The Mental Debt Struggle...

beanielou

So a thought here.
Is there a reason that your DS just cant go to college & do his GCSE's there?

Keedie

Yes you're very right @AntoMac, quality time with my son and more importantly time away from him as well.

I do feel better for cancelling the trip, it'll pay for a couple of exams or half his monthly school fees, so it was definitely the right thing to do. Adulting is a bit boring at times though lol.

Buuuuuut, I've even managed to add an extra night to my Kent trip, as I have two friends who live 5 minutes drive from each other and so I have invited myself to go from one to the other! So that'll make up for not having a weekender (I can't physically rave anyways, I just craved the getaway and being around other adults).

Keedie

beanielou said:

So a thought here.
Is there a reason that your DS just cant go to college & do his GCSE's there?

@beanielou... Do you mean just go 14-19 college or sixth form college?

beanielou

Either.
In Scotland a lot of people leave after 4th year & go to college & do exams there.
I think that would be roughly your year 11.

Keedie

The Scottish system sounds much better.   There’s an assumption from what I can see that everyone just does GCSEs at a school and college is for post 16 education and school leavers. 

I’ve struggled to find a college course that takes kids from 14+ to sit their GCSEs the first time around. There are only a handful and you either have to live in that local authority to be eligible. Or most of the courses were specialist vocational courses with 2 GCSEs (which I was fine with) but as they were full of lots of personal development elements like the Prince’s Trust they had to be referred by the local authority as it needed to be funded and cost about £12k. The council refused as they offered the Pupil Referral Unit only and if I rejected it, I had to homeschool.

I applied for a 14-16 college programme for home educators to do a GCSE course there, for Maths, Science & English. But I had my reservations about the location of the college and didn’t think my son would cope with making smart enough choices in terms of who he hanged around with (we’ve slowly, very slowly been turning a corner in terms of friendship groups). My nephew had gone to the same 14-16 college programme as he was homeschooled and my ex sister-in-law told me not to bother. By the time I’d changed my mind about going ahead with the application, when I saw how much my son was struggling with the online schooling, I’d missed the boat with the assessments for the college so it was no longer an option. I emailed them but they just ignored me. I regret not applying as he wants to be around other kids as he seems depressed by his situation, and said he’ll learn more face to face. But I didn’t tell him about the opportunity so he doesn’t know what he might have potentially had. He had so many false hopes that I stopped telling him everytime I found another possible option. But my reasons for why I didn’t continue the application still stand, but I do feel like I’ve boxed him into a corner that he’s struggling with (although it’s his actions that left us with limited options to begin with).

Because of the exclusion and with it being so far into GCSEs, we couldn’t get a managed move to another school. The managed move would’ve prevented the exclusion on his record and made it easier to try and change mainstream schools. But it didn’t work out that way. So aside from teaching him myself or having one to one tutors, I went with online schooling. 

I asked him if he wants to do an apprenticeship and he said he wants his GCSEs. But then he said he might have to do resits because he doesn’t think he’s going to pass anything. So now I’m super stressed as I’m under financial/mental  pressure and he’s under academic/mental pressure and I feel like just giving up and doing something different altogether. Then at other times he seems to get the hang of it, so I dunno 🤷🏾‍♀️. 

I lie awake at night sometimes and wonder if it’ll ever get any better… 😢. 

beanielou

My DS is now an adult.
My observation from the mid teenage years would be that unless you are very sure that your DS will actually get his head down & work then you are investing an auful lot of money without any liklihood of of a return of the sort you want.
I would not have done that at the age your DS is now.

Keedie

You make a good point @beanielou. I've got a lot to think about as the deadline for renewing for Year 11 is this Friday 8 July. It is a lot of money, but I feel like I have to try. But I sometimes if I want his future more than he does...

Chrystal

I agree with Beanie that you may be disappointed with the results. 

If he did an apprecticeship he can always do GCSEs at further education colleges if that's what he then wants to do.

