Is there ANYTHING we can do to help him?

I don’t have any real suggestions for managing your current situation. I was thinking though that if medication has not helped attention that you might investigate Interactive Metronome. My son’s attention improved markedly from doing IM, enough that we were able to avoid using medication.

Also, what are the disadvantages of him going back to the continuation school? Is it possible that it is a better fit for him?

Beth

Hi Beth, haven’t heard of the Metronome. I’ll check into it.

The disadvantages of the continuation school are that many of the kids are there because they’ve messed up big time—gangs, violence, etc., and we hate our son being around so many poor role models. Also, the place is basically a prison-block type place, no-frills— no social activities, sports, etc., and it’s hard to think of him missing out on all the extras that make the high school years such a fun time. On the other hand, his education is what really matters, and he can choose to surround himself with the good role models there rather than the bad.

I would call the continuation school and ask how your son did there. I would see if there is another alternative at your school district. And I would get your son involved in the decision of what to do. I worked with a woman whose children both refused to go to school, she continually got calls that they were skipping.They are both trying to get a GED and have part time jobs.I also have a nephew who has done the same thing and is now going to community college and working part time now (in an orange julius). Neither of the kids have diagnosed learning disabilities, and the nephew sent a threatening E-mail to another student supposedly because of encouragement from friends,so he was kicked out of school.I would be asking your son what at this point would he want to do…Maybe if he thinks about alternatives, he might want to improve his situation in the class and since he has had another experience in another class maybe he saw what techniques that teacher used or what he did differently that might help him in his current class. I feel for you,hang in there…

My mom gave me this book for Christmas” How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. The book has been around for awhile, and I am finding it will help with how I do IEPs, and how I deal with my daughter. I am still reading it and will keep it as a reference to refresh my mind. I also try to read parts outloud to my husband so my child overhears,so it will help her tool

auditory mom has a good suggestion. In our district there are several choices in your case. The continuation school sounds like the equivalent to one of our schools that is for students who have had severe discipline problems in the regular school setting. After two marking periods they are allowed to return to the regular school. However, in the past the actual education at that school has been questionable to say the least. The other alternatives are: dropping out of regular school and enrolling in the adult education program. You can earn a diploma in half the amount of time but requires that you discipline yourself to attend. Apply for the alternative high school which is not the same as the forced disciplinary school program (continuation?). The wait can be long so it’s good to apply early. Also, apply to one of the vocational schools. Some of them are half day programs. Half day at the regular high school and half day at the vocational school learning a trade. Another vocational school in a different county will accept our students for a full day program. They even offer programs in fine arts and theatre but students must audition for that. Home instruction is also an option. In our district students can take all of their courses by home instruction using a computer program—basically online courses. Good luck!

Here’s the web site for IM. It cannot be done without your son wanting to do it so I think others ideas of getting your son involved in the decision making are critical. I was just thinking that if your son identifies attention as an issue, you could have this in your tool box of ideas.

http://www.interactivemetronome.com

Beth

Is there any possibility of him being in a regular class-is he in special ed all day or for certain classes-I forget, although I remember your posts

It seems to me that ADD alone shouldnt be enough for full special ed placement.

High school kids are, by nature, a pain in the rear. Im sure the interruptions and bathroom trips are something every teacher is dealing with anyway. Send him to the principal or give him a lunch detention; let him spend his Saturdays at school. The school should do what they do for ‘regular’ 15 yr olds

I agree-family life is better when the school deals with school matters. I will be supportive of teachers(pick up from detention, etc) but I have my hands full dealing with curfew, driving haibts, etc. IMO its THEIR job to see that the kids follow THEIR rules. Heck, no one is helping me with MY rules while he’s in school, KWIM??

I was an aide for a few years and ran an after school study group for 4-6th graders with poor grades. We were sponsored by the school, were located IN the school, and were supposed to follow THEIR rules, which meant any kid who forgot a book or showed up with a dull pencil three times was kicked out

I mean-DUH!! What were we there for? At the end of the first month, the other aide had kicked out 3 of her students. I had all of mine. I brought sharp pencils; we walked down to classes together to retrieve forgotten assignments and books(I was SERIOUSLY bawled out for this by one teacher) I made them do their homework, study for tests, and taught them study skills.

