Year 10 Revision and trying to help my teenage son.

Having been quite frustrated with my 15 year old son for a while I have taken the bull by the horns.

To give you some background I have to tell you that my son is absolutely wonderful! He is good and kind. He is loving and a real home body who would rather be with us than out and about with his mates in town. He reminds me of myself in so many ways ... we are very similar ... content with our own company, but happy with our friends too.

Recently he has shown signs of teenagerdom and can answer back with the best of them. But he always thinks about his behaviour and although we might have a row he will always apologise  without prompting. All in all we are very lucky to have him!!

However ... his school work has started to be of a concern recently.He has started to show cracks in his otherwise A Grade school career. We have tried to get him to revise for upcoming exams, but he has not done nearly as much as he should have done. He seemed really rather lost and without focus.

I was beginning to really worry. After all, whatever his potential I want him to achieve it, to the the best he can.

Yesterday I had a moment of clarity, of realisation. I realised that he is afraid. He is afraid to fail, awed by the vastness of what lies before him and this fear has made him think 2 things :

a) I just don't know where to start, how to begin, because there is so much to do.

b) If I try hard and fail I will be a real failure, but if I don't try ... and fail, people will say " Oh well, he didn't try. If he had tried he would have been brilliant"

I know because that's how I have thought in the past.

So today I got up early and took his planner so I could see what lessons he had when. Then I worked out a revision timetable, a study timetable with a file for notes on what he does each day and an exercise book that I can guide him as to what to do .... things like

• What did you cover in your lesson today ... summarise briefly.
• Any problems?
• Key words, formulae?
• Go to school website and follow instructions for past paper, game, article etc

Each task had a box to tick and there were not too many tasks. At the end of each subject he could look and see that he had ticked all the boxes and actually achieved a block of work.

I also bought chocolate as an incentive and wrote at the start of his book ...

 Every journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step ...

To my joy and amazement he sat at the kitchen table and studied. He took breaks between subjects, but seemed genuinely pleased and relieved that I had done this for him. It will take up some of my time, but I hope that he will start to understand how to do it for himself and gain a real sense of achievement.

I hope I have done the right thing. I just want to support him and help him to do the best he can. He is such a lovely boy.

Life with Teenage Boys ... give me strength.

I have just eaten a date and cranberry hot cross bun followed by a large mug of tea. I am allowed to do that because today is not a fast day ( see previous 2 posts ...) The reason I have eaten this frankly delicious combo of carbs and caffeine is because I share a house with two teenage boys. If I allowed myself full rein I would have eaten the whole packet of said hot cross buns ...

This holiday has consisted of me nagging them to revise for exams ... me nagging them to wash ... me nagging them to help around the house ... I have tried bribery and various other forms of corruption as well as the old fashioned "Do this or I will kill you!" technique. And, at the end of the day, none of it works. They are, before my very eyes, turning into two morose, lazy, rude, x-box obsessed monsters.

These are not my boys ... photo courtesy of the Guardian.

I know this is harsh. Despite this fact I do still love them and would probably throw myself infront of a speeding bullet to save them, but quite often these days they are rather hard to like. This may not be the accepted school of thought for a mum to take, but this is my blog and I'll write what I want to.

I have tried reasoning, tried cajoling, tried shouting, tried bargaining ... and nothing works. I wanted to do something with them each day ... visiting places, going to the cinema, going out to eat ... and yet they show no interest in this. This afternoon I had planned on taking them to the cinema and to McDonalds for lunch. I gave them a choice of films ... The eldest refused point blank to go. The youngest came along, but was so rude when I said he would be having the McDonalds for lunch rather than after the film for tea, that I took him straight back home.

So that is it. I have told them that I will no longer nag. They assure me that revision is under control and they "know what to do ..." so its over to them. If they are so grown up then they can jolly well get on with it. I will spend the next week of this holiday doing what I want to do ... garden centre, exhibitions, dinner, allotment. And they can continue with their x- box, their lap top, their ipad. They can fry their brains with internet waves and grow their thumb muscles to obscenely huge sizes through their obsessive use of gaming controls.

And when they fail their exams they will face an electronic free world. There will be no mercy. There will be no x-box, no .... nothing with a screen or a twiddly control. I am so sick of their attitude, their arrogance and their addiction to You Tube, Fifa 13, Minecraft and Facebook. I am no longer going to nag them ... the ball is firmly in their court. I hope they prove me wrong and both come out with shining results, but I fear they are in for a nasty shock.

You may think me a terrible mother and you may be right. I have never claimed to be a good mum. I know my boys could be much worse. They could be out on the streets drinking or doing drugs, having under age sex and vandalising the local cricket club pavilion ( God, how middle class does that sound ... ) but what I want is for them to achieve their potential. I hate to see an A grade student getting Bs and Cs, refusing to write anything down or read his set books. I hate feeling so incredibly frustrated and rejected by them. They do not want to spend time with me and consider me stupid and petty. They drive me nuts with their attitude and their complete lack of enthusiasm for anything.

I have spent the last 15 years doing my best for them and all they do is behave as if its their God given right to do what they want, when they want, with no regard for anyone else. I suppose to some of you my post might sound a bit pathetic, and reading it back I would tend to agree with you, but I am going crazy with frustration here. What happened to my little boys??

The day I see them both happy, in good jobs, with loving partners and their own obnoxious teenagers ... I will shriek with joy ...