Mom of a middle schooler, feeling helpless! Advice please!

Thanks so much for all of the suggestions! Many of you hit the nail on the head about his personality. He is very bright. Not a genius or anything, but above average. He is just so disorganized. He’s not failing his classes because he’s failing the tests. He’s failing because he either doesn’t turn work in or he turns it in incomplete or he didn’t follow the directions. We brought his math binder home so he could finish a couple of assignments that he didn’t complete before. There were papers just crammed in there and several assignments with an “incomplete please finish and return” stamp on them. He can bring home work he doesn’t finish in class, but he doesn’t bother to. All of his classrooms have cubbies for them to keep their things, so he never brings anything home. I wish he could just keep everything in one big binder with dividers that stays in his backpack. His 4th grade teacher suggested a Trapper Keeper so he could keep all of his things together instead of cramming them in his backpack. I love the idea of theme park design. He loves roller coasters.

Roller coasters are a math and physics and engineering and visual design and construction and materials science and project management and psychology lesson brought to life.

Start with what he loves.

One of my kids couldn’t manage to keep a note from his teacher intact for the 20 minute bus ride home. I have walked the path you are walking!

My kid compensated for the lost assignments by scrambling and doing them a 2nd time right before class if she lost the first version. 8-|

Have you thought about starting bullet journaling with him? That system was created by someone who suffered from extreme ADHD. He might be a bit young to try it, but might be worth a go.

“Go ahead with the testing, but I am very happy that I sent my kids to Private school for MS and HS. Obviously it depends on the school, but they were very protected and supported intellectually and socially.”

I wish I had sent my kid to private school starting in middle school.

Really bright kid but lazy. No ADHD or any learning disability. Nothing we did worked. We even resorted to bribing him for good grades. All his 8th teachers told us he was the smartest kid in their class but they couldn’t recommend him for any honors in 9th grade.

6 weeks into freshman year another lousy progress report littered with C’s and D’s came home. That was it for us and by the next week he was in private school. In a week he was a completely changed student. You can’t hide or stare out the window when there are 10 kids in a class. And if you don’t hand in your homework you are kept after school.

I truly believe if we hadn’t pulled him from public school (the best in our area too) he would have ended up with no other choice than Community College.

Instead he went to a top 20 LAC, graduated on time with excellent job in hand and the world is truly his oyster.

My DD has tutored younger students for several years. She has been highly successful with helping MS kids get and stay organized. You can ask guidance if there is a HS student available to do this - many schools require a certain number of tutoring hours for NHS students, so there might not be a fee for you. I am bringing this up because sometimes kids listen to other kids more readily, and it keeps you from having to be the “Paper Police” - constantly going through his backpack. Many parents have told me their kids LOVED working with my daughter because they would feel so prepared and on top of things afterwards. Best of luck to you!!!

“Thanks so much for all of the suggestions! Many of you hit the nail on the head about his personality. He is very bright. Not a genius or anything, but above average. He is just so disorganized. He’s not failing his classes because he’s failing the tests. He’s failing because he either doesn’t turn work in or he turns it in incomplete or he didn’t follow the directions. We brought his math binder home so he could finish a couple of assignments that he didn’t complete before. There were papers just crammed in there and several assignments with an “incomplete please finish and return” stamp on them. He can bring home work he doesn’t finish in class, but he doesn’t bother to.”

I didn’t see your post before I responded. This was my kid!!

My suggestion is to run, not walk, to a private school.

They don’t let this kind of stuff happen.

It also makes home life much more pleasant when you are not constantly battling/nagging your kid all the time.

I disagree about private versus public. Pubic schools are legally required to accommodate disabilities.

It sounds to me as if the teachers are not properly accommodating him. I would ask for a 504 meeting with the coordinator, nurse and any other appropriate people. Do you have an annual 504 meeting? You cannot rely on your son to assess accommodations. You need to stay on top of it, and them.

Maybe educate yourself on ADHD. There is a great documentary on PBS, and there are books (“The Myth of Laziness”?). I cannot understand punishing a kid for a disability. Even if that method has short term success, it will backfire long term. And offering rewards can make the kid depend on an external reward for work that won’t always be there, so it risks future loss of motivation.

I think it helps to see this as a long term problem, and stop focusing on the short term. You can be training wheels for the next few years, and he needs support at school as well. In college, there may be a person to meet with weekly for time management and other issues, or you can hire a coach if affordable.

ADHD doesn’t have as much effect in elementary school. For the content-laden middle school curriculum, with more work and more serious expectations, it can really become apparent that ADHD is an obstacle. And add puberty, social concerns and so on.