Grades went up across the board, and one 4th grader BEGGED me to let him stay even though his grades were up(of course I did-again, DUH)

I know there are good teachers and good schools out there but it made me question ‘rules’ in a way I hadnt before. Sometimes we get too caught up in the petty stuff

Real life lets you show up with a dull pencil once in a awhile

marycas, I just want to say I love this line!

“Real life lets you show up with a dull pencil once in awhile”

Yes, real life does let you show up with a dull pencil!!! This is one of the problems with kids growing up. The rules don’t necessarily teach them anything but how to follow rules. Kids with ADHD don’t respond well to that. Things need to make real world sense to them.

There is a book called “Parenting with Love and Logic” by Foster Cline and Jim Fay. It isn’t specifically for kids with ADHD, but I think a lot of the techniques work well for these kids. It is seriously THE SINGLE BEST book I’ve ever read on parenting. The basic idea of the book is by letting kids learn through natural consequences they learn to be responsible. Kicking a child out of extra help because his pencil is dull is NOT a natural consequence. If you showed up to a work meeting with a dull pencil you would simply not be able to take notes. And if you always asked to borrow one from a colleauge they would eventually get sick of lending you one and say no after a while. And if you couldn’t take notes, and you couldn’t remember anything, your boss would get on your case. And on and on. But no one would kick you out of the meeting because you couldn’t take notes three times. That’s not how the real world works.

I’m going to make a separate post on this book, because I think that most parents can benefit from the techniques. I think they even have a separate book dealing solely with teenagers, which CAMom might find helpful (although I have not read it).

Hayley

Real life lets you show up with a dull pencil now and then. Indeed!

All through junior and senior high school I showed up regularly with no pencils or pens — lucky to find my head to be honest with you. I borrowed from classmates until yes, they got fed up, and I wasn’t much on taking notes anyway. Nowadays we’re permitted to wear jeans so I have finally solved the problem by always having a pocket full of pens, not stylish but functional. My teachers in high school were to busy *teaching* to be going around checking everybody’s pencil points, thank you very much.

This extreme micro-management of the most trivial and often unimportant details, even counter-productive details, is one of the problems with education, not the solution.

I attempted to teach in one school that thought they were God’s gift to Earth. The grade 12 functions and relations math classes were not able to do Grade 9 algebra, but hey, they were the very best school around and nobody could tell them different. Well, the first day I asked students there to take notes, I began to wonder what planet I was on. First they all got out their big binders. Then they all snapped open the binders, a sound I find very painful to the ear, especially multiplied by twenty-five. Then they all got out *one* sheet of paper. Then they all snapped the binders shut again. Then they all unzipped their pencil cases and got out one red pen and one blue pen and a ruler. This of course all took several minutes of class time, totally wasted. Then when I put notes on the board, they all carefully copied the title, then put the blue pen down and got the red pen and the ruler and carefully underlined it in red. Then they picked up the blue pen again and wrote the note, then repeated the whole act. The writing was very very neat, and painfully slow. When the notes went more than one page — an experience they had apparently never had before — they repeated the whole act with the binders and the snapping. Yes, everyone in that class had very pretty notes. They also finished less than half of the work they should have been able to do in the time allotted, and I’m not sure if they learned anything because all the time and energy was dedicated to the superficial appearance and none to the subject matter. Please, folks, this kind of thing is NOT “teaching organization”, it’s counterproductive and verging on teaching OC.

To get back to the original point of the discussion here, try to find a placement for the student that is the opposite of this — concerned with the realities of learning and not with the superficial appeaance. Organization is a means to an end and when it becomes an end in itself, time to ask where this is going.

Thanks, auditorymom. I’m thinking that we may have to begin “thinking outside the box” for our son. He’s just never fit in very well, academically, in the usual classroom. I think we may just have to think about trying to get him into some sort of work/study program if he continues to have problems. At 15 1/2, I’m thinking that, if he hasn’t gotten into the habit of appropriate classroom behavior, it just “ain’t gonna happen,” although the spec ed teacher did tell us that many kids, sometime between the end of their freshman and the middle of their sophomore year, finally begin to get serious about education. My son is a young sophomore, so we’re still hoping…

And sometimes all it takes is a couple of years of entry-level jobs for people to finally realize that learning stuff in school isn’t quite as boring as they thought. It gives them perspective and fires up a little motivation to pick a goal and chase it.