 The old saying of taking a horse to water but can't make it drink comes to mind, also that you can't put an old head on young shoulders.

I doubt that he really realises what it's costing you in terms of money, stress and no free time for yourself at all, at his age everything is only seen from their point of view.  

Really hope that you manage to get things sorted.  XXX

Keedie

Thanks @Chrystal for your insight.

I've resigned myself to the fact that I may well be disappointed. But the disappointment would be if he didn't make the effort and try to engage with it. I don't expect high GCSE grades, I just want him to pass them. If he doesn't get the grades he needs, but he's at least tried, then he can go to college for resits and I honestly won't have a problem with that. Because at least he would have made an effort. I've already researched the different resit GCSE programmes and what subjects they offer etc, so I know that will give him a chance of getting better grades or gaining new GCSEs. Because of his age and the personal issues that he has to work through, although he's better suited to learning in a classroom, the classroom options that wouldn't derail his personal development were few and far between. I can see some changes in him, but the biggest hurdle is his mindset.

So what's bothering me the most is that he doesn't seem to care - about anything. And that's worrying me. A lot. And I know the majority of that is because he's very heavily depressed and is still mourning/grieving his old life and so a lot of the resistance is because he really does wants to learn and do his GCSEs, but he doesn't feel like he can learn in this format, but the alternatives are incredibly limited. I found a few other online schools, some with smaller classes and more interaction and he said that he doesn't know if it will make a difference. He doesn't want an apprenticeship, he wants to do his GCSEs. He just doesn't think he can achieve them.

So I've looked at what he needs to catch up on, as he's incredibly overwhelmed and we'll focus on more practical elements and visual aids. Like nothing he did in History before is in the iGCSE content, but things like Weimar and Nazi Germany, and the First World War, we can learn through visiting the Imperial War Museum and the Science Museum and watching videos explaining key concepts on GCSE Pod and the other resources that the school has subscribed to. For English, we won't read Of Mice and Men, we'll watch the film and study the CGP books that outline the key themes and watch the video recordings that the school has produced and the information on CSE Pod and BBC Bitesize. He'll have to read the poems and annotate the anthology, but I figured I'll make a list and he can choose which ones he does as and when over the summer so that he still has a break, but goes back and isn't like a fish out of water. For Biology, there's only a few weeks of learning and then he's on target with his peers and he's already very good at Maths so he'll just do workbooks and go over content that he's unsure of. His passion is Business and he wants to do this at degree level, so that's his motivator for doing his GCSEs so that he can get onto his BTEC Business course.

He saw a psychologist yesterday and she was helping him with his sleep hygiene as he's not sleeping and eating properly. And she was trying to find ways to help him adapt to his new situation. He has another session with her on 19 July and one on 2 August and she said she can offer him another one before he returns to school to discuss his anxieties etc. Hopefully he'll move further up the waiting list for CAMHS soon and he can get some proper mental health support. At the moment, he cannot visualise a future because he's so depressed and he's freaked out by how much work there is to do before he can sit his exams. But I think if I boost his confidence with subjects that he's naturally good at, and we learn all that we can about how the portal works etc and then we start going to open days for colleges, it will help to see that this is just a means to an end.

I'm hoping that by September when he reaches Year 11, he'll be in a different place mentally and that will help him to make the most of the situation. The problem is that I have to make arrangements and commit to it now, based on how I think he'll be in the future. But even if it's stressful for me, I'd always do whatever I can to give him the best opportunities in life. I just want him to want more from life to be able to take advantage of that.

beanielou

Keedie said:

You make a good point @beanielou. I've got a lot to think about as the deadline for renewing for Year 11 is this Friday 8 July. It is a lot of money, but I feel like I have to try. But I sometimes if I want his future more than he does...

Yes. You have hit the nail on the head. 

You want his future more then he does. 

Bear that in mind. 

It has to come from him.