Parenting

[Mahraja1979]

Hey Guys

I am a single parent who is struggling to get my son interested in his school work. In a recent parent teacher interview, his teachers told me he is a polite child but is not interested in his studies. The teachers told me that he shows no interest in his subjects. Not sure what to do. I spoke to him  and he promises that he will do better. I find it hard as he has been promising me this for last few years. 
 I don’t know how to get him interested in his subject. 

[sbella02]

Hey Mahraja1979,

Thank you for reaching out to the forums, welcome.

It must be frustrating to hear that as a parent. I would probably approach it from a position of wanting to understand why he seems to have no interest in his studies - whether it's the workload, the subject matter, his teachers, peers, or something else. You could try having an open, gentle, and non-judgemental conversation with him about why he may not be interested in studying, and see how he responds. 

If you first come to understand why he's not interested in studying, you can then start to work with him to get more motivated for it. Motivation to study can come from something as simple as giving him a reward for a certain amount of study achieved, to encouraging him to find a long-term goal or even career path that he can use to drive his studies over the years. But first, it's important to know where his disinterest comes from.

I hope this helps, let me know what you're thinking and how everything goes, we're here to support you. 

All the best, SB

[quirkywords]

mahraja1979

Isabella has item useful advice.

I wonder how old your child is because that would affect my answer.

I was a primary teacher, and I knew of children like your son.

I think your son needs time to find something that interests her be it music or art or cooking or carpentery or animals etc. He may need a bit of help from you in discovering something he really likes.

[therising]

Hi Mahraja1979

I'm wondering whether your son knows why he's not interested in the work. I imagine there's a reason or perhaps a variety of reasons that maybe he's not fully conscious of. Do you feel that if you led him to become more conscious of the reasons, this could help shed light on things for the both of you?

A variety of reasons could include

• Focus issues. This can include anything other that the work being interesting. Daydreaming about fascinating things or even being fascinated by what's going on outside the classroom window can pose problems
• Cognitive issues or issues with not being able to fully understand the work, leading to frustration. Easier to disengage from the work rather than struggle with the frustration
• Distracting mental health challenges that can stem from issues inside or outside of school
• Questionable or boring teaching methods. An excellent and engaging teacher, who can lead a child to relate to the work in a specific way, can make a big difference
• A lack of energy. This can include chemical energy, like the kind of energy that comes from B12, iron, dopamine etc
• Distracting inner dialogue

Just some of the many challenges kids can face with schoolwork.

While my son faced some of these challenges up until the end of VCE last year, they weren't as intense in primary school, based on the work being rather basic back then. In secondary school, when the work gradually became more and more complex, the struggles became more obvious and more intense. Could there be a possibility that your son's brain won't let him do the work even if he wants to? If you consider the brain as being nothing more than a processor of information, it's basically the thing that leads our body to perform all of its functions and it allows us to process or make sense of things. We're far more than just our brain, our processor. I have to say, while my son has a naturally and truly brilliant mind in so many ways, with certain subjects his brain kinda says at times 'Nup, just don't want to work this one out'.