I loved reading and math and science and stuff, but school seemed soooo pointless and sloooow. It just didn’t seem to have much of anything to do with living life. Nevertheless, I stifled myself and plowed ahead and got an M.S. in Rehab Counseling at 23. School classes would have been easier to tolerate if I’d had modern tranquilizers<big grin here>

After 30 years in the rehab business I can honestly say that I’ve met at least a thousand people who felt the same way and eventually went on to be quite successful.

John

Excellent observation, John! Success in school does not necessarily translate to success in life, nor does difficulty in school preclude a happy and successful life. Some of the greatest thinkers of our time were school failures or misfits. Good to keep that in perspective!

How does your son feel about the situation? I’ve heard the best way to communicate with your child is when they are doing something they like. Like chatting when shooting hoops together.Maybe if you can get him talking about the situation it will get him thinking about it.Then I would just listen to see how he feels about it.I would start with how is so and so’s class. Maybe this will get him thinking about what is going on, and give you some ideas from what he says to resolve the situation.

Actually, my son usually is a fairly good communicator. Unfortunately, even at 15 1/2, he’s still doing a lot of that “magical thinking,” in terms of he can keep not doing homework and still somehow get passing grades, goof off in class and not get sent out of the room or to the office, etc. When we try to call him on these things, he gets angry. He HATES to have his failings brought to his attention.

In the meantime, we are still getting calls. So far, we haven’t been offered any alteranatives such as some of those mentioned by previous posters. I just don’t think my son is going to be able to make it, even in a spec ed class. His teacher is very frustrated, but it’s hard for me to believe that, in his 30-odd years of teaching, he hasn’t come up against a child like my son. He’s not beligerent, violent, disrepectful, etc. He simply hates being penned up in a classroom and finds it almost impossible to be surrounded by all his friends and not try to get their attention. As his teacher puts it, he is disruptive because he has great charisma and the ability to distract others as well as himself.

I understand the teachers’ frustration, but isn’t it their job to find a way to teach even the most challenging kid?

Have you talked to the school psychologist about going in, viewing his behavior in the class room and seeing what kind of behavior plan they can implement that would help? Since you say he doesn’t like being penned up in a classroom, maybe the teacher could have him pass out papers, close a blind or door, anything that is physical every so often. In my experience my school usually does not let me know of options, you have to ask, and then you have to ask the right person. Good Luck

CAmom wrote:

I understand the teachers’ frustration, but isn’t it their job to find a way to teach even the most challenging kid?

Well … you haven’t been able to change his behaviour even being his parents and one-to-one — how exactly is the teacher supposed to succeed in a large group with many other time and work demands? We are teachers, not miracle workers, alas. The school *has* found something that is moderately successful for him, the continuation school, but you have rejected that environment for other reasons; the reasons may be quite valid, but you are rejecting what the school can do successfully and asking that they do the impossible, make changes while not making changes. No doubt you are at your wits’ end by now, but do please try to be objective and realize that so is everyone else.

Can you afford a private school for him? Most areas have a variety of private schools, some wth small classes and close supervision.

It seems to me that your son’s behavior and achievement at the continuation school vs. the regular school tells you what environment is necessary for him to meet his potential. Clowning around, heading for the bathrom to escape, acting out and not doing the work are your son’s way of expressing “hey, I can’t take this place. It is too much.” Even though some of the students at the continuation school sound pretty rough, I’m sure there are lots of kids like your son there as well. Extracurricular activities are great, but they are expendable when a student is not sucessfully engaging in curricular activities. Victoria has really hit the nail on the head.

Victoria and Guest,

Both of you made some great points. I guess I just expected that a spec ed teacher with only eight other students would be able to better handle one challenging 15 year old without such difficulty.

The good news is that, since the school/we implemented a weekly report system which “rates” behavior as well as work completion, he’s finally bought into taking control and, according to all his teachers, is improving in all areas. This is something that has been suggested and even tried in the past, but my son simply didn’t pass the report around. This time, we’ve come up with a monetary reward (translate: bribe…), and he’s responding enthusiastically.