher and have been in education over 21 years. One of the main reasons I home school is bullying my daughter went through that I witnessed at her private school when she was in 7th grade. I was also a teacher there, so I saw and heard it first hand. I love so much about home schooling and would have loved to have been home schooled myself. My daughter just can't see the benefits of being able to choose so much of what and how she learns. Has anyone else come through this with a child who eventually matured enough to realize the benefits of an good education? 

[Ann.without.an.e]

I wish I could say that I have been there and explain how we found the end of it.  I hope someday I can write that post for someone else  :lol:   I have a tenth grade boy and we are in the same boat.  It stinks.  You can give them all sorts of resources, help, and encouragement but they have to find their own motivation.  He usually gets it all done but he doesn't enjoy it, he hates the process, and he makes us both miserable along the way.

 

This is just me - commiserating.  Here's to the day when we can hopefully reply to a similar post and tell our tale about how our kiddos overcame it or changed or something.  :cheers2:   Maybe we will even laugh about it in retrospect and wonder why we were so concerned. 

 

For now, I do this  :lurk5:   Waiting to see if someone adds in some sage advice that creates an a-ha moment.

[SparklyUnicorn]

I haven't come through yet, but one of mine...hates school.  He has always hated it.  And it's not because he struggles in any subject area.  He's just not interested.  I have tried various things, but nothing really has helped all that much.

 

So..I don't know.  I always liked school.  My first kid likes school.  My husband though, he said he hated school.  I guess some people just don't like it. 

 

It's hard not to take it personally sometimes.  Some people have said to me it's sad that a kid hates school...they shouldn't hate school...there must be something wrong with it.  No way.   As it is I BARELY make him do that much.  I give him zero busy work.  Everything is quick, to the point, and git er done (especially the stuff he hates the most).  I count a lot of non academic seat work type stuff as his school.  So he is spending a good portion of his day not doing anything that looks much like school (tinkering, building, drawing, watching whatever videos he wants on youtube, reading whatever he wants, etc.).  He doesn't mind all of that.  I'm just saying short of saying do whatever you want whenever you want, I've learned to be very flexible with him.  And yet, when we sit down to do some of the more schoolish stuff...forget about it.  It's like dragging an elephant through mud.

 

I do think he will be fine.  No clue what direction he'll take in life, but he'll find something.  He's a smart kid. 

[freesia]

My ds is finally coming through it as a senior. He's so excited about an honors program which is pretty much organize how I wanted his high school years to be and how I tried to have them be. When I mentioned that, he looked at me blankly. His love of learning took s long hiatus during adolescence.

[OneStepAtATime]

:grouphug:

 

For some kids structured required learning will not bring joy.  At least not learning required by others for some seemingly arbitrary and apparently pointless goals created by people that never even met them.  It just won't.  That can be hard to take for someone who does love learning and wants to convey that sense of joy.  But for some it really does seem pointless and forced, not interesting.

 

Think about it.  So much of what is often required to get a diploma or into college was created by people in a system that does not know your child, has never met your child, and created these requirements based on nothing that your child may see immediate value in.  You are following along with that system and to you it makes sense and has value.  For many, that's fine.  They leap through these hoops and may even find joy or at least purpose in doing these things.  For others it just feels false and boring and like they are being shackled into doing things that have no relevance to them.

 

If you can just keep her moving through things she needs, try not to take it personally if she is not terribly engaged.  Do what you can but make certain you are giving her opportunities to pursue and perfect the areas she does have interest.  Don't micromanage.  Help her achieve HER goals or at least create an environment where she can discover her own goals but give her freedom to pursue those things her way (within reason).  And try hard not to want her to "appreciate" the "opportunity" she has been given with homeschooling.  Her viewpoint, her desires, needs and expectations are not yours.  She is her own person.  It is frustrating and can be disheartening when there is such a mismatch between instructor/parent and student/child.  BTDT.  But walking away from your own disappointment/frustration with her attitude and just moving on with the business at hand can help.  

 

FWIW, DD was never my academic.  School was not a good fit for her for many reasons but, regardless of age/grade, structured learning did not engage her.  She resented it.  Homeschooling starting in 6th grade wasn't much better until I found ways to really help her pursue her personal interests and hone skills she values.  Now?  She is very motivated because getting through academics helps her to get to her long term goals for her future.  Goals she has set for herself, not goals I or any arbitrary system foisted onto her.  She works within the system where she has to and works around or over it where she finds other paths that work just as well to achieve her goals.  Now?  She's my easiest one regarding motivation.  Now she sees purpose.

 

I hope that makes sense.

 

Hugs and good luck.

[Ravin]

Have you checked for ADD or other 2E issues that might be getting in her way?

 

I was just like this as a teen and still wonder if ADD may have been why. 

 

If she is not motivated to learn what others want her to learn (including you), what DOES she want to learn? What DOES she care about?

 

I deal with the same disinterest issue with my teen--and she does not have above-average aptitude to make up for her deficits so it's HARD.

[Tsuga]

I hated school but I did it because I thought that if I did well, I'd get a scholarship to college. That turned out to be a big lie, but anyway... what has worked in my family is not asking someone to enjoy it but setting goals and relating those to extrinsic rewards because "school is your job".

