Unmotivated?

Teens (especially) Not Motivated to Learn and/or Not Cooperating with Homeschooling?

Q: I have a teenager who is unmotivated/depressed/not cooperating with Homeschooling. How can I deal with this if I pull her out of school to homeschool?
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A: This can be common for high-school-age students. So many of them do not want to waste time on things that they don't see a purpose or meaning to. They may not see how the lessons they are expected to learn will be of any use to them.

I went through this with one of my own and I've helped many other people through it. What I have found helps is to start with working on helping your child figure out what he or she wants to do in adulthood. Make that the focus for a while. Use books or websites to help your student figure out what they do and/or don't want to do as an adult. Think not just about types of careers, but also the lifestyle wanted.

Does your child want a safe and secure adult life with regular salary, paid sick leave, regular working hours, etc.? Or the excitement of possibly having a commission and a big bonus? Does your child want a desk job or an outdoor job or some of both? Does your child want a job with independence where your child can make a lot of decisions about the day-to-day working or the kind of job where somebody stands over the child's shoulder telling him or her what to do all the time? These sorts of things can help figure out the kind of job that would work for your child.

Then work backwards. Figure out what your child needs to learn to reach that point. Even if your child later changes his or her mind, working towards a goal of his or her own choosing will tend to make the child more willing to go along with the lessons and better prepare him or her for whatever path in life.

Giving the child the power to plan their own lessons can help too. With one of mine, I told him the classes that I expected him to do to reach his goal, but I wanted him to figure out how to do these classes. For electives, he could choose whatever he wanted.

So, for example, one of the subjects I told him he had to learn was American history. He asked if he could watch videos to learn it. I told him I was sure that someone had already mapped this out, and we could search the Internet to find such a person who had done the work of planning for us. So, we searched and found a site someone had set up listing videos on American history by time period. I agreed to let him pick videos from their lists as long as he didn't focus on just one time period. He had to write down the title and keep a record of how much time he spent watching these. For each one that he watched, I told him that he had to write a paper telling me what he'd gotten out of it. What had he learned? What questions did it raise? I might ask him to rewrite it if I thought he hadn't put enough into it but as soon as he had watched 120 hours I would give him one credit for American history. We saved most of the papers he wrote as samples of materials created by the student for the course.

He needed some electives; I let him choose the subjects.

He wanted to join a gym that was within walking distance of our house, and he set up a daily workout routine and that became one PE elective. Again, I told him that I'd give him one credit once he'd logged at least 120 hours. His notes on his exercise routine served as samples of materials created by the student for this class.

He was interested in enlisting and wanted to read about military history and books by generals and other military leaders. He chose books and recorded their titles. After reading each one, he told me about it. We discussed what he'd learned and what he thought of each book. We gave a name to this elective calling it Social Studies: Intro. to Military History. After logging at least 60 hours, I added it as a half credit to his transcript. Photos of a few pages he'd read served as samples of materials used for this course.

At the nearby gym, he also joined a serious martial arts class with police officers and other professionals in it for another P.E. elective. Again, I wrote it up in an official transcript as one credit once he'd logged 120 hours or more in the class. Paperwork for him earning different levels of belts served as samples of his work in the course.

For a final science class, he decided to take an Earth Space class through dual enrollment at the local community college. He had a sibling and a friend in the class and didn't mind having the more formal class since he chose it.

Once he got to plan what and how he was studying, and saw that it was helping him reach his goals, his level of cooperation turned around greatly. He was a much more willing participant in his own education.  He was accepted by every college that he finished the application to, but chose to go into the military instead--he accomplished his goal.

Most students respond well to this approach. Some may need more assistance in figuring out options for learning, but helping the student figure out educational goals that can be met in a way that works for the student usually changes a student's motivation level dramatically--especially if the parent or a mentor of some sort helps the student figure out options that are workable for the student.


For more information on Homeschooling high school this page on my website may help:
https://www.flhomeschoolevaluations.com/homeschooling-high-school.html
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I have helped a number of parents dealing with this to find options that work for their child. If you'd like a consultation, you can schedule one here:
https://www.flhomeschoolevaluations.com/consultations-and-choice-navigation.html