Please help. My name is Randi and I have three wonderful children; a nine month old daughter, Cameron, a two year old daughter Aniyah and a nine year old stepson Corey. My current dilemma is with Corey and his school work. Corey has already been through alot in his short life and is currently back and forth between his dad and myself and his grandmother. His grandma has custody and his dad and I get him everyday after school and on weekends until his dad can get custody. Corey has turned around quite a bit since he has been spending more time with his father and I, and we are incredibly proud of his progress and tell him so often. Our problem is that Corey has many difficulties in school. He is ADHD and is on medication, but still has behavior and academic issues. He goes to tutoring and we help him as much as we can with his homework and studies, short of doing it for him. He is very bright, but completely lazy, he either refuses to do his homework, lies about having homework, hides it, or does it wrong just to get it done. He also has problems focusing and completing his work in the classroom. He is also in counseling due to many past family and behavior issues. I am terrified Corey is going to fail the third grade; which the teacher is basically already saying will happen if he does not pull up his grades, and I'm not even sure if at this point in the year if it is already too late. We have offered him rewards for better grades, I'm not talking straight A's but at least not all D's and F's; such as some kind of sport or club of his choice. But we explained to him schoolwork comes first and after school activities are only if he keeps his grades up. We have taken away all of his video games until he pulls his grades up. We try and help him with his homework, we don't yell and scream at him if he gets it wrong, but calmly try to explain the concept of the work to be done and let him try again. He has already failed once, when he was with his mom and missed so much school he was held back. So if he fails again he will be two years behind his peers and I know he will be picked on terribly. At this point I just don't know what else to do, we try to instill the fact that negative behavior gets negative results and positive behavior yeilds positive results, but honestly it's like he just doesn't care. Please help us. Thanks, Randi

Randi:
My older son (now in college) sounds very similar. He was (and still is) smart and capable, but he was ADD and struggled to keep focused, stay organized and do well in school.
I can't say that I have the perfect answer, but I can tell you that what worked best for us was a three-pronged approach. First, we tried to be consistent with him about expectations and penalties, and if he didn't meet the expectation, that meant he would be restricted from TV, video games, time with friends, etc... We hated being ogres, but you have to have carrots and sticks, and the sticks sometimes need to be big, bad and ugly to work. The second part was that we tried to help him find his passion. In his case, it was cooking, so we helped him understand that all of the other academic stuff would help prepare him to go to a good culinary school. We eventually put him in MTI in the culinary program and he flourished. The third part is that we had him in therapy from the time he was 10 until he left for college. There's a lot of stuff that comes with ADD, and we learned that it took a team effort (parents, kid, teachers and therapist) to work through his challenges.
It wasn't easy, he fought us at every step of the way, but we created a consistent set of rewards and punishments/restrictions and when he didn't live up to his end of the bargain, we cracked down.
We found that some of the tutoring services (like Sylvan) can be helpful, if he's struggling in some area of academics. They're expensive, but they do the same thing. Practice and reward results.
Best of luck with your son. You are in my prayers.
Warmly,
Robyn
(Andrew and Avery's Mom)

Hi Randi!

Unfortunately, I can't give advice b/c I have no experience with ADD/ADHD, but I did read your story and feel for you, your family and Corey. You're in our prayers!