 

Sitting at a desk and memorizing what has got to be the most unimaginative curriculum for history ever devised because "someone who has a job teaching teachers in a university thought this sounded like a great idea and they did a single study on a single 10th grade and were able to manipulate the statistics enough to secure funding" is not something I'm going to defend.

 

I will defend "but this is how people get paid because people pay other people for the illusion of control". That might be a little too realistic for your teen but if she's really smart and you're honest with her, it might at least get her to set goals and then accept meeting them for specific privileges.

[CAJinBE]

My dd18 struggled with homeschooling. She needed the pressure of performing for a classroom teacher and competing against other students to stay motivated. She is graduating this year. We ended up using an online school so she would have outside teachers and "real" grades. It helped some, but caused it's own issues. In the end, she took an extra year. The maturing in the last year was remarkable. University in the fall is now her focus. 

[mom31257]

Following! My 14 yo ds is not interested in school. He gets it done with a lot of reluctance. He has the potential to do well, though. He is a mathy kid like me and could be much further along except for his apathy toward school. I am hoping maturing helps. 

 

 

 

 

[Pen]

Are there things that do motivate her?

 

Is she depressed?

 

What is the "sense of dread" about?

[JBJones]

Are there things that do motivate her?

 

Is she depressed?

 

What is the "sense of dread" about?

I also wondered about her being depressed, especially if she endured bullying.

Or perhaps suffering from anxiety and/or insomnia?

Edited January 25, 2018 by JBJones

[Arcadia]

She doesn't want to switch curriculum. She says she just doesn't like to learn things she is forced to learn.

...

My daughter just can't see the benefits of being able to choose so much of what and how she learns. Has anyone else come through this with a child who eventually matured enough to realize the benefits of an good education?

 

My DS13 has voiced certain opinions which may or may not be relevant to your scenario.

 

1) he picked his outsourced classes and his curriculum out of whatever is available. For him, it is picking the best from whatever is available and not his ideal. He is a realist and accepts that the ideal outsourced class, public school, affordable private school is just either unavailable or financially not feasible. Because of where we stay due to affordability and easy commute to work, he knows that public schools that has the crazy amount of academics workload he likes is not possible and that the assigned schools to our address is not a good match. So the only reason he is willing to homeschool is because it’s “better†than the assigned public school which has high failure rates.

 

2) he is also looking at the minimum requirements for college and much as he like science, he is so done with labs for chemistry and physics. He does not want to do biology and so he pick astronomy as his potential third science. Since he loves black holes, astronomy would work if he doesn’t change his mind.

He does not like history so he opts to study for the SAT world history, take the subject test in the near future, and get a high enough score to fulfil the high school world history requirements. He has not decided on how he will fulfill US History and US Govt & Politics/Civics.

So basically he is allowed to use get it done ways to fulfill high school requirements to get into state universities without us (parents) caring about rigor. My husband says that he was happy he could just check the box from 7th-college without opting for the most rigorous options for every subject/course.

 

3) Good education is viewed differently by different people. For example, my husband went to elite public schools but he feels his best education was learning to be street smart while working as an arms buyer as a non-combat military personnel. Those skills helped him for his subsequent jobs and even postgraduate. I grew up on the streets as a latchkey kid and cruised through elite public schools so it is a different life experience from my husband. So what helped my husband and I wasn’t the good academic education but the people and management skills we picked up.

 

My DS13 has said he doesn’t want early college or early dual enrollment. He wants to have whatever is left of his childhood to take classes because he just want to BTDT, or take hard classes without worrying about a B or C grade. He has been thinking about jobs since he was in elementary school and he has thought about college majors as well. However he is well aware that tech sectors do like to pay the minimum possible and that supply is more than demand (despite what the news say) because my husband does interviews at college campus and we tag along and it’s a big stack of screened resumes. So he is also thinking about jobs that are harder to outsource or automate. He worries like an adult and so want to stay a child longer.

 

Being “smart†can be a liability, my husband was less bored in school while our kids and I enjoyed the social aspects of public schools while we doodled our boredom away during class time. Expectations for smart kids by my public school teachers were so much higher that I learned to go under the radar because I don’t want to be in the most rigorous class for every subject. I definitely did not take the most rigorous class offered in my high school for multivariable calculus, calculus based physics or chemistry and the engineering school I applied for and attended didn’t have a problem with that thankfully in the early 90s.

[JanetC]

I think classroom teachers in particular are a poor match for homeschooled kids who don't want to be told what to do, because in their professional experience having control of the classroom and marching through curriculum at the required pace are so important.

 

I wonder also if she had enough time to deschool and de stress after the bullying. She may be unhappy because of the trauma she experienced rather than because of anything specific you asked her to do.

 

To deschool: work on finding things that make her happy and engaged, without worrying about "the curriculum." This may be time in nature, art, music, sports, volunteering, etc. Read real books together on the sofa rather than working through textbooks.

 

Consider doing a project rather than a curriculum. Over the years my kids did history fair, science fair, and noncompetitive writing and art exhibitions for example. It helps to have a contest or exhibit to enter just to give a deadline and motivation to do polished work.