I would really start advocating for the help he needs and not expect the solution to come from him. I would also look at alterative ways for him to learn. For instance, some students with ADHD do well with online classes, which provide organization on a screen, and schools should accept the credits. Your school can even join this one: https://vhslearning.org/ We advocated for this with our local Ed. Foundation and school. The Foundation paid for the school to join and 25 students could take online classes each semester. For some reason, kids with ADHD often thrive with this.

I have personal experience with this scenario and believe me, your son can do fine, but he needs to develop a vision for his future and it may differ from yours. So the hard part is disengaging from your vision of school and career, while at the same time ramping up your involvement. You need to be his coach for now, and also get the school to follow what is required by law.

If the school won’t, call your nearest Federal Dept. of Education, and ask for the Office for Civil Rights, and they will help train the school. Not saying that things are that serious, but that office is a great resource for advice and informational materials. Ditto the Federation for Children with Special Needs.

Also my image for kids’ brains at this time is a gutted house with ladders against it and a bunch of construction workers hammering away. The brain is truly remodeled during this time and for boys that continues for years.

Organization and time management is a life skill he will need as an adult. Millions of kids with adhd develop it, and find coping mechanisms to deal with it. Your son is young, and if you start working on it now, you may have great success. I did. Yes, it is extra work for you and him. But the reward of an organized adult is worth it. Most kids this age find it a challenge, so recognize it is a common problem most parents share right now, and teachers are used to dealing with it at this age. It may take a while, and require a lot of effort, but it is likely things will improve. Good luck.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting punishing a kid for a disability. It is in the family’s interest to find coping mechanisms for the child to work around the disability, if possible. For example, I need to park near the same spot when I go to the mall on order to find my car. Something about spatial relationships doesnt click for me. Wish I didn’t have to, but I’ve had enough experience to know I won’t find it otherwise. So I work around it, when possible.

Wow, some great comments. I didn’t read the entire thread but I would add the following about gifted students. There are multiple levels of giftedness. Often in an honors class there are two types of students the ones who are bright ( not stellar) and work very hard to be there/stay there and the kids for whom things come very easily. Sometimes kids get confused, they are labelled by their parents are being “special/gifted/etc” when in fact they are just strong students with parents who are invested in keeping them in the highest level classes.

Among the gifted there are those who work hard and those who don’t. Yes, many gifted have Executive Function issues. Some are also used to doing very little so when the shift happens in 6-9th grade, they are surprised by the work and retreat. I would suggest getting him tested for his real level. There is an amazing difference between a strong student with an IQ of 105, one with 130 and one above 150. Learning for each is not the same. Highly gifted and profoundly gifted people lose their patience easily when they have to sit in a class where things are repeated multiple times and they want to move on.
And there are kids who are put in advanced classes who don’t belong there. This can cause a strain when the kid doesn’t want to tell the parent they need to move down a level.

My suggestion would be to keep the focus on school and use what he likes to do as an incentive for what he has to do. You CAN check his work. At the beginning of the week he makes a schedule and writes down all the things which are due, adds and changes daily. You review this with him until he get to the point where he does it everyday. This will be quick as he will not want you to be doing it. But if you are spot checking then you know it will be done. Additionally, as a parent I would request seeing all papers that are returned. I would speak to the teachers and counselors and tell them you are going to get things back on track and need to work as a family for some time. If you know he took a science test on tuesday you will be expecting it back the next week. Your son knowing that he will have to review his work inside and outside the classroom will change everything.
One of my kids isn’t the type to do a schedule. But after many years has now integrated it into daily life. This is important. Without it, this kid would not be an A student but maybe a B student with forgotten papers and assignments. I haven’t checked that book in years. But it allows for personal responsibility.

I actually agree that a private school CAN be part of the solution if it is affordable for you. In an independent private school, no one had to make most of her teachers support her with issues related to her disability. Small class sizes and a school where teachers communicates across subject areas in on how our kids were doing definitely was a benefit for my kid. She was known, supported, and encouraged in a way that is harder in a bigger school.

My oldest kid is classic absent minded professor type. Inhales information but forgets to respond to e-mails etc. He is a senior now and has thrived dual enrolling. A couple things that have helped with him.

He has a “business” e-mail account that also comes to me. I have prompted him on how to respond in a timely fashion to e-mails. This makes it so he hasn’t missed important e-mails but has allowed him to baby step toward autonomy on it. I have to say this set up has been important for a very busy teen during college application season. He probably gets 100 e-mails a day right now. I don’t monitor his day to day stuff anymore, but I am watching closely for the directed college related stuff (which is extra complex in his case because he’s applying to colleges but also auditioning for some college music programs).

