LittleRae Report post Posted February 17, 2011 Hi All. I've not been on the forum for quite a while. My DS with AS and ADHD (inattentive type) is in his third year of secondary school. We do not live in the UK. Secondary school has been wonderful for him. He has made good friends, seems well-liked by the staff and does consistently well in school work and end-of-year exams. He has become quite sociable and involved in a limited number of after school activities. Our problem is now he is due to take his first state exams this June. Currently he is doing 'mock' exams and it seems everything is falling apart. Over the last 2 months I have set up a study timetable for him, broken down into subjects and provided him with a list of topics within each subject to tick off when he has reviewed them. Even getting him to study at all is a huge stress. DS is very clever and often gets 100% in subjects like History, Geography, Science. As in his own words he 'does not know how to learn' I have been setting him previous exam questions to which he marks down bullet points to check he knows the topic. No problem there. I don't doubt him when he tells me he 'knows everything'. The main problem appears to be exam technique. I have gone over the papers with him, we've discussed what he needs to do, how many questions, etc. He has come home each day with the paper incomplete. He will not read the instructions, he won't read over the paper before he starts, he won't even divide his time between the questions. There was a major fallout and meltdown yesterday as he didn't have time to complete a long question in his English exam as he had spent all his time answering the short questions. I sent him a text this morning reminding him to place a tick on the top of the exam booklet each time he answered a question so that he could keep a tally of what he had done. His answer? NO!! What can I do? I hate to be lecturing him all the time but I cannot get it through to him that it doesn't matter what you know; if you don't get the answer down you don't get the marks. He has been using a laptop for homework and exams for the past year and it has really improved his work and he often is quite excited by homework, asking us to read what he has written in essays, etc. I'm at a loss what to do now. I feel like I'm talking to the wall. I would love to step back and let him get on with it, but he's becoming so frustrated knowing each day that he has not performed well. I dread the fallout when he gets the results. Has anyone been through similar? Any advice on how I can approach this with him? He will be totally devastated if he doesn't do well - we are talking about a child who has the potential to get A1s in everything. Thanks LR Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
oxgirl Report post Posted February 17, 2011 Yes, I had this with my lad, and I know it is frustrating. With my lad, science was his thing. He was guaranteed to get As in all three science subjects so, tbh, we didn't worry too much about revising for those, we knew he'd do well. With English, we had the same problem as you. He would insist that, out of the two questions asked, he could not even attempt one and so would spend the entire time doing just the one question and ignore the other one. No amount of explaining to him that if he only did 50% of the paper he'd only get, maximum, 50% score made any difference. When it came to his GCSE proper, in both English Lit. and Language exams, he only completed one question for each out of the two asked. He insisted that he couldn't think of anything to write for the other questions so just left them blank. Tbh, we were pleased with the D and E he got, thought he would do a lot worse, but it is frustrating. I kept telling him that if he'd only try and write one sentence at least for the other question he might get a couple of marks for it, but he was adamant that he was unable to. It didn't matter how much he wrote for the first question, unless he got 100% marks for it, he could still only get half marks for the paper as a whole, but ultimately he did what he felt he was able to. I'm not sure what the answer is. If your lad is unwilling to listen to you, could you get a teacher or helper to explain it to him, he might take it better from them? Also, when it comes to subjects your son excels at, I wouldn't try and put too much pressure on to revise for those subjects personally, I'd trust that he will do well and concentrate on his weaker subjects. All the best. ~ Mel ~ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dm2010 Report post Posted February 17, 2011 Hmm. As an exam veteran (A levels in maths, science, degree in engineering) preparing like this for mock exams is a bad move. Reason being, the stress will be double when the real thing comes along. Mock exams do not matter - no one is ever going to know or care in later life what he scored on them. Exam stress more than once a year isn't good. Best not to revise for mock exams, manyana ! When the results come in you then have an unvarnished record of how good he is or isn't at each subject. With the pressure off he'll do rather well I reckon. Then you can take a critical look at where the effort needs to go in to prepare for the real thing. You say you want to let him do his own thing but can't for fear of failure. Well let him make that decision, failure is part of life and a mock exam is a pretty low risk way to learn about it. 4 years from now he will have to study alone at university so best to start learning how to do it now. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
LittleRae Report post Posted February 17, 2011 HI Thank you both for your replies. I guess I have to let him sink or swim on his own with this one. I think I have done all that I can do for now. LR Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
