Hi DebbieR! This is my first time on a community page but your post is something that I can relate to. My son is in 7th grade this year. We pulled him out of public school in the middle of 6th grade to homeschool him. He loved school up until that year and always did well also. He was diagnosed with ADD in 2nd grade but it isn't a severe case of it, if that makes sense. His self esteem really suffered and we are constantly working on it. What his teacher destroyed in 6th grade is taking a long time to recover. This year he seems to have lost his desire to put forth his best effort in anything. I've tried everything I can think of and look for helpful suggestions all the time. The best advice I've found, especially in the writing area, is to not get too hung up on doing reports before they hit 8th grade. It is said that doing creative writing at this point is what works best. My son is very good at orally reporting on anything but hates to write. Once he actually sits down and gives it a good try he does wonderfully! He is very creative and makes his writing interesting to the reader. I decided to back off a little this year and not do reports but instead do summaries for books. I ask for 2-3 paragraphs. I've also used starter sentences for writing assignments. He hasn't realized it yet but doing it that way I've gotten him to write descriptively, first person, short story, persuasive, and creative, etc. I've used humorous or unexpected type of starter sentences to crab his interest. I've found he writes way more for me without any "pushing" from me. For the other subjects I don't know what to say. My husband and I sat our son down and told him that he needed to change his attitude. I put in a lot of effort into homeschooling him and he needed to do the same. He likes to play video games but we limit them so we use them as a reward for good work- not just acceptable but good honest work. We want him to understand that if you do your best you will have positive things happen to you. I hope this helps some! If you find any tips that have helped, please pass them on!!!