I’ve trained him on using google calendar for events and reminders. You can set up phones to pop up reminders with google calendar (there are a number of tools like this). I truly hope he continues to use this when he leaves for college. It has been helpful for ALL of us as a family of somewhat scattered thinkers to be able to see what’s coming on any device or computer.

Homeschooling through his brain dead puberty period was honestly a life saver. He choose to continue for high school, though I think he would have done fine in high school. He actually got a much deeper out of the box education than he would have received with what was available to us when he was a 9th grader. I personally think it’s ok to give your kid the back up he needs to be successful and help him develop organization skills over time. Plenty of young men are not fully baked at age 18. There is nothing magical about that age.

I also agree with the earlier comment on public vs. private schools. My kid had an early poor experience both in a public and a private. At least with a public you legally have rights for services. But if there are other educational options locally that may work better, I absolutely think that is worth exploring. What is going on now clearly isn’t working.

If he has ADHD and is not finishing work in school…shouldn’t the teachers be helping him a little more on that? Or is there a way he can bring it home to finish?

My kids don’t particularly like the 3-ring binders. They shove everything into them and they are not organized at all. Instead, they use 13-pocket accordion folders with a zipper. Each class has its own pocket and they just stick the papers in the right pocket - no holes to punch or papers to flip past. They have a pocket in the front for homework to do, so anything assigned for home ends up in there. This has worked really well for them. It took a few tries to find the right system for my kids. If what he’s doing doesn’t keep him organized, maybe something else would.

I don’t have any other advice, but do wish you good luck in figuring out what works for him!

One other plug for the right private school is, they recognize that parents are part of the solution at this age. Yes, kids need to start taking responsibility but not every kid can–Private schools work WITH the parents instead of public schools which often can work with the system (big difference). If you get a teacher in public who is willing to work with you ( and there are many) that’s great. Often they don’t want to take on the extra work. In many private schools, the administration recognizes that kids are different. They often have online systems with everything situated there from emails to assignments to billing etc. Could make it a lot easier if your kid doesn’t want to share.
In terms of systems, I let my kids pick their own organizational tools and binders for school. It’s expensive but they have the systems that work for them. We have also required that they start putting things in the family calendar beginning in middle school. They need to own their schedule to some small degree. I do most of the family calendar but by no means all. And if it is something we might not know about, if it isn’t in the calendar–it might not happen,

"ALL of this would have been treatable had I listened to MY GUT and not to his teachers/counselor. So instead of starting treatment in middle school, my son started getting treatment when he was 19. So many years lost!! It’s my biggest regret as a parent. "

@katliamom or anyone else,

What are possible treatment methods?

Private school doesn’t always equate to more (or better) attention. At that age, it still depends on teachers and context.

Sorry to say, there are many kids who cannot triumph when it’s the parent who’s trying to teach something like organizational skills or organized thinking. In many areas, there are outside mentors who do this. Not tutors as much as a non-family support. They’re trained to do this. A parent can not only be too close, but the relationship too complex. Sometimes, the parent has to step back and just be the parent, not the coach.

And there he is, in puberty, a time when changes come and thoughts jumble. It’s possible that, if he’s popular, this distracts from work- the satisfaction of that growing ability and power.

I think it’s a mistake, at his age, for the child to tell the psychiatrist he doesn’t need a change in Rx. (How would he know? It’s the outside observations that show the issues, not hs own recognition.) And meds DO need to be revised, at times. Add x or lower y, change for other reasons. Been there.

Because I’ve been there done that: think very carefully about how you implement a reward scheme, so that it works out as habit building as opposed to punishment. Don’t set long periods in which nothing must go wrong, don’t set deadlines. You’re setting him up for failure and he will perceive the loss of the reward as punishment.
Award points for much smaller steps. Stuff you want him to do every morning? Go through his backpack to check his stuff for the day? If it works - points. If it doesn’t - no points, but also no far reaching consequences. Just move on to the next chance to earn points, which might be on coming home and check that home work folder or whatever. Make it so that he always has some points in the evening. Give him the chance to make up on things by going back, and doing it again, or doing it better - you want the result, not the consequence.
Don‘t set up a reward for a weeks period right away. Something will go wrong on day one, you’ll have to pull the reward, he’ll sulk and feel badly treated, and nothing is going to be improved for the rest of the week.
And never lose sight of the big picture, the two of you: it’s about him learning how to stay on top of stuff and feel successful in school. It’s not bribes, or rewards, and certainly not punishment, it’s about structured motivatio to help him focus on building the habits he needs to be successful.
And yeah, eventually he needs to get a bike out of it.