Sending you a big hug and empathy for getting through the project - we've just made it through our last few weeks of school and honestly, even without such a huge project, all the little extras that get thrown in add up to just such a bunch of craziness - a time of year that should be fun is just so much danged work that it's nuts!
Re your ds and his project, from my perspective, there's a difference in being in the situation where a student purposely procrastinates or is willfully lazy in not digging in and starting on a project - that's one thing. What you describe sounds so much like my 2e ds who struggles with written expression.
I am frustrated that most of the other classes have already finished this project, this teacher is only in her 2nd year.
I think it's worth mentioning the timing kindly to this teacher - I know it's high school and that parents are supposed to be hands-off, but it sounds like she hasn't really figured out yet what the end of the school year is like for most kids. A kind mention re timing from a few parents this year might prevent this same thing from happening next year to a new set of students - or to your ds if he every happens to have her for a teacher again
[quoe]We have started his intervention but it hasn't been going on long enough to help much yet, so it looks like I will be babysitting my son's work on this project. Something I should NOT have to do in H.S. [/quote]
I wouldn't think of it as babysitting. Chances are projects like this have been assigned for years in school, right? There's a reason for it - putting together a project that requires research, thought, and a written product requires a lot of skill, and it takes time to develop those skills. My kids have had projects like this almost every year they've been in school - partly because the curriculum goals is learning how to do a project as much as it is learning the content of the project. Keep in mind that all kids learn skills at different rates - some kids learn how to read at an "average/expected" rate, some learn by osmosis at a young age, and others struggle then suddenly become fluent much later than anticipated. Not everyone learns how to read at the same rate or at the same age/grade. Same thing with developing the skills to do this type of project - and from what I think I remember of your other posts, your ds needs help, possibly has some type of 2e going on. So instead of viewing this as babysitting, look at is as instruction and scaffolding - you are providing him the framework to learn skills he hasn't mastered yet.
Last night I sat near him for the 5 hours it took to churn out one paragraph that was due this morning. Most of that time spent agonizing about what he was going to write, and how he had nothing to say.
This is my ds - or was my ds before he went through years of speech therapy. He still gets "stuck" with open-ended types of assignments at times, and with trying to organize his thoughts when he needs to summarize a large amount of information. The only advice I can offer up here is - it took us a lot of working with ds - over a lot of time - to really understand what this type of slow progress was coming from, and also a lot of experimenting with different techniques to help him find ways to get the information to flow *out* of his brain.
At first he wasn't convinced he needed to do more research to understand the geography more than look at a few maps. It's like he believes that he should just know this information.
Are you sure that the issue is that he doesn't know the info? It's possible he knows more than enough about the geography, but doesn't know how to get his knowledge out of his brain and onto paper.
It feels odd because he needs the most help at the pre-write stages but once he finally gets writing, the only thing I'm needed for is to be right there so he stays on task. He doesn't need this for either math or science.
This was true of my ds - his huge stumbling block was just getting started and getting an idea of what to write. Once he had an idea he was able to move ahead. He did (does) need help with staying on task - not because he's purposely not wanting to, but in ds' case because he doesn't have a good sense of time when he's writing - he may sit for an hour but doesn't realize he hasn't been doing anything productive and instead thinks it's only been a few minutes. What my ds does is to set a timer for 15 minutes on his iPad when he's writing - if it goes off and he hasn't made progress he gets up and does something else for a few minutes before going back to it. If he's writing actively and making progress he either resets the timer or leaves it off.
What is the most frustrating is I insisted that he work on it in the afternoon, so hopefully he could go to his evening extracurricular. That gave him 2 1/2 hours, what I would estimate to be a reasonable time to finish the task at hand. Most of the afternoon was spent in avoidance techniques and he didn't really settle down with it till after dinner & the extracurricular had been nixed.
I wouldn't automatically assume he's purposely seeking out avoidance techniques - it's possible he's lost and needs scaffolding up front.
And then he just gets stuck and sucks us all into this world wind of his agony. I know what I need to do to get him through this project without doing it for him. But he has been doing project likes this for years and I would have expected he could have done them mostly independent by now.
Has he ever really had help that is targeted at the skills he's missing? If not, I would try not to get frustrated and just jump in and help - teach him the skills he needs. He's still a kid with a ton of promise whether or not he can successfully complete a project like this independently today. There were tons of times that between myself and our SLP and some of his teachers that it would be easy looking in from the outside to say "a kid this age doesn't need that kind of help" or "a kid this age shouldn't be getting that much support for that task" or "that mom is a helicopter mom!"... but the reality was simply - ds needed to learn the task, it did not come easily to him, and we stepped in and taught him - taught him both specific techniques/skills and also helped him discover accommodations and work-arounds and tips that helped him be able to ultimately work independently without a ton of scaffolding. (And it's still a work in progress!). There have been some things in ds' life that he's been behind on or unable to do that we (as parents) have said ok, that's not important. But for the skills that are necessary, that are important, you teach your children how to do them or you find the help they need to learn them. It can be really frustrating, but try not to think of it as babysitting - really it's not!
Also try to think of how it might feel to be in his shoes - having a large project to do in front of you that is a big part of your grade, and really not knowing how or where to get started on it, or how to complete it, or whatever the challenge is. Factor in being a teen and not wanting to have to depend on a parent or other adult to show you how to do something the world expects you should have known how to do already and that you are most likely aware your peers can sit down and take on without worries.
Hang in there! You've realized he needs help and things *will* get better the more you learn about what his challenges are and the more he receives specific instruction with the things that are roadblocks for him.
polarbear
